Francis Scott Key Bridge Collapses
 

In Baltimore, 6 workers presumed Dead . Not sure how much has come out yet

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...tes-rcna145049

I'm a horrible person for making this joke, but just like Carl Lewis's national anthem, it's now going to be the Francis Scott OFF-key bridge.

I think your news feed is lagging

I am hearing reporting that the 6 people killed in the bridge accident were all migrants from Central America, so according to the GOP no actual humans were killed.

So, I get in this social media era we all immediately look for who to blame and how loudly we can blame them, and I’m sensitive to seeming like I’m trying to blame somebody rather than just being curious about this topic.

With that being said, what I’m struggling to understand a little is it doesn’t seem like a ship losing power and drifting is a one in a million year event. And it seems like the consensus is that the size and speed of the ship when this happens means that it was a foregone conclusion that if this happened and it hit a bridge support, the bridge was a goner.

So shouldn’t have there been some risk mitigation in place here? Is this just a freak act of God that nobody could see coming? Is it basically impossible to run a busy port in a city without these kinds of risks? Seems like time of day and a very quick response to the Mayday saved it from being much worse in terms of loss of life - what happened if this happened at 8am and the response wasn’t fast enough, we just live with hundreds of people on their daily commute dead?

It seems like quite a few things had to go exactly wrong in the same sequence, at the same proximity, with the necessary speed, and to a ship of a necessary size/weight, etc and so on and so forth. Down to things like ebb tide at the time and one day past a full moon "when tidal current velocities are especially strong".

For all those things to converge, feels like you're at least bumping right up against "act of God" territory.

so you're saying GoD HateS IlLeGaL ImMiGrAnTs!

well done

It seems that having barriers in place on critical bridge supports would go a long way to prevent/greatly lessening the chance of a bridge collapse. This was a similar event to the Florida Skyway bridge incident back in 1980, and the new bridge has artificial islands around the bases of the towers in the water.

sorry I thought this would be a bigger story than it was and there doesn't seem to be a thread for structural disasters.

wow that video is horrendous

https://www.nbcnews.com/video/video-...n-207678533914

Saw this covered somewhere, though I can't put my finger on the first (and better IMO) piece I read about it.

Basically, there seems to have been something in place there, at least as far back as 1980. But even then, when cargo ships were generally smaller and lighter, the effectiveness was questionable. Basically the configuration of the channel, topography etc, was an issue and referenced in 1980 was also the "cost prohibitive" nature of it. Fast forward to today and even experts who say something bigger might have helped in this case they admit that it's very uncertain if anything big enough could have been installed without blocking the channel (which is considered to be narrow)

The short of it seems to be that container ships are unimaginably large, which is great for keeping down the price of iPhones, but causes serious problems when anything goes wrong with them.

pffff I don't believe anything drives iphone prices DOWN

This was where my head was at immediately, was that if a ship hitting a bridge support was that catastrophic then wouldn’t there be some way to put some kind of barriers or channel to make that less likely, but admittedly I know nothing about the topics here.

You DO have an account on a forum on the internet and that makes you more an expert than science and engineering

Awful event, the State of Maryland is absolutely reeling over this. The emerging story is that some remarkably quick actions by the ship's crew and the bridge staff likely saved many lives. But six are lost, and a city that didn't need another misstep just suffered a rather bad one.

Yeah, the actions of all of the folks that led to the bridge closure are really heroic.

After I had knee surgery I sat around and watched like 30 hours of Air Disasters. One common theme was that it was never one thing that goes wrong, it's like 5 things that are rare happening at the same time that causes an accident.


Saw an engineer online talking about this. Basically said there is nothing we can build that would prevent a bridge from being destroyed by a ship that large besides land. The force at that size is just too massive.

Wondering why the government is paying for the bridge repair. Shouldn't the company that destroyed it be responsible?

Because there will be half-a-decade of litigation/negotiations to get the money from the responsible parties.

In the meantime, we need a bridge. The governments will get reimbursed eventually.

So why were there even guys up on the bridge if it was a state of emergency and they closed the bridge because of this very possibility

That is not a fair description of what happened.

Basically, from what I understand, the time between the ship losing power and the boat captain having them close the bridge (and try to get everyone off the bridge) was only 40 seconds. As cathartic as it may be to blame the pilot, it sounds like it could be much, much, MUCH worse. They got the traffic stopped and many of the folks off the bridge.

oh wow. hmmmm
so the dudes were up there for a different reason working on something else?
still odd that they didn't leave.

and it sounds like the boat captain saved lives really. NOthing he could have done about losing power. I guess it WAS all those bad things happening at once

Here's the timeline: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/francis...rker-recovery/

I get fronting the money, but this seems like an open and shut case. Their company drove a fucking boat into the bridge. They should have insurance or something.

Also should add that criminal charges should be filed. People died and considering the company's crappy safety record, that should fall under involuntary manslaughter for the execs that allowed it. I won't hold my breath though.

Maritime laws do not seem to have a lot of common sense as a part of them. They are incredibly convoluted

Honestly, we haven't proven a damn thing.. if it turns out they got sold bad fuel, etcetera. I understand the bitterness here, but this isn't putting the cart before the horse, it's putting several carts before the horse..

Let's be honest, no one will be held accountable. Taxpayers will foot the bill and subsidize those businesses thst use it. The people responsible for the deaths will never face charges.

We know the company has a bad safety record and retaliated against whistleblowers. We know the ship had recently had safety concerns. In a just world, they'd be held responsible for those deaths.