27

It will be no surprise to anyone living in the DC region that yesterday's most active thread was about the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse. Titled, "Key bridge in Baltimore collapses after cargo ship crashes into it" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum, this was actually the second thread on the topic. The first had been posted about an hour earlier in the "Political Discussion" forum, but I locked that one since this is not really a political topic. The initial posts in the thread were mostly aimed at gathering and disseminating information about what had happened. But fairly quickly a number of topics emerged upon which posters focused throughout the thread. One of those involved tugboats with users questioning why the Dali — the ship that hit the bridge causing its collapse — was not under the control of tugboats at the time. While it later turned out that tugboats had initially been used, ships are sent on their own in that part of the river. Next was the question of cruise ships and what would happen to them. Some posters saw this topic as insensitive given the circumstances, but other users were concerned about Baltimore-based cruise ships that would not be able to return to port. Any ships in the harbor are trapped for the foreseeable future and the few Baltimore-based cruise ships at sea will land elsewhere and their passengers will be bussed to Baltimore. Probably the strangest divergence was that dealing with how to escape a car that has plunged into water. A surprising number of posters seem to have long-standing fears of traveling across bridges and described carrying life jackets and hammers for breaking windows when they have to cross large bridges. There was considerable discussion in the thread about the best ways to escape a car that has landed in the water or even the possibility of doing so. Some users touted various tools that are supposed to break windows of a submerged car while other posters said the tools would not work. It turns out that bridge authorities were able to stop vehicle traffic just prior to its collapse and it appears that no cars were traveling across the bridge at the time. The 6 deaths were all construction workers repairing potholes on the bridge who were not warned in time to escape. A topic that was discussed throughout the thread dealt with liability for the collapse. Almost immediately posters were eager to cast blame. Some suggested the bridge was poorly constructed and fell down too easily. Others suggested the port authority and the lack of the aforementioned tugboats were responsible. One poster, supported by a number of others, hypothesized that cost-cutting measures by the Dali's owners may have resulted in a lack of maintenance, leading to the power failure that sent the ship out of control. One thing this incident did was reveal the many-layered owner and management arrangements common among ships of this nature. There are so many different companies involved, with all likely pointing fingers at each other, that it will probably be difficult to determine exactly who is responsible for what. Posters also discussed the economic impact the closure of the port of Baltimore would have on the region. In addition, there was considerable sympathy for the workers who were lost in the collapse.