Key bridge in Baltimore collapses after cargo ship crashes into it

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is definitely going to cause big shipping and fulfillment issues from our area, for a few months at least.

Not just our area. According to wikipedia (I know, I know, but good enough for anonymous message board posting) it ranks 7th out of 36 US ports for total dollar value of goods handled, handles 25% of all US coal exports, and handles everything from cars to lumber to steal.

The port’s temporary closure will be an economic hit for the city and state, but let’s not overstate its broad regional and national significance. Baltimore is the smallest deep water port on the East Coast — 25% the size of Norfolk and 10% the size of NY/NJ. Goods bound for Baltimore will be rerouted to larger ports in the region that can handle the excess capacity. Will there be headaches in some niche sectors like imported cars? Perhaps. Will there big shipping and fulfillment issues across the DMV? No.

[Anonymous]

I am hearing it is six Latino construction men who were lost. I have a feeling they will not be publicized and humanized the way drivers on the bridge would have been, had that been the way this went. I hope I am wrong.

So sad thinking of them and their families.

[Anonymous]

Who are these geniuses who think you can open a door or window underwater??
Are you unfamiliar with water pressure ???

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Lots of monday morning quarterbacks in this thread. To add my useless two cents

1) All of you complaining about the bridge being flimsy must have skipped high school physics. It seems shocking when you look at it but modern bridges are marvels of engineering that rely on balance and tension. The cards these houses are built with are strong and sturdy but a bridge is still a house of cards. If you take out a keystone, an arch falls. It doesn't mean the arch is weak. Bridge pilons are bridge keystones.

2) Talking about the massive downstream effects from this incident is not downplaying the tragedy. Lives were lost here in the immediate impact but these other issues could cause a LOT of damage to the people of Baltimore. Livelihoods lost, I mean even something as simple as someone no longer being able to reasonably commute to their job resulting in loss of employment resulting in harm to children/family/etc. You can say that doesn't matter but many people live on a fine line and the job they have is the difference between being able to keep your kids housed and fed and being homeless. Disrupting a MAJOR traffic artery in the area for what will likely be YEARS is no small thing.

3) Comparing this to other situations where freeways were put back up quickly is a fool's comparison. Bridges are FAR more complex construction projects than basically any other roadway. This will not be fixed in two weeks. Car ferry I guess is a possibility but this bridge took like 35k people across it every day. You would need infrastructure akin to like the Staten Island Ferry to make that happen (a ferry system that includes 10 boats in addition to the harbors/ports that house the ferries and facilitate loading up/disembarking)

In short, this is a tragedy not just for those men but a true crisis for the city of Baltimore that could have wide ranging effects on all kinds of people and my heart hurts for Maryland.

NP. No one said it would be fixed in two weeks. Someone up thread guessed it would take that long to clear the channel and reopeon the harbor. Probably about right.

Rebuilding the bridge will take years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Who are these geniuses who think you can open a door or window underwater??
Are you unfamiliar with water pressure ???

There's a lot of questionable physics in this thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lots of monday morning quarterbacks in this thread. To add my useless two cents

1) All of you complaining about the bridge being flimsy must have skipped high school physics. It seems shocking when you look at it but modern bridges are marvels of engineering that rely on balance and tension. The cards these houses are built with are strong and sturdy but a bridge is still a house of cards. If you take out a keystone, an arch falls. It doesn't mean the arch is weak. Bridge pilons are bridge keystones.

2) Talking about the massive downstream effects from this incident is not downplaying the tragedy. Lives were lost here in the immediate impact but these other issues could cause a LOT of damage to the people of Baltimore. Livelihoods lost, I mean even something as simple as someone no longer being able to reasonably commute to their job resulting in loss of employment resulting in harm to children/family/etc. You can say that doesn't matter but many people live on a fine line and the job they have is the difference between being able to keep your kids housed and fed and being homeless. Disrupting a MAJOR traffic artery in the area for what will likely be YEARS is no small thing.

3) Comparing this to other situations where freeways were put back up quickly is a fool's comparison. Bridges are FAR more complex construction projects than basically any other roadway. This will not be fixed in two weeks. Car ferry I guess is a possibility but this bridge took like 35k people across it every day. You would need infrastructure akin to like the Staten Island Ferry to make that happen (a ferry system that includes 10 boats in addition to the harbors/ports that house the ferries and facilitate loading up/disembarking)

In short, this is a tragedy not just for those men but a true crisis for the city of Baltimore that could have wide ranging effects on all kinds of people and my heart hurts for Maryland.

NP. No one said it would be fixed in two weeks. Someone up thread guessed it would take that long to clear the channel and reopeon the harbor. Probably about right.

Rebuilding the bridge will take years.

Someone mentioned Newsom getting the major freeway in LA back up and running when a section collapsed last year being a good resource to consult on this. Not saying it was a widespread talking point but it was def brought up!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am hearing it is six Latino construction men who were lost. I have a feeling they will not be publicized and humanized the way drivers on the bridge would have been, had that been the way this went. I hope I am wrong.

So sad thinking of them and their families.

Yes. A co-worker has spoken to the press. He said they’re all Latinos who only speak Spanish and are not in a union.

[Anonymous]

Who are these geniuses who think you can open a door or window underwater??

A manual roll-up window would open just fine. Unfortunately, most cars have motorized windows now and the chances of them working when the car is submerged are low to zero.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Who are these geniuses who think you can open a door or window underwater??

A manual roll-up window would open just fine. Unfortunately, most cars have motorized windows now and the chances of them working when the car is submerged are low to zero.

Ohhhhh your arm strength is greater than tons of water pressure ?
Anything you say David Banner!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would say 99.9% of DCUM posters would not survive this bridge crash. Most of you are past 50, in poor physical health, and overweight. You can roll down your windows all you want though. Whatever makes you sleep better at night.

This bridge is 185 feet above the water in the middle. It's unlikely to survive that fall, especially with tons of steel collapsing on you as well, regardless of age or fitness.

They rescued two alive already

Hours ago. The water is very cold, so it's unlikely they'll find more.

A ten story fall is not survivable. I wonder if the two survivors were strapped in or on a section that did not totally collapse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am not going to get the image of the bridge plunging into the water so fast out of my head. It was so, so fast.

To the people suggesting that the bridge was shoddily designed or constructed -- that's like blaming the person who built a house if a semi truck accidentally drove through the living room window. You can't build things that are impervious to catastrophic events. Whatever failures occurred here (and there were likely several) they don't lie with the people who designed and built that bridge. And by the way, those same people will be responsible for rebuilding it, and may have known the work crew who was on the bridge and likely lost lives, so next time perhaps think a little harder before weighing in.

The ship weighed ~100,000 tons. It was moving at 9 knots so about 4.5 meters/sec. That gives it a momentum of 450,000,000 newton/sec. Momentum in a collision is largely conserved, so all that momentum was transferred to a single bridge support. I’ll let the bridge engineer tell us how big a support would need to be to withstand that amount of force/sec.

Yep. Container ship sizes have doubled in size in the last 20 years. They are essentially massive floating cities. We probably need to rethink port designs completely from being a ‘safe harbor’ to more like save the harbor from these ships and figure out off shore freight loading.

https://maritime-executive.com/editorials/a-brief-history-of-the-shipping-container

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The insurance claim on this is going to be massive. Whoever underwrote the ship + it's liability will be going out of business. I hope the city of Baltimore and the Feds go hard after the ship owner and the insurer. Apparently the ship was chartered by Maersk, but owned by another entity.

I belive it was being piloted by a Baltimore harbor pilot.

I feel bad for the pilot, for whom this is their home port/community. Can't imagine the trauma of trying to navigate to avoid this disaster in a ship whose controls

It really sounds like his or her quick thinking saved the lives of the drivers stopped from going over the bridge, once the ship’s Mayday was received.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It wound seem that this will have an effect on the availability and cost of all sorts of goods in this region.

They'll reroute a ton of the traffic into Norfolk. Presumably some to Philadelphia as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

The ship weighed ~100,000 tons. It was moving at 9 knots so about 4.5 meters/sec. That gives it a momentum of 450,000,000 newton/sec.

You either misspelled "kilograms" or didn't do the metric conversion. In the latter case, it would be 405,000,000 newtons/sec.

Momentum is newton * sec. A newton is kg m/s^2.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I feel bad for the pilot, for whom this is their home port/community. Can't imagine the trauma of trying to navigate to avoid this disaster in a ship whose controls

It really sounds like his or her quick thinking saved the lives of the drivers stopped from going over the bridge, once the ship’s Mayday was received.

If I understand the sequence of events correctly, they dropped anchor when they realized they lost control of the ship (rudder) and reversed the engines to slow the ship. When the anchor caught, the strong current swung the ship at an angle from its proper path, straight towards the pillar. Did dropping the anchor cause the ship to crash straight into the pillar, destroying the bridge? Was dropping the anchor the right thing to do, or would it have been worse without it?