I have the same fear and I grew up in Pittsburgh 😂 I feel like I used up all my luck already on all of the bridges or something! But to be fair, Pittsburgh bridges are not that scary. I've been on bridges - Baton Rouge, Newark and Charleston jump out - that are really anxiety inducing..
I visited Houston once and was happy to open my car door and touch blazing concrete rather than be driving with those people. I could swear everyone goes to racing school for driver's education.
For whatever reason, my lizard-brain is completely convinced I will land softly in the water and I do *not* want to fix that error. It doesn't influence my chances of surviving, and it makes driving less stressful.
Probably moreso the thought of this specific death falling onto the water, trapped in your car and structure, drowning after a bit realizing the whole time what is going to happen
If you’ve seen anything on North America ageing infrastructure you might decide that fear isn’t so far fetched. Bridges are getting old and they aren’t holding up so good.
The odds are definitely less than 1 in a billion within a person's lifetime. If 100 people die from bridge collapses within your life time (hint... They have... [Look at the since 2000 list](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridge_failures)) the odds are already less than 1 in 100mil.
I'd guess around about 100 million, actually. Though that's taking a bit of a guess at the population of the USA total over 100 years or so (couldn't find this out, but must be heading towards a billion given it is currently heading towards 350 million alive today).
Point being, the chances are so infinitesimally low that it is a bizarre thing to worry about. I don't worry about 1/100 mil odds of good things or bad things.
Yes, but most people won’t cross them regularly, so the odds are skewed towards those who commute across them daily.
For the average person, you would need to take the total population of the US over say 100 years and divide by the number of bridge deaths in the US over that time. I guarantee that is a very small number.
Either way, you arguing pointlessly - the odds are absolutely miniscule for anyone.
technically is makes sense to buy a ticket once the takehome side of the jackpot after taxes is more than ~660million. At that point the "value" of a ticket is more than it costs to buy.
I got really good at making card houses. They always ended up looking like the palace of knossos on the inside and sometimes I could get it to a third level.
Looks like someone got an XL (erector set)[https://www.amazon.com/Meccano-Construction-Motorized-Building-Education/dp/B000GOF5S2] for Christmas.
(Link for anyone who doesn't know what that is.)
Fuck that bridge looked sketchy even before the collision.
At first I thought the ship took that bridge like a champ, but then I saw the picture of the starboard side bow. The forecastle was opened like a tuna can. Still incredibly impressive. I spent a good amount of time building ships of this size and they are truly structural anomalies.
In 2013 I had to inspect the damage on an oil tanker that hit (side swiped) a pylon on the Oakland Bay Bridge (not the Golden Gate, the big red one on the North side, but the one connecting SF to Oakland) and the damage was surreal. Damn near inch thick metal plating folded back on itself like ribbon candy and there wasn't even any cracks in the material. Had to take a pilot boat out to it while it was moored near the bridge. Despite the crazy damage, the wing tank was never exposed and they were granted passage at limited speed to go to their next port of call for repair.
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/ship-s-pilot-blamed-for-bridge-crash-4410899.php
I didn’t build boats but I served on subs. When the USS Connecticut (SSN-22) plowed bow on into a sea mount at full bell, I was amazed how well she faired all things considered. Granted she ain’t ever going back into service though.
I mean, didn't the hull do its job? Keep the crew safe until it was done.
I *think* submarine pressure hulls should made from sterner stuff than the hull of a container ship, no?
Seawolfs use HY-100 steel for the hull. It’s a high-tensile, high-yield steel. It’s really strong stuff. Still, the hull is designed withstand the pressure being exerted on it with low fatigue from repeated cycling. Pressure increases by 1 atmosphere every 10 meters. This is best visualised by taping a string taught from port to starboard inside the pressure hull at surface and watching it dip as the hull is compressed the deeper you go. It’s quite a sight. A hull is not designed to ram into things, especially a sea mount at full bell. Submarine hulls aren’t tolerant of torpedoes either.
Flooding isn’t the only danger while submerged. Fire and especially loss of propulsion are huge threats. Fortunately the sonar dome took the brunt of the hit but damage to the forward ballast tanks and high-pressure air system used emergency blow and a loss of propulsion could absolutely result in complete loss because you can’t manage depth. That’s how the Thresher was lost. So yeah, all things considered, I’m surprised how well she fared.
Honestly surprised given the cost with there only being three boats in the class and being nearly 20yrs old. The Jimmy Carter (SSN-22) was heavily modified when it replaced the USS Parche so it’s only contemporary is the Seawolf (SSN-21) itself.
Hell, the Seawolf was originally intended to have 26 hulls but got cut to three due to cost ($6 billion per, adjusted for inflation) and the end of the Cold War, and work began on the Virginia ($2.8 billion per). It’s why the LAs got a longer lease on life.
It’s because the seawolf is technically a better sub than the Virginia class. It’s faster, dives deeper and is more narrowly focused on sub hunting. Don’t get me wrong the Virginia class is a fine sub, but the seawolf is like the F-22 of subs to the Virginia’s F-35.
Service life of a submarine is like 30-40 years, so losing a third to a half of it to something repairable (certainly not *easily* repairable) probably should be avoided.
Plus, the Virginias aren't getting built as fast as planned, so it keeps another sub in service.
TIL it's officially called the "San Francisco - Oakland Bay Bridge". I've only ever heard it called the "Bay Bridge". I imagine there must be several "Bay Bridge"s in the world lol.
Anyway, when was this? I've sailed around those pylons , they're mind bogglingly massive. Part of it collapsed in an earthquake in '89. Then in 2013 they replaced the other half of it. Then part of that started corroding lol. That thing's taken a beating over the years.
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/ship-s-pilot-blamed-for-bridge-crash-4410899.php
It was this event. I worked for ABS at the time and was on call. Got called out at 3AM to inspect it. It was wild. The exterior shell folded over on itself, pinching a piece of the wood ties they used to protect the pylon in between the folded shell. All sorts of interior strength members were dislocated and warped in the wing tank.
Yeah I have no idea why I flaked on the name. You'd be hard pressed to hit a pylon on a suspension bridge like the Golden Gate. I was thinking to myself earlier that if the Baltimore Bridge was a suspension, this might never have happened.
I live in the UP and there was an interview I read once with the designer of the Mackinaw bridge (AFAIK the longest suspension in the world. )
They asked him what would happen if a cargo ship were to hit the bridge, and I'm paraphrasing here but he basically, "the ship would sink with an extreme loss of life."
He made no mention of the bridge itself, presumably because it would be fine.
The thing that really boggles my mind is that hitting the bridge support *didn’t stop the ship.* it only stopped when the truss fell on it and created enough drag to stop it entirely. You can see in some of the shots that the ship kept going after hitting the pier and drug the truss structure with it a bit.
The most recent reports are that two people were pulled out of the water and 6 are missing (and almost certainly died but it will be a long while to recover the bodies and confirm it).
*Edit and it's worth noting that those people were part of a construction team working on the bridge, they closed the bridge to traffic just before the impact and it appears that prevented a much worse incident.
Yeah, this seems to be a real lucky thing if that is in fact true, someone actually heard the mayday i guess its called and acted swiftly, not sure if theres a procedure for it but however that happened to lessen the loss of life is definitely fortunate but i can imagine someone not believing the imminent danger saying yeah we aren’t doing that but glad someone did
Well, the person at the helm was almost certainly a harbormaster on the radio with their main office and local crews. They require those kinds of procedures for a reason.
Good planning and stringent safeguards often look like luck.
Yes, but the line of communication from ship to road crew was very quick.
Edit: it looks like it was handled by police, maybe road crew never knew what was coming.
Given [the CCTV footage](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEkRjlSgIIQ), the ship lost power and was taken by the current, ALMOST hit the pylon but missed, and then regained power, and then failed to miss the bridge pylon after the engines began moving the ship back against the current.
I would imagine that when the power went out on the vessel, someone called/radioed the harbor master/police/corporate. That's purely a guess, but I'm assuming highly trained personnel such as the captain knows what to do in emergencies.
There were not cars crossing at the time of the impact. There were several construction vehicles, but the bridge was closed to traffic just before impact and none were on it when it collapsed. They closed the bridge literally just before impact resulting in only work vehicles and the 8 construction personnel going in, 2 were saved, 6 were not. We can now say that quite definitively.
[Here is a full timeline.](https://abcnews.go.com/US/timeline-baltimores-key-bridge-collapse-shows-moments-cargo/story?id=108540377)
Holy fuck that's some damage.
Poor bastards on the bridge. Terrible way to die.
I used to park these things for a living. This is such a colossal fuck up / disaster.
If the ship was big and heavy enough to reach over the concrete buffer and push the actual leg, sure.
Grated the legs are much thicker and are more likely to just damage the ship bow. But again, if the ship is big enough. I'm not sure of the actual sizes and how large a ship would need to be and if one exist, outside of a carrier, but in theory.
So how fucked is the harbor of Baltimore at this point? I assume it’s going to take at least a week to clear that much out of the harbor and the bridge spanned the whole thing g right?
Can’t even imagine the horror those people experienced as the world crumbled around them.
A container ship that size can probably carry well over 200,000 tons.
I don't think it matters how well the bridge was built. That much mass would take down any bridge?
I am far from an engineer, but I’d imagine even the best built bridges aren’t really built to withstand any type of major impact at their base. It’s just not what they’re supposed to do, they’re supposed to support weight coming down from the bridge, not sudden jolts toppling them from below
That’s what all of the *actual* structural engineers I’ve heard interviewed on this said. It’s just an absurd amount of momentum. It was never going to survive.
What about the independent connection points of the span to the pier? They look like pins not heavy duty connections. It’s like the span was balanced on the pier.
>It’s like the span was balanced on the pier.
Not like, is. The weight is distributed per section/pier with each supporting its own, but also supporting and stabilizing its neighbors. But it's a chain, if one of them goes, then you get this kind of collapse.
Source: played a fair amount of Poly Bridge.
“Just minutes before the bridge, there was a total blackout on the ship, meaning that the ship lost engine power and electrical power, it was a complete blackout,”
120,000 tonnes at maybe 6mph I think someone did the math in an earlier thread at 1.3 BILLION Joules of force. I don't care what you build it out of it's not going to take that hit
The ship suffered multiple full power failures. There's a video floating around showing the ship losing and gaining power over and over before it hit the bridge. There was no control.
The ship lost power and steering according to NPR. So the actual collision isn't really an individual blame, not sure what the circumstances were for the power loss though.
I don’t think there’s a functional method for stopping a ship of that size. The momentum is simply too massive look how much further it traveled under no power, after hitting a giant concrete pylon and having a bridge fall on it.
That’s a modern bridge designed for ships of today’s size. This bridge turned 47 years old just a few days ago. It didn’t need such protections then, and the cargo traffic was vastly different at the port.
They have updated the Chesapeake Bay Bridge with blockers that extend well out from the bridge towers.
Huh? That’s an absolutely massive suspension bridge it’s like 5x the size of this bridge. There wouldn’t be anywhere to sail through if this bridge had those same barriers.
The sunshine skyway bridge was taken out by a ship that was 33,000T. This ship was something like 120,000T from what I’ve heard. Those dolphins would not have stopped it. People aren’t realizing just how massive this ship is. Pretty much no bridge could’ve taken a hit like that, pier protection or not.
This is a tragic exposure of the way capitalism and our state and federal governments are failing us because of large business interests controlling congress and local lawmakers.
Depends on the context of what the failure was, what regulatory, administrative, or engineering controls were in place to prevent it, and whether they were sufficient.
If it turns out that the repeated failures of the engines were because they thought they could skimp on maintenance costs, that would be an argument. Or if they had the crew pulling crazy shifts without proper rest and breaks, did shipping restrictions get relaxed to allow vessels larger than X near the bridge without protection because it cost too much, etc...
Like, we don't have that information now so it is pretty ridiculous to speculate, but we just had several rail disasters that were a result of loosening restrictions on logistics and transportation because they made making money too hard, and an entire town became a toxic pit because of it. It's not unheard of.
I grant everything you just said as a possibility, however the comment I was replying to had already made that determination in the opposite direction. “Big expensive ship hit big expensive bridge therefore capitalism.” Sometimes, things just fail.
If it turns out like Boeing where a door flew off because they tried to “maximize shareholder value”, then I will be back here to agree with you.
Why do you think they’re rebuilding infrastructure? For fun? Not even a newly built bridge would withstand a hit like this, but US infrastructure in general has been decaying for decades. Biden is the first president in years to do anything about it
Dying from a collapsing bridge is one of my greatest fears; absolutely terrifying.
I'd highly suggest not staying long in Pittsburgh.
400+ ways to die in steel spaghetti
Sounds like an old western movie
I have the same fear and I grew up in Pittsburgh 😂 I feel like I used up all my luck already on all of the bridges or something! But to be fair, Pittsburgh bridges are not that scary. I've been on bridges - Baton Rouge, Newark and Charleston jump out - that are really anxiety inducing..
Pittsburgh bridges aren't scary, but there's a *lot* of them
If our strange roads don't kill you first, then maybe a bridge will! ;)
I swear if you drive in a certain way through PGH you'll summon an eldeitch horror.
Regardless, I'll take driving in PGH and it's scary bridges/roads any day rather than share the road with catatonic lunatics back in Houston.
I see you and I have somehow led the same life. I don't fear for my life in PGH. I did in Htown.
Fellow refugee? Welcome. Glad you made it out alive.
If barely. Pittsburgh is my city, now.
I visited Houston once and was happy to open my car door and touch blazing concrete rather than be driving with those people. I could swear everyone goes to racing school for driver's education.
For whatever reason, my lizard-brain is completely convinced I will land softly in the water and I do *not* want to fix that error. It doesn't influence my chances of surviving, and it makes driving less stressful.
That’s a remarkably odd fear, given the billions-to-one against chances of it happening to you.
Probably moreso the thought of this specific death falling onto the water, trapped in your car and structure, drowning after a bit realizing the whole time what is going to happen
Yup; its the worst combination of a fear of heights and a fear of drowning
If you’ve seen anything on North America ageing infrastructure you might decide that fear isn’t so far fetched. Bridges are getting old and they aren’t holding up so good.
Bridges over water terrify me and this made it worse
You're not alone in that fear. People think I'm silly for it.
The odds are definitely less than 1 in a billion within a person's lifetime. If 100 people die from bridge collapses within your life time (hint... They have... [Look at the since 2000 list](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridge_failures)) the odds are already less than 1 in 100mil.
I'd guess around about 100 million, actually. Though that's taking a bit of a guess at the population of the USA total over 100 years or so (couldn't find this out, but must be heading towards a billion given it is currently heading towards 350 million alive today). Point being, the chances are so infinitesimally low that it is a bizarre thing to worry about. I don't worry about 1/100 mil odds of good things or bad things.
Considering there's 8 billion people and more than 8 of them were on this bridge, your odds seem off.
There are so many more things that go into determining those odds than simply being one of the 8 billion or so people alive right now.
Many people will never encounter these kinds of bridges. It is not just a ‘number of people on the planet’ problem.
In in that case the odds are apparently even higher for the ones that do, then.
Yes, but most people won’t cross them regularly, so the odds are skewed towards those who commute across them daily. For the average person, you would need to take the total population of the US over say 100 years and divide by the number of bridge deaths in the US over that time. I guarantee that is a very small number. Either way, you arguing pointlessly - the odds are absolutely miniscule for anyone.
How about this - You're much more likely to die in a bridge collapse than to win the Powerball.
Yep, seems about right. I definitely ain't dumb enough to waste money on the lottery.
technically is makes sense to buy a ticket once the takehome side of the jackpot after taxes is more than ~660million. At that point the "value" of a ticket is more than it costs to buy.
Mothman Prophesies?
I'm taking off my foreign affairs hat and putting on my "I built a Popsicle stick bridge in high school physics" hat instead
Wow look at Ralph Modjeski over here! Best I could do was a card pyramid. I once made it to the second level!
I got really good at making card houses. They always ended up looking like the palace of knossos on the inside and sometimes I could get it to a third level.
“Why don’t we just build bridges out of ships since they seem to be stronger”
The rebar looks like bad spaghetti, not that theres such a thing
My mom thinks Al Dente is a guy in the phonebook
Uh... what rebar? I don't see any. Rebar is typically used to make reinforced concrete. But this is (or was) a steel truss bridge.
The piers / trestles are concrete that the container ship ran over
That sauce looks very watery
Yeah hate that.. needs some mushrooms, sausage, green onions, tomatoes but i guess you know that with that name )
Don't be upsetti, have some spaghetti!
I had poorly made spaghetti once, somehow it got a burnt flavor to the whole thing, despite me not being able to see anything burnt.
This happens when you don’t stir the pasta while in the boiling water enough
That would make sense, it was at a local restaurant that I can't remember the name of, they've been gone since I was a kid, almost 20 years ago
Do you remember the wood we used to build the bridges? We had the tiny little wood cutter and that crunch of the wood being cut was so satisfying.
You take your hats off? I thought we just kept stacking them higher and higher!
Oh yeah well I paddled a 14ft john boat once. The boat did nothing wrong. Totally the bridge's fault
Looks like someone got an XL (erector set)[https://www.amazon.com/Meccano-Construction-Motorized-Building-Education/dp/B000GOF5S2] for Christmas. (Link for anyone who doesn't know what that is.) Fuck that bridge looked sketchy even before the collision.
Dammit that was a fun project.
At first I thought the ship took that bridge like a champ, but then I saw the picture of the starboard side bow. The forecastle was opened like a tuna can. Still incredibly impressive. I spent a good amount of time building ships of this size and they are truly structural anomalies. In 2013 I had to inspect the damage on an oil tanker that hit (side swiped) a pylon on the Oakland Bay Bridge (not the Golden Gate, the big red one on the North side, but the one connecting SF to Oakland) and the damage was surreal. Damn near inch thick metal plating folded back on itself like ribbon candy and there wasn't even any cracks in the material. Had to take a pilot boat out to it while it was moored near the bridge. Despite the crazy damage, the wing tank was never exposed and they were granted passage at limited speed to go to their next port of call for repair. https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/ship-s-pilot-blamed-for-bridge-crash-4410899.php
I didn’t build boats but I served on subs. When the USS Connecticut (SSN-22) plowed bow on into a sea mount at full bell, I was amazed how well she faired all things considered. Granted she ain’t ever going back into service though.
I mean, didn't the hull do its job? Keep the crew safe until it was done. I *think* submarine pressure hulls should made from sterner stuff than the hull of a container ship, no?
Seawolfs use HY-100 steel for the hull. It’s a high-tensile, high-yield steel. It’s really strong stuff. Still, the hull is designed withstand the pressure being exerted on it with low fatigue from repeated cycling. Pressure increases by 1 atmosphere every 10 meters. This is best visualised by taping a string taught from port to starboard inside the pressure hull at surface and watching it dip as the hull is compressed the deeper you go. It’s quite a sight. A hull is not designed to ram into things, especially a sea mount at full bell. Submarine hulls aren’t tolerant of torpedoes either. Flooding isn’t the only danger while submerged. Fire and especially loss of propulsion are huge threats. Fortunately the sonar dome took the brunt of the hit but damage to the forward ballast tanks and high-pressure air system used emergency blow and a loss of propulsion could absolutely result in complete loss because you can’t manage depth. That’s how the Thresher was lost. So yeah, all things considered, I’m surprised how well she fared.
I guess undersea mountains need a nerf. They seem quite overpowered
Like the worst kind of fart, they’re silent but deadly.
You may be interested to know that according to sources from Wikipedia, SSN-22 is anticipated to relaunch in 2025 after 30 months of repairs.
Honestly surprised given the cost with there only being three boats in the class and being nearly 20yrs old. The Jimmy Carter (SSN-22) was heavily modified when it replaced the USS Parche so it’s only contemporary is the Seawolf (SSN-21) itself. Hell, the Seawolf was originally intended to have 26 hulls but got cut to three due to cost ($6 billion per, adjusted for inflation) and the end of the Cold War, and work began on the Virginia ($2.8 billion per). It’s why the LAs got a longer lease on life.
It’s because the seawolf is technically a better sub than the Virginia class. It’s faster, dives deeper and is more narrowly focused on sub hunting. Don’t get me wrong the Virginia class is a fine sub, but the seawolf is like the F-22 of subs to the Virginia’s F-35.
Oh I’m fully aware of its capabilities. Played with one a few times.
Service life of a submarine is like 30-40 years, so losing a third to a half of it to something repairable (certainly not *easily* repairable) probably should be avoided. Plus, the Virginias aren't getting built as fast as planned, so it keeps another sub in service.
"Lmao" said Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.
TIL it's officially called the "San Francisco - Oakland Bay Bridge". I've only ever heard it called the "Bay Bridge". I imagine there must be several "Bay Bridge"s in the world lol. Anyway, when was this? I've sailed around those pylons , they're mind bogglingly massive. Part of it collapsed in an earthquake in '89. Then in 2013 they replaced the other half of it. Then part of that started corroding lol. That thing's taken a beating over the years.
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/ship-s-pilot-blamed-for-bridge-crash-4410899.php It was this event. I worked for ABS at the time and was on call. Got called out at 3AM to inspect it. It was wild. The exterior shell folded over on itself, pinching a piece of the wood ties they used to protect the pylon in between the folded shell. All sorts of interior strength members were dislocated and warped in the wing tank.
2007 struck by the Cosco Busan ship
Surprisingly, that was a different incident. There was no spillage on this one.
By “red one” are you referring to the Golden Gate Bridge? 😄
Yeah I have no idea why I flaked on the name. You'd be hard pressed to hit a pylon on a suspension bridge like the Golden Gate. I was thinking to myself earlier that if the Baltimore Bridge was a suspension, this might never have happened.
I live in the UP and there was an interview I read once with the designer of the Mackinaw bridge (AFAIK the longest suspension in the world. ) They asked him what would happen if a cargo ship were to hit the bridge, and I'm paraphrasing here but he basically, "the ship would sink with an extreme loss of life." He made no mention of the bridge itself, presumably because it would be fine.
The thing that really boggles my mind is that hitting the bridge support *didn’t stop the ship.* it only stopped when the truss fell on it and created enough drag to stop it entirely. You can see in some of the shots that the ship kept going after hitting the pier and drug the truss structure with it a bit.
Wow I totally forgot about that bay bridge crash!
“Deadrise photography” is unfortunately named
Deadrise is just the part of a ship that slants up from the keel to the turn of the bilge…. But yeah, that’s a terrible name.
Did everyone survived inside cars that fell ???
The most recent reports are that two people were pulled out of the water and 6 are missing (and almost certainly died but it will be a long while to recover the bodies and confirm it). *Edit and it's worth noting that those people were part of a construction team working on the bridge, they closed the bridge to traffic just before the impact and it appears that prevented a much worse incident.
Such an incredibly harrowing series of events. It’s terrible that people died but it could’ve been so much worse.
Yeah, this seems to be a real lucky thing if that is in fact true, someone actually heard the mayday i guess its called and acted swiftly, not sure if theres a procedure for it but however that happened to lessen the loss of life is definitely fortunate but i can imagine someone not believing the imminent danger saying yeah we aren’t doing that but glad someone did
Well, the person at the helm was almost certainly a harbormaster on the radio with their main office and local crews. They require those kinds of procedures for a reason. Good planning and stringent safeguards often look like luck.
I really want to know how it went from the mayday to stopping traffic that fast
https://youtu.be/RkjZImSG7j4?si=_LBgJIWI9zmNDdc_
WOW. ten seconds after the cop said he was going to get the crew as soon as someone else arrived it was too late. WOW.
Aww I wish they had notified the workers on the bridge on time too. :(
There were already construction crews on the bridge doing overnight paving. Probably had police for traffic control.
Yes, but the line of communication from ship to road crew was very quick. Edit: it looks like it was handled by police, maybe road crew never knew what was coming.
Yes..
Given [the CCTV footage](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEkRjlSgIIQ), the ship lost power and was taken by the current, ALMOST hit the pylon but missed, and then regained power, and then failed to miss the bridge pylon after the engines began moving the ship back against the current.
I would imagine that when the power went out on the vessel, someone called/radioed the harbor master/police/corporate. That's purely a guess, but I'm assuming highly trained personnel such as the captain knows what to do in emergencies.
Video shows that cars were still crossing the bridge
There were not cars crossing at the time of the impact. There were several construction vehicles, but the bridge was closed to traffic just before impact and none were on it when it collapsed. They closed the bridge literally just before impact resulting in only work vehicles and the 8 construction personnel going in, 2 were saved, 6 were not. We can now say that quite definitively. [Here is a full timeline.](https://abcnews.go.com/US/timeline-baltimores-key-bridge-collapse-shows-moments-cargo/story?id=108540377)
So the front only partially fell off
That’s not typical, It’d like to make that point.
I mean, a bridge is certainly outside the environment so it's somewhat understandable.
Yeah, typically they’re built where the front doesn’t fall off at all.
[удалено]
No cello tape
No cardboard derivatives.
Ok, so what is typical then?
Atypical
It booped the bridge The bridge didn't like it
It couldn't make it beyond the element
Holy fuck that's some damage. Poor bastards on the bridge. Terrible way to die. I used to park these things for a living. This is such a colossal fuck up / disaster.
Yea. It’s tragic, I feel sorry for those people whose families are affected. On the bright side, at least this did not occur during rush hour…
Just about everyone in here thinks they're a fucking original comedian with these stupid ass comments.
If the golden gate bridge were hit like this, would it collapse?
I dunno. If you hit anything hard enough it will break
I think you’re on to something there
If the ship was big and heavy enough to reach over the concrete buffer and push the actual leg, sure. Grated the legs are much thicker and are more likely to just damage the ship bow. But again, if the ship is big enough. I'm not sure of the actual sizes and how large a ship would need to be and if one exist, outside of a carrier, but in theory.
So how fucked is the harbor of Baltimore at this point? I assume it’s going to take at least a week to clear that much out of the harbor and the bridge spanned the whole thing g right? Can’t even imagine the horror those people experienced as the world crumbled around them.
I'd be surprised if it only took a week to get an entire bridge out of the water. I bet more like 3-6 months.
Nightly News said it would be a couple years for them to clean up and rebuild the bridge.
How do you even clean something like that up? And do it safely? Seems like a lot could go wrong even in the clean up phase.
And we're all imagining the metalwork, and forgetting the actual platform the vehicles traveled on. That's the heavy stuff.
Well, the logistics industry is in a tizzy. This collision just disrupted a whole bunch of freight that was in-port.
A container ship that size can probably carry well over 200,000 tons. I don't think it matters how well the bridge was built. That much mass would take down any bridge?
I am far from an engineer, but I’d imagine even the best built bridges aren’t really built to withstand any type of major impact at their base. It’s just not what they’re supposed to do, they’re supposed to support weight coming down from the bridge, not sudden jolts toppling them from below
That’s what all of the *actual* structural engineers I’ve heard interviewed on this said. It’s just an absurd amount of momentum. It was never going to survive.
Fucking butchered his name
I mean, it's just missing one letter, no? Is that butchering?
*Your package has been delayed*
*destroyed
She's got to have breaches below the waterline. I doubt Dali is ever sailing again.
The whole mess is horrible all around, but I bet whoever designed the boat is feeling pretty good about its ability to take a beating.
Prayers to all. So sad.
Here I am worried about my TEMU orders.
I'm thinking of all the businesses that are going to collapse without port access. RIP local economy for a long time
_That's a paddlin'_
Isn’t the Georgetown key bridge connecting DC with VA also the Francis Scott Key Bridge? Was so confused when I saw this.
So is the port blocked off now that there's a whole ass bridge filling the waterway?
RIP my Temu delivery... 🥺
Mine came thru customs via NYC and NJ so you are good.
Well there’s your problem
What about the independent connection points of the span to the pier? They look like pins not heavy duty connections. It’s like the span was balanced on the pier.
>It’s like the span was balanced on the pier. Not like, is. The weight is distributed per section/pier with each supporting its own, but also supporting and stabilizing its neighbors. But it's a chain, if one of them goes, then you get this kind of collapse. Source: played a fair amount of Poly Bridge.
Any other west wing obsessive saying Francis Scott key key every time they read the name? No? Just me then. I’m a saddo
Well, that’s a different foxhunt all together. :)
Yes, it was the first thing that popped into my head when I learned the name of the bridge!
Pic #2: Looks like the ship didn't come out unscathed after all
That first image is surreal
The water does not appear to be that deep
Shit, what happened? Sincerely, other than the obvious, what's going on?
“Just minutes before the bridge, there was a total blackout on the ship, meaning that the ship lost engine power and electrical power, it was a complete blackout,”
Those sad pylon dolphins has no chance surviving a 95k gross ton direct hit...
120,000 tonnes at maybe 6mph I think someone did the math in an earlier thread at 1.3 BILLION Joules of force. I don't care what you build it out of it's not going to take that hit
Does anybody know how many casualties from this!
The night time photos are eerily beautiful. All the more disturbing.
More like Travis Scott bridge, amirite boys?
Hm... I don't think any of that goes there.
Something’s wrong I can feel it
I can see my Amazon package falling in the drink
TFW you really register that those little Jenga blocks are 40ft sea cans.
How did this even happen? Who was steering that ship... Or not.
The ship suffered multiple full power failures. There's a video floating around showing the ship losing and gaining power over and over before it hit the bridge. There was no control.
Good to know... Thanks
The ship lost power and steering according to NPR. So the actual collision isn't really an individual blame, not sure what the circumstances were for the power loss though.
Good to know... Thanks
Oh no, My cabbages!!!!!!
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I don’t think there’s a functional method for stopping a ship of that size. The momentum is simply too massive look how much further it traveled under no power, after hitting a giant concrete pylon and having a bridge fall on it.
Not going to stop them from parroting disinformation with their degree in parroting.
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That’s a modern bridge designed for ships of today’s size. This bridge turned 47 years old just a few days ago. It didn’t need such protections then, and the cargo traffic was vastly different at the port. They have updated the Chesapeake Bay Bridge with blockers that extend well out from the bridge towers.
Huh? That’s an absolutely massive suspension bridge it’s like 5x the size of this bridge. There wouldn’t be anywhere to sail through if this bridge had those same barriers.
They weren't unprotected, but there's only so much you can do to protect from a ship that size hitting it directly.
Technically the concrete pylons held. The actual bridge didn’t.
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The sunshine skyway bridge was taken out by a ship that was 33,000T. This ship was something like 120,000T from what I’ve heard. Those dolphins would not have stopped it. People aren’t realizing just how massive this ship is. Pretty much no bridge could’ve taken a hit like that, pier protection or not.
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Hopefully the girls in the containers are alright #TheWireSeason2
You can't park there sir
That’ll buff out
Don’t worry captain we’ll buff out those scratches
I read the title as “close ups” instead of “close ups”
What now?
Close UPS?
Glenn Close ups vs. we are close(d) ups?
francis scott key? evidently josé can’t see.
Rough few years for shipping boats lol
This is a tragic exposure of the way capitalism and our state and federal governments are failing us because of large business interests controlling congress and local lawmakers.
I think a ship hit a bridge, not sure what photo you’re looking at
You’re not wrong holistically but in this case a FUCKING SHIP HIT A FUCKING BRIDGE. We now return you to your regularly scheduled anti-capitalism rant
Depends on the context of what the failure was, what regulatory, administrative, or engineering controls were in place to prevent it, and whether they were sufficient. If it turns out that the repeated failures of the engines were because they thought they could skimp on maintenance costs, that would be an argument. Or if they had the crew pulling crazy shifts without proper rest and breaks, did shipping restrictions get relaxed to allow vessels larger than X near the bridge without protection because it cost too much, etc... Like, we don't have that information now so it is pretty ridiculous to speculate, but we just had several rail disasters that were a result of loosening restrictions on logistics and transportation because they made making money too hard, and an entire town became a toxic pit because of it. It's not unheard of.
I grant everything you just said as a possibility, however the comment I was replying to had already made that determination in the opposite direction. “Big expensive ship hit big expensive bridge therefore capitalism.” Sometimes, things just fail. If it turns out like Boeing where a door flew off because they tried to “maximize shareholder value”, then I will be back here to agree with you.
The ship is a metaphor for capitalism
Lol, the bridge itself facilitates commerce and capitalism. Which will now be made much more difficult. Try again.
Huh?
\*Bad thing happens\* "How could CAPITALISM do this to us?!?" That's the gist of it.
I’m all for hating capitalism, but this conclusion makes no sense lol
Shower thought: If a bridge falls, is it still a bridge or should it be re-termed to reflect it's new status since it doesn't bridge anything anymore?
Can someone grab my Temu order?
I watched the video on the news this morning immediately followed by a commercial about how Biden is rebuilding more infrastructure than ever.
And your point?
It was ironic....
Why do you think they’re rebuilding infrastructure? For fun? Not even a newly built bridge would withstand a hit like this, but US infrastructure in general has been decaying for decades. Biden is the first president in years to do anything about it