I wanted to put up a thread on the collapse of the Francis Scott Key I-695 bridge in Baltimore at 1:30 this morning. Here’s the latest from the Post [gift link]:
A major bridge in Baltimore collapsed after being hit by a freighter at about 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, sending at least eight people from a construction crew into the water as a large section of the bridge crashed into the Patapsco River. The container ship, traveling at a relatively rapid speed of about eight knots, lost power in the moments before it struck the bridge, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) said at a news conference.
Other reports say that the ship was able to broadcast a Mayday when it lost power, and they were able to close the bridge to new traffic, probably saving some lives.
Obviously there’s going to be an investigation and hopefully some changes to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again.
Old School
Does Boeing make ships too?
Urza
That same ship apparently had an accident in Europe previously. It was only built in 2015 so its not very old yet.
MattF
Also notable that the ship was crewed by a specialist team, specifically to get it through the harbor and into open water. The crew knew what they were doing and were faced with a major mechanical failure.
OzarkHillbilly
@Urza: It’s just a pup!
wenchacha
Tragic.
Can anyone comment on the bridge design itself? I have zero knowledge about architecture, construction, engineering. Does a bridge like this, with such a long extension, have redundancy built in?
I know it was hit in a main support area, but I’m curious about the design.
YY_Sima Qian
Surveillance video shows that the ship lost power moments before hitting the bridge, & the ship did appear to try to avoid collision at the last moment, but these high tonnage cargo ships don’t really maneuver.
The collapsed spans will also close the Port of Baltimore until they are removed. This will have a cascading effect on regional & global logistics & supply chains.
At least it happened at 1:30 AM.
TaMara
Interesting that they were able to close the bridge to new traffic – when I watched the video, it did seem that there was less traffic by the time the ship hit the bridge than before. I, too, hope that saved some lives. Distressed about that construction crew…
Leto
I don’t know if they can, but would larger concrete blockers (idk what you call what the bridge attaches to in the water, those concrete barricades) help in this situation? Or is the combination of the size of the ships (super large cargo ships), and what size you’d need to make those blockers, be unfeasible? Idk, It was fucking horrifying seeing that though. Glad it wasn’t during a peak time.
Misterpuff
It’s McNulty’s fault!
McNulty: What the fuck did I do?
Seriously, sick about the repair crew, but glad they stopped traffic.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
The two pilots are being grilled now, but this sounds like a mechanical – electrical failure. The ships engineers are not having a great day, nor are the bridge team.
“A collision at sea really ruins your day” -old maritime maxim.
wenchacha
@Misterpuff: I like him less and less since he became Prince Charles.
OzarkHillbilly
@wenchacha: I read earlier this AM that the design was such that all spans got support from each other. Hence when one came down, they were all gonna come down.
ETtheLibrarian
Per WTOP:
Baltimore Fire Chief James Wallace said that sonar has detected vehicles in the water, but the exact number cannot be confirmed. Initial reports early Tuesday were that “at least seven” vehicles fell into the water.
Two were rescued from the construction crew but 6 are still missing.
Scout211
Not the bridge design per se, but I read this morning that large cement barriers were added in front of the bridge supports but the ship plowed right through the barrier. The speculation was that whenever those barriers were added, the cargo ships were smaller than the are now..
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Leto: I think the size of the ship is past the point where you can build a bridge pillar that’ll absorb the impact without transferring the shock to the bridge superstructure. Comparisons I’ve seen are bigger than a battleship, an aircraft carrier, the Titanic, what have you. Once a mass like that is in motion, it has a staggering amount of kinetic energy to it, and a lot of inertia, so once it goes off course, it’ll be really difficult to get it back on course.
Baud
For about 1 minutes, several people were pissed at the closure.
pluky
Was pointed to this YouTube post. The poster clearly knows his stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N39w6aQFKSQ
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Having driven the Baltimore beltway so many times and knowing the volume of traffic that uses it, my mind boggles at the effects this is going to have.
The tunnels will still take the bulk of the north-south interstate traffic, but anybody that didn’t use the tunnels for one reason or another is really going to be screwed.
And what is the effect on shipping?
I see “construction crew still missing” in headlines. Terrible.
wenchacha
@OzarkHillbilly: Oof. Again, no knowledge on my part, but now wondering how many similar bridges are out there, and what other designs there might be.
I suppose some stuff just demonstrates Murphy’s Law, unfortunately.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
This. Having worked with highway bridge engineers for 27+ years, much of what goes into the design of a bridge has everything to do with calculating Factor of Safety and Load Bearing.
I could flood everybody with engineering links that really wouldn’t help much as they’re uber technical (any resident civil engineer would be able to ‘splain).
But it really comes down to bridges like that one were never designed to deal with the kind of hit from a ship that size.
FYI, I was on the bridge just a week ago. Friend lives just south of there so we used it to head to CT, then back again several days later.
DaBunny42
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: Yeah, and the ship was traveling relatively fast. Like 8 knots? Which I guess is pretty fast for a ship that size.
wvng
@TaMara: It appeared to me that previously active traffic pattern just stopped maybe 5 seconds before the collision. A lot of lives were saved by that.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: They ought to be able to cut up the bridge and haul it out in a couple of months, maybe less. Since the port is beyond the bridge, that should help a lot.
zhena gogolia
I hate that all I can think about is, will this help Trump win?
wenchacha
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Thanks for the short but sweet explanation to you and all who replied.
I should have taken that Physics class in highschool, but everybody said it was so boring! Amazing to think I did not know everything at the age of sixteen.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Geminid:
Since it’s part of the Interstate system, the feds will flood this with monies–I worked for the agency that handled previous bridge collapses. They’ll want everything up and running as quickly as money can provide.
That means the harbor approaches will get cleared relatively quickly. A new bridge will take probably at least 2 years.
WereBear
@pluky: Thanks, it’s amazing what citizen journalists have created.
raven
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: The 1-85 bridge fire in Atlanta was completed way ahead of schedule but this is way more complex.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Don’t drive yourself crazy over things you can’t control.
Andrew Abshier
The same thing happened to the Sunshine Skyway Bridge at the entrance of Tampa Bay. Unfortunately it was daylight and there were vehicles on the bridge when it went down; 47 people lost their lives. When the new Skyway was built, the piers were protected by massive concrete “dolphins” that would absorb the impact of any wayward ships instead of the bridge piers. They probably should do the same for the replacement FSK Bridge.
BTW the impetus for the new Skyway bridge came from then-Gov. Bob Graham, a Democrat; the bridge was later named for him. I can’t see any of the R’s lining up to do this kind of major infrastructure construction.
M31
all the hazmats that can’t go through the tunnels now have to go around the 695 beltway the other (longer) way
so more traffic in the most-used part of the Baltimore beltway (which is already bad), plus increased time/expense for all the hazmat carriers
ugh
local commenters are already screaming about the new Baltimore bike lanes
that, and the WOKE DEI, of course, which totally caused it
VFX Lurker
This, this, this. The Los Angeles Times mentioned that the bridge served thousands of vehicles during the day.
I am hoping against hope that the drivers and passengers of the lost vehicles all survived.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: You sound like my physical therapist.
Leto
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: true to all that, and kind of what I already thought. I don’t even know what you could do to help improve safety for the bridge from something like this. Hopefully we can get the federal funds out quickly for both the cleanup and the building of a new one. It’s still going to take years and years though.
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Does the port have an alternate entry/exit vector? I was wondering about the effect on shipping as soon as I saw it. I’m sure they have backup plans?
comrade scotts agenda of rage
I’ve been plowing thru links on bridge failures. This one provides a nice overview of how the engineers look at such things:
https://www.nae.edu/7710/TheSafetyofBridges
It makes note of the Sunshine Skyway in Tampa:
I’m sure there will be a reexamination of bridge piering safety measures and a review of appropriate bridges like Key Bridge. Obviously way too early to determine what, if anything, might be done down the road.
M31
what I’ve read from engineers point out that to build a bridge to withstand that kind of impact means pretty much you’re building a dam with some passages for ships in it
dmsilev
@DaBunny42: 8 knots isn’t very fast for a ship like that…
…in the open ocean. They slow down a lot near shore, because the turning radius and stopping distance at full speed are huge.
frosty
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Effect on shipping is not good. Baltimore is the biggest RORO (Roll-On-Roll-Off) port for cars, construction equipment, farm equipment, on the East Coast. Those deliveries will stop, then be reduced while the shippers try other ports until the remains of the bridge are out of the channel.
ETA: I was on the Key Bridge less than two weeks ago. I didn’t use it much though, maybe half a dozen times a year.
dmsilev
@M31: Depending on how wide the channel is, you could build a bridge with enough of a clear span that the support pillars are on dry land. No idea whether that would be feasible here.
Scout211
@Andrew Abshier: @comrade scotts agenda of rage:
What I read this morning was that there were concrete barriers in place but they were built when the cargo ships were smaller than they are now and the cargo ship this morning went right through the barrier. So yeah, bigger and stronger concrete barriers will likely be part of the new bridge design.
CaseyL
I don’t know why catastrophes in the water seem more terrifying than on land or in the air. Maybe I have too active an imagination. But it just seems to me being dragged underwater and drowned is more horrific because it takes longer and you have what seems an eternity to think about what’s happening.
(Also, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” first heard when I was a tween, may have traumatized me.)
O/T but worth mentioning, since BJers are acutely aware of the dangers Covid poses to immuno-compromised individuals: the FDA has approved a monoclonal antibody drug for high-risk individuals. NOT, it must be noted, as a treatment for Covid: you need to get the shots every 3 months as a prophylactic. Story here. )
Leto
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: after Katrina, the bridge that connects Biloxi to Ocean Springs (highway 90) was demolished. Basically the storm surge was high enough that between the water and the wind, the sections of the bridge were simply lifted up and off the support pillars. They got that cleaned up, and rebuilt, in about 12-18 months? It was relatively fast.
frosty
I just read that construction started on this one in 1972 and it was completed in 1977. There’s going to be some time needed for design, too. I think two years is optimistic.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Other info:
Bridge usage per day is 30-35K vehicles.
The harbor speed limit is 6 knots.
Baud
@pluky:
Very nice.
raven
@Leto: Tha video posted gives a good overview and, no, no way in or out.
https://youtu.be/N39w6aQFKSQ?si=zAVSeuvpXaHfl_8v
frosty
@VFX Lurker: The temperature of the water is 48 degrees. Even if you survive the impact and get out of your vehicle, hypothermia will get you pretty quickly. I doubt there will be any survivors.
frosty
@dmsilev: If it was feasible to put the supports on dry land they would have designed it that way. Much safer, cheaper, and easier to build than piers in the water.
Chat Noir
@Misterpuff:
I was wondering if that is the same bridge near where McNulty found the floater in the first episode of season 2.
WeimarGerman
The Independent has a good article on some of the structural issues for a continuous truss bridge like the Key Bridge.
The Key Bridge is old enough to not have been designed with today’s super-size container ships in mind. The speed/weight of the Dali may not have been anticipated in the anti-collision protections for the supports.
Leto
@raven: whelp, shit.
Leto
@dmsilev: @frosty: grabbed this from the web:
Just to help give scale to what we’re talking about here.
Ruckus
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
It’s the cargo ship, the hundreds/thousands of steel cargo boxes and the cargo inside them. Look at the picture and imagine that all of those steel boxes are full of something. Look at the size of the ship and the steel that makes that up. That is a lot of tons of momentum.
Ships do not turn on a dime, not freight ships that long, that weigh as much as this one did – even if all those containers were empty. Eight knots is around mid speed for one of these and the turning radius is about 3-4 ship lengths at least. It is fortunate that this doesn’t happen more often, all things considered.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@CaseyL: I’m the same way. I watched “The Mothman Prophecies” and enjoyed it, but it culminates in a disaster where a bridge full of traffic collapsed, and that one scene, because it was a real incident, just reduces me to a puddle. Even just thinking about it.
I had the opportunity to ride a Navy ship (as a civilian) in a near-hurricane, which didn’t actually bother me that much. But there was a man-overboard alarm during the trip (false alarm as it turned out) and thinking about some poor sailor alone in the water really did a number on me.
Two movies I will never ever be able to watch: “A Perfect Storm” and “Open Water” (about the couple abandoned accidentally at sea while scuba diving). Can’t even tolerate the trailers.
Baud
@Ruckus:
Strong regulation > good fortune.
dmsilev
@Leto: Current champion for single-span suspension bridges is 2 km, about 1.25 miles. So, not quite enough to span the whole channel while keeping the towers on land, but they’d be really close in to the shore.
Nina
Most new cars en route to the customers go in and out of Port of Baltimore, they have a specialty yard set up for it. A lot of cars bound for overseas are stuck unless they can move them, and a lot of cars bound for the US won’t be delivered unless they find another port with capacity for them. It’s going to take a while to clear the channel for through marine traffic, let alone start putting a bridge up. They’ll need to revisit the design of the bridge – it’s not that old, but when they put it up in the 70s container ships were not nearly as massive and heavy as they are today.
The bridge is also important to north-south road traffic – anything with hazmat or over height cannot go through the Baltimore harbor tunnels so they were used to go over the bridge. Now that will be routing around the west side of the city.
They did shut the bridge to truck traffic on occasion in the past when there were high winds. So trucking logistics companies have a ‘bridge not available’ plan in place and won’t have to spend too much brain power over that at least. There should be a one or two day blip in supplies and the business as usual for most things outside our immediate area.
The Port of Baltimore employs just over 15,000 people, so that’s going to be a huge hit as well.
fish bicycle
The bridge was designed before container ships were all of global shipping like they are now. The dali is about 13000 TEUs. The average size of the container ship fleet in the early 1980s was 750ish TEUs and the biggest container ship in the world at that time was ~3000.
kindness
I see Nancy Mace announced on Newsmax this morning that it is Joe Biden’s fault that the ship hit the bridge and collapsed it. I have to admit that one kind of shocked me and you’d think I’d be used to the Republican knee jerk bullshit by now.
RaflW
I saw the footage of the collapse, and it brought back the I-35W disaster in Minneapolis for me. I was home it when that happened, but my partner was the transportation reporter — newly on that beat by a few months — when it happened. And we’re both infrastructure geeks.
pat
@kindness:
You’re kidding, right? Biden’s fault.??? WTF???
Hey, if he can do that, maybe he can end the war in Ukraine and Gaza and and and…. How dumb do you have to be to say something like that?
OK, dumb enough to be a republican….
catclub
Is this Biden’s katrina? I have my doubts. 9/11
made Bush unbeatable for 4 years. Then he really fucked up the Katrina response. And the economy went in the shitter. Luck is a thing.
Citizen Dave
When I was a kid I’d sit in the back seat of our car with a weird thought/fear of what to do if the bridge collapses and we fall into the water. Didn’t help that then I could not swim, and my college swimming class–well that was a long time ago. The occasional trip over the Chicago Skyway bridge was especially memorable. Mackinac Bridge, 5 miles. Usually I try to be in the middle lanes…it’s like gaming out seats on the plane.
Manyakitty
@Citizen Dave: middle (or inner) lanes for sure. I have to lock my elbows every time I drive over a bridge like that, just to make sure I keep going forward. 😬
RandomMonster
Donald Trump will say that Baltimore is a disgusting rat-infested city in a blue state, so nothing should be done about it. Also, it wouldn’t have happened if he were president.
Paul in KY
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: Ship probably grossed 175,000 tons all loaded up like that. IMO, 8 knots is kicking it in that situation.
Eyeroller
@pat: Nancy Mace isn’t stupid, she’s evil and a known liar. She knows perfectly well what she’s saying is ridiculous.
Suzanne
@wenchacha: WARNING: I AM SPEAKING GENERICALLY.
There’s always factors of safety (aka “redundancy”) in every design. But there’s also design limits. Almost nothing we build is capable of withstanding that kind of impact.
People asked this after 9/11…. could we design a building that could withstand a plane impact? The answer then, and now, is yes. But it would cost so much and, quite frankly, be so difficult and ugly that we aren’t gonna do it.
Also, all this old stuff is designed to the environment then. Ships and planes got bigger.
Paul in KY
@Baud: “Damn fucking officious nobodies!!!! I gotta get to work!!! Oh, thank God!!!!
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@Leto: Yes. It’s called Philadelphia.
Seriously: the Port of Baltimore is reached by only this one channel. The next Deepwater ports up and down the coast are Philly to the north and Newport News to the south. Baltimore is out of action until the wreckage is cleared.
raven
@Citizen Dave: The old tin can sailor taught us to roll the windows up when you hit the water and slowly crack them so the force of the water doesn’t pin the doors shut.
Suzanne
@kindness: Clowns on Xhitter are trying to say that DEI made the ship hit the bridge.
Old Man Shadow
I’m not a sailor, but I’m guessing there aren’t redundant systems or backup generators in place that would let you run the engines in the event the main power goes out?
wenchacha
@RandomMonster: He could “fix this in 24 hours in a way that would make everyone happy.”Just like those other issues.
KrackenJack
I was on a tow boat that hit a bridge with an oil rig back in the 80’s. It was a small bridge and a small rig. And in our defense, the bridge was designed to be hit. It was a draw bridge that extended out into the waterway beyond the dolphins when raised. It got hit every couple of years and the town got a big insurance payday from the unlucky company. They used some of the money to build a second vertical lift bridge next to it for when the drawbridge was under repair. Forget it Jake, it’s Louisiana.
Ruckus
@dmsilev:
Ship like this, normal top speed is likely 15-18 knots. The power needed to go much faster goes up exponentially, and that takes more room and more fuel, so more money to move the goods. The fuel and propulsion source to run a lot more speed takes a lot away from cargo space, reducing the income stream. What is in those containers does not have to cross oceans in hours, and at that speed it really only takes a few days at those speeds, unless there is a storm. I’ve crossed the Atlantic aboard ship many times, in summer and in winter at under 20 knots because going faster takes a LOT more fuel. Things that have to be somewhere faster than a few days are shipped air freight, at a much higher cost. Things that don’t go by cargo ship. There are active maps online that show the number of ships at sea and if you’ve never seen the ocean past the breaking waves you might not realize the number of ships and how they are loaded/unloaded, and how much stuff they carry. There were a lot of ships the over 50 yrs ago when I did all my crossings, today that number would seem puny. Here’s a map called MarineTraffic. https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:-12.0/centery:25.0/zoom:4
Paul in KY
@Andrew Abshier: The ‘bumpers’ should be angled in a way, like bow of a ship, that steers any colliding ship away from the bridge supports & makes a direct hit just about impossible.
frosty
@raven: Except you can’t roll the windows down when you’re under water and the battery is shorted out. Your 66 Chevy pickup, sure. Anything built in the last ten years? Nope.
ljdramone
@frosty: The Patapsco is about 1.5 miles wide where the bridge crossed it. There’s a causeway on either end, totalling about 0.5 miles. The center truss section of the bridge (all of which collapsed) is about 0.5 miles long, and the shipping channel between the two piers that supported the truss is a bit more than 0.2 miles (1,100 feet) wide.
I live in Baltimore, and one evening about 5 years ago I got to spend 2 hours hanging out on the Key Bridge — there was an accident just ahead of me that blocked the eastbound lanes, and I was on the truss span when traffic stopped.
At the time it was kind of cool, got a great view of several ships passing underneath while I waited for the road to clear.
TheflipPsyd
@Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq): There is another deepwater port just a bit south of Philly as well — Wilmington DE
cain
I hope commuters are given the option of doing “remote work” – in fact, I would say the city and state govt should direct employers to do exactly that in order to reduce congestion
ETA terrible about the construction crews – I hope they find more survivors.
Paul in KY
@frosty: The car doors can’t be opened till the interior has filled up with water.
Paul in KY
@kindness: She really is that big of a scumbag.
Barbara
@Suzanne: I had never heard the term “Panamax” until I went to — doh — the Panama Canal. They made the freaking canal larger in the last decade so that larger ships could get through. This bridge was built in the 70s. WaPo has a little write-up from a British bridge engineer who made that point, but also said that most likely, the dolphins or whatever they call those things that are supposed to protect the piers from collision could have worked except that based on the video he viewed the ship might have come in at an angle that essentially breached them.
trollhattan
@TaMara:
Nothing good will come from this but had it occurred twelve hours earlier/later the death toll would have been ghoulish.
#SmallFavors
Barbara
@kindness: Hey Nancy, I think your bra strap is showing.
Paul in KY
@Citizen Dave: I sure don’t think the Chicago Skyway bridge could ever come down, short of a nuclear strike. That thing is massive!
Mackinac one sure could, though.
HinTN
@Old Man Shadow: Which begs the question, “How the hell does main power go out?” (And then, apparently, come back on!)
Paul in KY
@Suzanne: I think the Empire State Building could. But it was built like a giant fortress and that kind of building style would be cost prohibitive today.
Ruckus
@CaseyL:
Crossing the Pacific or Atlantic by ship takes far, far longer than by plane. The flight from Los Angeles to New Zealand takes around 13 hrs. By ship it would take about 2 weeks. In all the times I crossed the Atlantic by ship the fastest was 5 days and the slowest was 11-12 days. That trip was 50 ft waves and constant wind in the mid 20 knots range – for over 10 days. We ended up quite a few hundred miles north of where we wanted to be because you have to head directly into 50 ft waves or you will be capsized and sunk. Often commercial ships just wait out a storm, rather than take the risk of sinking and losing everything.
Juju
@zhena gogolia: I do not think it will help Trump win. All could think of was what sort of inane comments he would make n regard to the accident.
hueyplong
@Paul in KY: It withstood being hit by a B-25 bomber in 1945.
frosty
@Paul in KY:
True. But you want to get out fast, so you have to get the windows open to fill the car. These tools can do it:
https://www.amazon.com/car-window-breaker/s?k=car+window+breaker
Unless your windows are tempered glass, like the Tesla that McConnell’s S-I-L was driving.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@kindness: Nancy Mace increasingly sounds deranged, and I don’t mean that as a metaphor.
trollhattan
@frosty: Keep a Resqme tool attached to my car “key” on account of driving county roads in the Delta, where you’re always a foot or three from a levee edge.
Would I reach and deploy it while sinking into the opaque waters? I do not care to find out, but get some comfort from having it.
RaflW
I worked in the shipping industry for a short time (less than 2 years, at two very different firms) very early after graduating college. So my knowledge here is admittedly slim.
But it seems like the industry-wide decision to not have a tugboat escort for these megaships is a cost-cutting measure that, as is often the case in catastrophic events, only cost effective for all the operators who don’t have a devastating, deadly & extremely expensive loss.
TBF, I don’t know if a tug could have prevented this crash. But if there was a total engine, electrical and navigation failure, one could at least imagine a hefty harbor tug might have been able to keep the bow pointed under the span and used the deadweight momentum to carry the vessel past the danger point.
from gCaptain.com: “Ships are not required to have tugboat escorts when passing under the Francis Scott Key Bridge so they have limited ability to slow down on their own when they lose power and can not put the propeller into reverse.
According to past photos, she is equipped with a bow thruster. However, these are not typically connected to emergency power systems. Even if it were engaged, bow thrusters are designed for slow-speed maneuvers and have a limited ability to push the bow into the wind when the ship’s speed exceeds 5 knots.”
Ruckus
@raven:
Great site!
RaflW
@frosty: Correction, tempered glass is breakable (the tempering makes it break into small, roundish pieces rather than long deadly shards).
Laminated glass is functionally unbreakable. And used in side windows in Teslas and in several brands of luxury cars (and basically all front windshields, which you want for your safety – you’d never try to break out of your car that way anyway).
raven
@frosty: This was a long time ago in this car.
Barbara
@RaflW: They had a tugboat escort until just before the bridge, or perhaps that was your point — the tugs didn’t go with the ship under the bridge. But my question is, would it have mattered if the ship lost power and started drifting?
HinTN
@Ruckus: Intellectually I knew there was a lot of traffic but that really brings the understanding to an almost unimaginable level. And the chokepoints! Woof. I couldn’t find the key for red and green.
raven
@Ruckus: Yea, dude knows his shit.
Doug R
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: There might be some way of designing shaped barriers that redirect the ship away from the bridge supports.
Paul in KY
@frosty: Very good point! Thanks for link.
trollhattan
@Barbara: “Begin by imagining an infinitely large tugboat.”
raven
@Barbara: I think it was drifting. Momentum is a bear/
Anotherlurker
@Paul in KY: The speed of the vessel may have been dictated by the conditions. For example, say the ship was running with a stiff outgoing tide. In this case, she may have needed some extra speed in order to maintain control.
Just guessing here. I did hold a USCG 100GT Master’s ticket for 25 years. But OMG, I’m not even close to being an expert, just making a slightly educated guess.
Jackie
@frosty: I wonder if Biden/Buttigieg can put up a temp bridge like was done for the Kentucky/Ohio bridge while the Key bridge is being rebuilt using infrastructure bill money?
Uncle Cosmo
@raven:, @frosty:
IOW to survive the plunge you’d need to have enough foresight and reaction to unlock the doors, roll up the power windows & then crack them a tad while in free fall, hope you don’t break any bones when you hit the water, then as the car subsides, wait patiently as the passenger compartment fills up, breathing deeply until the last possible second so long as you can reach the remaining air with your mouth or nostrils, then once the pressure is equalized either push the door open (if you’ve unlocked the doors) or smash a window or windshield out with a window=breaking tool while holding your breath, wriggle out and hope to float to the surface (ETA: Presuming you have removed enough clothing etc. to get your head above the water – I for one cannot float, my bones are too large and heavy) in time for the next breath, and hope someone finds you before hypothermia kicks in.
Does anyone here know of any human being sufficiently calm, aware, and physically forceful enough to manage all that with absolutely no warning, in the time available?? I sure as hell don’t.
Betty
@kindness: That was just a matter of time. I was joking about the likelihood of that take just a few minutes ago.
Jackie
@kindness: Mace is reminding us the GQP House members make nails look smart in comparison. 🤦🏼♀️
frosty
@RaflW: Right, laminated glass is what I meant.
Anotherlurker
@HinTN: I’m just guessing here but I think they had just managed to get the back up systems up and running..
Ruckus
@Baud:
One regulates people and what they do.
Machinery may be regulated at it’s build and in how often it is actually checked out for working, but it’s machinery, it’s in salt water, it’s huge and it has a huge turning radius that is confounded by wind and current and sometimes by the humans supposedly in control. Take away the actual propulsion for whatever reason and all logic and control is gone. A ship that size, loaded, then has the turning radius of a sky scraper laying on it’s side and under those conditions it goes where momentum and the tide take it. Think of driving your car down the freeway and the steering wheel comes off in your hands, the brake pedal falls on the floor, the key breaks off and you are going down hill with no way to stop, sooner or later (likely far sooner) you are going to hit something. The open ocean is far more forgiving but that is really not much help because a ship that gets broadside to large waves can be swamped in a heartbeat. In or near a harbor it gets far, far easier to hit something. And that much weight and momentum can do a hell of a lot of damage.
Suzanne
@Paul in KY: I remember reading shortly after 9/11 that the WTC was built to withstand an impact from the largest plane at the time. Empire State probably is similar. But the fire is what did in the WTC, not the impact.
Barbara
@Uncle Cosmo: Well, if you are paranoid like I am about to become — I already hate driving across bridges — you will just open all your windows as you cross a bridge. No special tools required.
RevRick
@wenchacha: Bridges are designed for the loads they bear, not for getting plowed into. It was an open truss, steel arch design, triangles being the strongest structure there is. The bridge did what it was supposed to do, which was carry high volumes of traffic.
WhatsMyNym
@Ruckus: The USNS RICHARD E BYRD (a replenishment vessel) just sped by at 22.9kn on it’s way out.
frosty
@Uncle Cosmo: I remember a Mythbusters episode where they tested the ability to get out of a car upside down underwater. It was impossible, mostly because they were completely disoriented.
https://mythresults.com/episode72
They tried manual and power windows but they didn’t work because of the force of the water on the glass.
ETA the link doesn’t back up my first comment, BTW. But that’s what I remember.
RandomMonster
@Jackie: Ship traffic needs to pass under it, so…problematical.
Ruckus
@kindness:
Everyone on board was named Joe Biden? That would be a bit weird.
End Snark.
wenchacha
@Suzanne: Thanks!
Suzanne
@RevRick: Everything is designed for some amount of “additional” load. But, like, not everything that could ever conceivably occur.
Thats why the “Swiss cheese” model of protection is so critical. Everything is imperfect and defeatable, but when you have multiple layers of protection, even though some layers may fail, you have a better chance of avoiding a catastrophe.
Mr. Bemused Senior
I recall listening to someone from the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory describing it as a textbook example of progressive collapse.
[from the fire weakening the steel]
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@pat: On a sunny day Rethugs will complain that Dems created a drought, and during a reinstall they will complain that they caused flooding.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@catclub: Shrub had Katrina as his failure because HEB! covered for him the year before in the Charley/Frances/Ivan/Jeannie catastrophe. We got two terms of Shrubbery thanks to another Bush in Tallahassee.
Suzanne
@Mr. Bemused Senior: Oh, absolutely. The impact broke the spray-on fireproofing to bits (that shit is really crumbly), and the fire was on more than three stories. My structural engineering professor discussed the report, and he said that it was determined that any fire that affected three stories was determined to be able to bring down those buildings. No impact required at all.
Doug R
@frosty: Here’s a specifically designed window punch with a seatbelt cutter:
https://www.leevalley.com/en-ca/shop/home/automotive/110008-resqme-car-escape-tool?item=45K0730
We got the cheaper flashlight multi-tool with a pointed window hammer and a folding knife:
https://www.leevalley.com/en-ca/shop/home/lighting/flashlights-and-headlights/76423-flashlight-multi-tool?item=09A0865
Canadian store, but I’m sure you can find similar tools locally or online.
RaflW
@Barbara: I believe it would. The tug merely has to have enough horsepower (and that’s a tugs whole job description) to keep the vessel on — or close to — course. I’d argue that gCaptian’s notion of a tug slowing or stopping the vessel is not right. It’s just keeping it from swinging in the wind while the 8 knots of momentum very slowly dissipate.
catclub
@raven: not sure how that works in these days of electric windows. Avoid immersing car in water!
RevRick
If the ship was loaded to maximum capacity, it hit the bridge with approximately 9 trillion foot-pounds/second!
Feathers
My father is a civil engineer, trained in roads. Went into planning. Said he’d be in endless meetings, wishing he could just be one of the bridge guys, who got to build things. But then there was a fatal bridge collapse and he saw how it destroyed the team that had designed it. The required maintenance hadn’t been done, but they still felt deeply responsible. One of my dad’s friends took early retirement and apparently never really got over it.
Another Scott
@pluky: Thanks for the pointer. All that video and tracking information should help them figure out what went wrong, and how to prevent it in the future.
One maybe obvious thing – to someone who thought about sleeping at a Holiday Inn Express, but hasn’t actually done so in decades – is to try to keep the tugs with giant ships like that until they’re fully clear of major obstacles.
:-(
Cheers,
Scott.
Suzanne
@Mr. Bemused Senior: Oh, and BTW, we studied a whole slew of building disasters when I was in grad school. The overwhelming message that I received is that people waited waaaaaaaay too long to exit. And then they couldn’t, or there was panic and chaos. Sometimes the fire alarms didn’t go off, but more frequently, people waited to evacuate because they thought it might be a false alarm. Fuck that. If you ever hear fire alarms, GTFO. Even if they tell you “there’s not a problem in this level”. There’s a lot of building elements that penetrate vertically and that shit can move.
Spanky
Low tide at Baltimore was around 0130 last night, and she was going out on the outgoing tide, as one does. A lot of those 8 knots were from the
acceleratingtidewater.Edited to note that the outgoing flow would have been lessening as it approached low tide.
Paul in KY
@Anotherlurker: Good point on facing the tide, etc.
Paul in KY
@Uncle Cosmo: There are a few. Very, very hard to execute as you illustrate. Not getting knocked out by impact would be a major factor.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Suzanne: thanks, good advice I’m sure 😁
RaflW
@Suzanne: Yep. Designers were aware of the very high levels of aviation traffic around Manhattan. But they didn’t anticipate planes flying at near 90 degrees from horizontal, and fully fueled for transcontinental flight, so that the massive wing tanks unloaded all their fuel across that many floors of structure and combusting.
Spanky
One workaround route is going to be diverting off of the DC Beltway/I95 onto eastbound Rt50 and out over the Bay Bridge and up US301 to Wilmington. Gonna be a helluva trip to the shore this summer!
Paul in KY
@Suzanne: If a big airliner hit Empire State Building, it would cause catastophic damage (duh). Think the construction style would have stopped it from pancaking due to fire. It would, however, be years and many, many millions of dollars before it could be opened again, IMO.
Paul in KY
@WhatsMyNym: That’s moving! I’ve been on an ex-PT boat going 18 knots through the open ocean and that thing was ripping. Engines blasting, etc.
Barbara
@Feathers: We have usually been here before. This actually seems like it might be a really freakish perfect storm kind of event that might have been more difficult to foresee than many other examples of collapsing buildings or bridges.
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/feb/26/what-caused-the-genoa-morandi-bridge-collapse-and-the-end-of-an-italian-national-myth
Spanky
@Spanky: Baltimore tide table says low tide was 0220 this morning.
Paul in KY
@frosty: Very hard to do, but 1st thing is to get out & then you can figure out which way is up.
Barbara
@Suzanne: This has been my working assumption for a long time. The worst that can happen if you leave when you don’t have to is an extra cup of coffee at a local cafe and you are back up in 30 minutes or less. In DC, if the firefighters who go through a building after a bomb threat find someone who stayed they escort them out and begin searching the entire building again. There is a very big push to get everyone OUT.
lowtechcyclist
@Andrew Abshier:
My wife is from central FL (Plant City), and it was the first thing she thought of. She was in tenth grade when the Skyway went down.
Paul in KY
@Another Scott: Keeping the tugs with them should always now be done! Hopefully that will become a law.
lowtechcyclist
@raven:
Impressive – it’s harder than people think to burn your bridges.
Paul in KY
@Suzanne: Excellent advice! You can always come on back in when they determine it’s a false alarm.
Suzanne
@RaflW: Even if they did anticipate, there’s nothing they can do about it. Engineers and architects simply cannot design to the parameters of “all the crazy shit you can imagine”.
Having been a part of many projects in which we talk about “future-proofing”…. changes that may come, things we may need….. it quickly gets to a point where there’s no good way to know, really, anything. Is this likely in 5 years, 10 years, 50 years? What would it take to meet that need? How likely is this to be an issue? How often would a problem occur? No one knows. So the can gets kicked. There’s not enough resources for designing something that can respond to every conceivable scenario.
Geminid
@Spanky: A lot of through truck traffic will likely peel off the Capital beltway at I-270 and cut over to I-81, or slide over on I-66. Just because the western detour at Baltimore will be very crowded and slow.
R'Chard
@Scout211: On one video, it looks to me like the bow deck, which has a massive overhang, contacted the pylon first, below bridge level. On Google Maps, it does not look like there’s any sort of revetment protecting the pylon, above water anyway.
Another Scott
(via USDOT)
Cheers,
Scott.
Jackie
Curious if the safety/reflective vests the bridge repair crew were wearing include any inflatable floatation device? Seems reasonable for working above water in case of accidentally falling – or a bridge collapsing because…
lowtechcyclist
@kindness:
Ha! We know it was Josh Hawley and J.D. Vance that did it. She can’t get us to buy her attempt at distraction.
Doug R
@lowtechcyclist: When the wooden part of the Patullo bridge caught fire and burned, it took about 2 weeks to find a span to replace it-since they were just finishing up the subway/elevated train to the airport/Richmond BC, they had a few construction bridges to choose from.
lowtechcyclist
@Suzanne:
They clearly mean Opus DEI. //
WhatsMyNym
@Paul in KY: Ships: the longer you are, the faster you can go.
ETA: something like that : ) I’ve seen submarines (surfaced) passing their smaller, high powered escorts.
Marcopolo
So maybe breaking news:
Ronna is out at NBC.
Hope the person who okayed her hire is out as well.
edited to add looking for confirmation of Dylan Byers’ tweet. also, thanks to all the on air staff for standing up yesterday!
Ksmiami
@Dorothy A. Winsor: she’s such a garbage pos. Why is she even in Congress? Fuck these people who do nothing for America. She needs to get a new job
Jackie
Off topic: NBC has seen the light:
Spanky
@Ksmiami:
Because this country is rife with shit people who like what she does. SATSQ.
JPL
@Marcopolo: NBC should have paid her for her contract and said we’ll call you when we need you That way she couldn’t go on NewsMax
Suzanne
@Paul in KY: Two times in the last year, I have been in high-rise hotels when fires have occurred. In the first one, the alarm when off with a verbal message to evacuate. It was not smooth. There were people with mobility problems who were really struggling to get down the stairs, and people behind them were starting to panic. It also had an egress design in which one left one fire stair on the second floor and transferred to another stair, and people were confused and stopped to try to figure it out, and that made it even worse.
The second time, the alarm went off, but the verbal announcement said the fire was contained and not to evacuate. (It turned out to be a burned waffle.) I evacuated anyway and had the stairs to myself! No panic!
Paul in KY
@WhatsMyNym: Good point. Also have to have the engines/fuel that can genn up that speed.
Spanky
Interestingly, at the start of the afternoon commute now, the traffic layer on Google Maps is showing all green around Baltimore. By comparison, the DC area is yellow or red in all the usual spots.
Paul in KY
@Suzanne: Wow! That is scary. Nothing like that has happened to me since jerkwads would set off the alarm at Kirwan Tower. Usually when weather was very bad.
Paul in KY
@Spanky: As someone up above said, I hope they are letting all work from home or have a couple of days leave to get their stuff so they can work from home, etc. etc.
Ruckus
@Old Man Shadow:
I was a sailor, ran an electronics department on a USN ship that was steam powered – 4 – 1200 degree 1200 psi steam boilers. Not quite what a commercial freighter would be. And a ship this size likely was diesel powered with one very large engine.
And yes there were backups – on a warship. There may be a backup diesel generator but a current day ship like this is likely diesel powered and may not actually have a lot of backup. And someone has to start that if it exists. All things considered I’d imagine there is no back up or twin engines. Something goes wrong – which is likely rare these days, you likely have what we saw, a blacked out ship with no power and no steering.
lowtechcyclist
@Suzanne:
Makes me think of the late Rick Rescorla. The firm he handled security for had about 30 floors of people in the second tower hit on 9/11. (from somewhere in the 50s to the 80s, IIRC, but it’s been a long time.) When the first tower was hit, he got his people moving out, right away. They were already mostly out of there when the second plane hit their tower.
Uncle Cosmo
@Paul in KY: Would the airbags go off as the car hit? Not sure if the attitude of the vehicle would affect that. If they do go off it’s a mixed blessing – might keep one from breaking anything or getting knocked unconscious, but the inflating gas is nitrogen (produced in a chemical reaction) and as they bags deflate the N2 might displace the air still contained in the passenger compartment that you would be counting on for breath while the compartment fills up. A real puzzle.
RedDirtGirl
@Jackie: Noice!
Jackie
@JPL: As Ronna’s persona non grata with TIFG, I doubt very many RWNJ media will take her – or risk the wrath of the demented orange god.
RaflW
@Suzanne: I evacuated from about the 12th floor of a hotel once very, very early in the a.m. In the hallway before I went down the stairs, some people asked me if I was really headed down. Yes, I said emphatically, but didn’t wait to see if that made them act.
IIRC, a detector that sensed water flow in the sprinkler system was the cause. (Same thing happened in my former condo, also a highrise but I lived on the 5th floor and took the stairs out of habit on a daily basis). Apparently these things measure ounces of water movement, and do go off erroneously from time to time.
The only real bummer of the alarm was that the elevator system was not designed to return 100s of guests to 16 floors of rooms in one mass grouping. I trudged back up the stairs!
eta: (And TMI?) I sleep in the buff. That was a reminder to always have street clothes easily at hand to jump into :)
Steve in the ATL
@Suzanne:
Note to self: never stay in the same hotel as Suzanne
Matt McIrvin
@pat: I’ve already seen the “Biden’s America!!!” responses on Facebook.
Nobody even seems to remember that last summer, a tanker truck accident collapsed part of I-95 in Philadelphia, because the local authorities and Biden’s administration were so fast and competent with the recovery. Obviously, this is going to be much more difficult. But competence at keeping things running can have a way of obliterating any memory that it happened.
Barbara
@lowtechcyclist: I remember reading an article of some kind about a guy who worked for a smallish tech firm in the second tower, who persuaded his boss to leave the building with him after the first tower had been hit “just in case.” Needless to say, his boss was incredibly grateful.
frosty
@Spanky: I came back from Essex on the east side of the Bo Beltway at rush hour yesterday with no traffic. I suspect it’s green because the County schools are on Spring Break and not because of the bridge collapse. I used to see the same effect when I was commuting.
Miss Bianca
@RaflW: I wonder if they will change that rule about tugboats now.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: There was this brief period after 9/11 when people were batting around ideas about dismantling cities or moving into underground warrens because of the hijacked-airplane threat. And then the moment passed.
And then when covid hit there was about a month when people were talking about eliminating dense cities because they were such a pandemic risk. And then the moment passed (and it became clear that it wasn’t just an issue with cities, too).
Barbara
@Jackie: Most people who serve in roles like McDaniel’s are people pleasers of the first order. It’s hard to imagine how disorienting it must be to learn that nearly everyone hates you. Not that it’s my problem or that I care, but the dilemma of the desperate to be sort of mainstream professional Republican is getting harder and harder to navigate. That’s why so many are retiring. No doubt she thought NBC would be a really soft landing, sort of like Nicolle Wallace.
Suzanne
@RaflW:
The first evacuation occurred at 5:30 AM on a Sunday morning. So everyone was asleep, and I hadn’t brushed my teeth. I grabbed my wallet on the way out. When we were allowed to go back up to our rooms, it was the same big mess at the elevators, so I bought myself a cup of coffee in the lobby while I waited. Was very glad I thought to grab the wallet, was embarrassed about my morning breath!
JPL
@Barbara: I don’t think she was prepared for Kristen Welker’s interview. The difference between other conservative or liberal hires are they didn’t try to overturn elections.
artem1s
@WeimarGerman:
My first thought was “I wonder how long this has been on the waiting list to be replaced?” Built in 1972. Too many years of the GOP refusing to address infrastructure problems. I’m betting Biden pulls out all the stops on this one. He’s going to pull FEMA, DHS, Army Corp of Engineers dollars to expedite the clearing of the channel and getting a replacement started.
Oh look – according to Wikipedia
President Joe Biden said he intends to ask Congress to fund the bridge’s reconstruction and said all resources are being made available to assist in the response to the incident. He said he plans to visit Baltimore in the coming days.
Let the conspiracy theories commence.
Eyeroller
@Paul in KY: I don’t think a person in that situation should wait till the car fills up with water to equalize the pressure. Open or break the window and get out. You may still have trouble opening the door and meanwhile you’ve lost a lot of time. Of course you would have to be conscious for any of this to work.
lollipopguild
@Paul in KY: A B-25 bomber hit the empire state building and caused a lot of damage but the building held up.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: A B-25 bomber collided with the Empire State Building in 1945. It killed 14 people and started a fire that was put out in 40 minutes. But it’s a different situation. The 9/11 hijackers deliberately chose planes that would be laden with enormous amounts of jet fuel and crashed them early in flight.
frosty
@artem1s: The first span of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge was built in 1952. The George Washington Bridge in NY was built in the 1930s. Brooklyn Bridge was built in the 1800s. Bridges can last a long time.
CarolPW
@trollhattan: I grew up in Clarksburg and every couple of years some mix of kids/parents/grandparents would go into the Sacramento and drown. Being a car passenger on the levies was anxiety-making. Being the driver was better.
Our farmhouse was about 1/4 mile back from the road, and there was a slough next to the house that went through a culvert under the road. There was a railroad track along the slough on the side opposite the house. The road had a bit of a rise before the tracks, and at the tracks began to curve. People would hit the tracks a bit too fast and launch into the slough. Happened once or twice a year, and Dad would call the fire department and then go fish them out. Fortunately no one died because the slough was too shallow.
Ruckus
@WhatsMyNym:
We could easily go faster than that on the DDG I was stationed on. Except. To do that on a steam powered ship – yes it used steam turbines to turn the shafts that hold the propellers, all 4 steam boilers had to be fired up, and that meant that the burning of a hell of a lot of fuel. Not a gas tank like on your car but huge tanks that were refilled under way by 2 – 6 in hoses, from the tanker or aircraft carrier we sailed alongside about 100 feet or so apart. This is something that we did every 2 or 3 days under way because we of course had to be ready for any emergency 24 hrs a day. And when I went onboard that ship we used bunker oil, which is crude oil with the rocks and tar removed. We then switched to jet fuel, which at the time would be considered kerosene. We still had to refuel every 2-3 days so we’d always have enough fuel to operate for several days without refueling. My station was forward refueling, setting up the sound powered phones for ship to ship communications. Good times. (Not
always/often….)Jackie
@Barbara: Nicolle Wallace became an early anti MAGA/anti Trumper and quit the Republican party.
McDaniel doesn’t compare to Wallace at all. Wallace spent close to an hour yesterday denouncing NBC’s McDaniel hiring. McDaniel hasn’t quit the GQP MAGA party, and as far as I know, hasn’t any plans to.
Sure Lurkalot
I blame Nancy Mace’s parents for not using effective birth control measures because now we are all subjected to her sycophantic idiocy.
In better news, how about a BJ contest on how much NBC is going to pay Ronna to go way? My opening bid, $2 million.
Matt McIrvin
@artem1s: The Basiliere Bridge on Main Street in my town is up for replacement next year. It’ll be 100 years old and is visibly disintegrating, to the point where I just hope the thing escapes collapse for another year. The job will be a headache but it’s desperately needed. Trump’s Infrastructure Weeks didn’t get us that, but Democratic control did.
catclub
There is a book called “the Ghost Map” about tracking down the pumphandle that was an epicenter of spreading typhoid fever. It was also about how cities getting big had to deal with plumbing and sewage in a way that their citizens could survive in ever larger cities. If typhoid epidemics just got progressively worse as cities got too big, people would leave.
catclub
@Sure Lurkalot: I mentioned the catch and kill strategy between Trump and the tabloids yesterday
on what to do with her. It might be cheapest to pay her and forget to ever put her on air.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@artem1s:
As I said above, my former agency was the one that handled bridge collapse rebuilds as part of its overall mission. Given the importance of the harbor access and that bridge, we’ll fling massive amounts of dollars at it and make sure the planning involves an accelerated timeline for completion.
Above I said maybe 2 years to rebuild, probably longer. Prior to various interstate bridge collapses during my time with the agency, we originally were very conservative in rebuild timelines but the last 15 years have shown those timelines have always been far slower than what eventually happened.
JPL
The New York judge presiding over one of Donald J. Trump’s criminal trials imposed a gag order on Tuesday that prohibits him from attacking witnesses, prosecutors and jurors, the latest effort to rein in the former president’s wrathful rhetoric about his legal opponents.
The judge, Juan M. Merchan, imposed the order at the request of the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which brought the case against Mr. Trump.
NYTIMES
MattF
@Jackie: I think zero. McDaniel’s contract is a sunk cost.
Mike in NC
In the 1990s I was assigned to a Navy Reserve unit at Fort McHenry. The unit operated three landing craft (LCM-8s) and at least one time they assisted with some folks who had a mishap in the Baltimore Inner Harbor.
Villago Delenda Est
Bottom line here: Ships happen. That much inertia is, short of Star Trek type tractor beam technology, not going to be deterred with mere concrete barriers. Or, as Dok Zoom at Wonkette wisecracked, the ship hit the span.
raven
catclub
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: The twinspan from Slidell to New Orleans is 5.4 miles long and took 5 years to rebuild. I think 5.4 miles is much longer than the Key Bridge
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Jackie:
Wallace’s hire still reeked of “access journalism” given she spent most of her adult life as a GOP hack.
That being said, her academic bona fides trained her for the job (BA in Mass Comms, MA in Journalism). Of course it was her GOP career that got her the plumb job at MSNBC, not her academic credentials.
raven
@Mike in NC: I took one of those from Nah Trang to Hon Tre Island once upon a time.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@catclub:
This is one time where it would be nice if I were still working. I’m just email 2-3 of the bridge engineers for info. I suppose I could still do it but then then they’d have my post-work email address. :)
Jeffro
I’m sure Mr. Martyr Supreme will lie about this like he does everything else, but hmm…not being able to attack witnesses, prosecutors, and jurors? Why, that’s called “THE RULE OF LAW”. It’s what happens when you have a history of inciting violence.
(Oh, and a note to the so-called liberal New York Times: Witnesses, jurors, and prosecutors are not trump’s “legal opponents”. They are a) our fellow American citizens and b) integral parts of our legal system, worthy of protection from Mr. B-Movie Mob Boss’s thugs (both in person and online).
They are NO ONE’s “opponents”)
Villago Delenda Est
They’ve already started, within hours after the news broke.
Paul in KY
@Uncle Cosmo: I would think they would go off. Would have to be ready for that too! Just about impossible to extricate yourself, I guess.
RaflW
@Matt McIrvin: Alas the useful response, HEPA-filtering and fresh-air-exchanging all public use buildings wasn’t really persued.
Yeah, some schools, companies etc boosted indoor air quality a bit, but far from needing to smash civilization, we need air!
Paul in KY
@Eyeroller: Breaking a window would start the egress process quickerer! Better be ready for the sudden influx of a shiton of cold water.
Steve in the ATL
@raven: curiously, the Port of Savannah is not located on the coast; instead, it’s a couple of miles up the Savannah River. So harder for large ships to get in and out of. Also, as ships get larger, the channel has or be deepened so they can get up the river to the port. Which l, of course, destroys more and more of the nearby wetlands but who cares, right?
Scout211
Since there are at least 13 journalists at NBC who have been let go recently due to budget constraints, I would imagine that the Guild will be all over a settlement payout for McDaniels’ handful of days working at NBC News. They have already filed complaints with the NLRB, according to a report, for the Guild employees who have been laid off.
Three days of work would warrant a buyout? A lawsuit? Not in the real world of employment where most of us can be let go for any reason during a probationary period.
Paul in KY
@frosty: There’s some bridge up in Northern Scotland that was built in late 1800s and is colossal. Was purposely built much, much bigger/stronger than it needed to be. Not sure what name of bridge is. Have seen pics. Tremendous big round beams & supports.
Paul in KY
@Ruckus: Bulk fuels…ick!
artem1s
@frosty:
It’s not just about age. Lots of factors can lead to a bridge being on the replacement list.
Bridge Report
There are 167 million crossings on 42,400 bridges rated in poor condition.
National Bridge Inventory: Maryland Congressional District 5
Of the 1,143 bridges in the counties of this district, 37, or 3.2 percent, are classified as structurally deficient. This means one of the key elements is in poor or worse condition.
This is down from 43 bridges classified as structurally deficient in 2019.
Repairs are needed on 329 bridges in the district, which will cost an estimated $2.0 billion.
This compares to 336 bridges that needed work in 2019.
The state has committed $400.0 thousand in IIJA bridge formula funds to support 1 project in the District.
One thing I noticed about FSKey was how close the top of container ship was to the bridge deck. If these very large ships can’t get thru except at low tide, that causes shipping traffic problems and increase risk of collisions in the channel. FSK might not be on the ‘about to rust away’ category but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t benefit from upgrades or replacement to address clearance issues.
NotMax
@Villago Delenda Est
Ahem.
;)
trollhattan
Buddy’s company had a division housed in the second WTC tower. When the first tower was hit, many of them evacuated, as they were told to. Then an announcement said to return to their offices. One of my friend’s coworkers said basically “the hell with that” and did not, then the second plane hit.
IIRC they lost more than eighty people that day.
rikyrah
@YY_Sima Qian:
The 1:30 am part saved so many lives
Steve in the ATL
@Scout211: there would be a written employment contract in this situation, so normal practices regarding employment at will and probationary periods would not apply
NotMax
@Paul in KY
Y’all think fueling with oil was bad? Coaling a steamship was a drawn out, dreadful and horrendous job.
Nina
@Paul in KY: The Forth Bridge? Beautiful structure, still in use for rail traffic. There’s still a phrase in the area “painting the Forth Bridge”, describing a task that has to be restarted the moment you finish it, since legend says that by the time you finish one coat of paint it’s time to begin again or else the rust monster will get you.
3Sice
The bumpers are called starlings.
A combined through truss has multiple trusses attached into a single load bearing truss. The plus side is less materials(weight), but knock out a pier and that’s going to happen.
The design and build was early seventies, materials, construction techniques, ship size, were what they were.
I’d guess the replacement will be cable stayed with fewer piers and more and larger starlings.
Scout211
Okay, thanks for the correction.
Timill
@catclub:
The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic–and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World
Suzanne
@trollhattan:
Yeah, absolutely be that guy.
The MGM Grand fire went vertically through the building really quickly due to shitty fillers in the expansion joints. We put in EJ covers, but who knows what condition that filler material is in? You can’t see it. GTFO.
catclub
@Timill: thanks! I hope I did not butcher the quick description.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@Anotherlurker: Low tide, according to the tide chart I found online, was 1:50 AM; the collision was a little after 1:30 AM. So the tide was going out still; I’m sure the speed of that will be mentioned in the investigation.
I suppose the ship was going out then to use the tide, since every bit of help saves fuel costs.
Another Scott
@Paul in KY:
Probably late, but it sounds like the Forth Bridge.
[ Nina got there first! ]
Cheers,
Scott.
Seanly
@wenchacha:
The bridge was a continuous through-truss bridge. The weight of the spans on either side of the main span help resist the forces of the main span and allow the main span to be longer with the use of less material. Since there are only two main load carrying members (left truss & right truss), there is no redundancy in the bridge. This bridge is a fracture critical bridge – loss of certain elements will mean the bridge falls.
Short & medium span bridges (less than about 400′ main span) often use multiple girders to support the deck. These allow redundancy – so if an exterior girder is taken out, the other girders can share the load until the bridge can be closed and repaired. But in order to span 1200′, we’re very limited on what type of structure can accommodate that gap.
Engineering design essentially balances cost versus safety. We have codes based on probablistic modeling and we understand pretty well how the materials behave and load paths. This is not to say that we flip coins – our codes are balanced to strive for safe structures that can withstand 75 to 100 (or even more) years of traffic and environmental abuse including powerful winds and seismic loadings. But we can’t make earthquake-proof or ship collision-proof structures. The cost would be astronomical for very little gain in functionality.
Newer bridges have more significant fenders or dolphins to deflect the ship. Those tend to be further away from the structure (notice the newer fenders around power poles west of the bridge). The distance allows more room for deflection or recovery of the vehicle. However, even those might not have saved the bridge.
EDIT – my bonafides is that I am a registered civil engineer (5 states) and have been a bridge engineer since I graduated college in 1990. https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanstephenmurphy/
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
Here in earthquake west building design seems to be not a lot different than it was decades ago. But one thing we don’t normally see is extremely tall buildings. The tallest in LA County is 1,100 ft tall. NYC’s tallest is 1,776, the world trade center. Which is also the tallest in the US. There is one that is 2,717 in Burj Khalifa, Dubai, supposedly the tallest. Now that’s an elevator ride……
Another Scott
RollCall.com:
The I-35W bridge seems to be similar in some ways, very different in others, but I’m not a bridge engineer. I expect, though, that things will move very, very quickly once the investigation of the scene ends and the cleanup starts.
Cheers,
Scott.
Suzanne
@Seanly:
Yes, thank you.
I do buildings, but many of the considerations are similar. The design loads specified in the building codes include safety factors, but unless we are doing something incredibly specific, we generally don’t exceed them by very much.
I wish people could understand that the issue is not a failure of imagination. We can all sit around thinking of scenarios that would cause something to fail. Hell, that’s what disaster movies are. We just don’t design/engineer to make something withstand every scenario we can dream up. We would never be able to afford the cost, in resources, time, disruption, aesthetics, etc.
Suzanne
@Ruckus: The seismic codes in CA increased the structural requirements mostly for lateral loads. There’s also a lot of seismic stuff that isn’t visible, like base isolation. And there’s a lot of stuff on the interior that is required for seismic design. Suspended (grid) ceilings have to be laterally braced because that’s typically what actually hurts people.
Y’all don’t do tall buildings there because of zoning height restrictions and highest-and-best-use considerations, too.
NotMax
@Suzanne
Events also sometimes can dictate design.
The then new structure to replace the old main library at Swarthmore College was built during the time of 1960s campus protests. Pleasant on the inside, the exterior resembles a medieval fortress, with windows suggesting the arrow slits in a castle.
Paul in KY
@NotMax: God, yes! Much more dangerous. Think the Maine was sunk from a coal dust explosion.
Paul in KY
@Nina: Yes! That is it. Thank you for figuring that out. What a monster!
frosty
@Paul in KY: Probably the Firth of Forth railroad bridge. One of the most beautiful ones ever designed.
ETA Late with the comment!
H-Bob
Will they rename the rebuilt bridge — the subsequent verses of the Star Spangled Banner are pro-slavery and somewhat racist.
NotMax
@H-Bob
Will lay down real folding money the Spiro Agnew Memorial bridge will not appear on the list of potential names.
;)
mrmoshpotato
@H-Bob: Key II – Even Keyier!
Ruckus
@HinTN:
This is an English website. Not the language, the country of origin. The language is English but the page with answers is in ENGLISH. And they speak a different dialect in the UK than we do in the US. So I can’t answer your question without standing on my head and reading with one eye closed.
BTW that’s snark, I’m in a bit of a mood today….
But. My imagination is that they are different types of ships, say freighters or tankers. Any more I’d bet there are not a lot of freighters that have holds that goods are loaded into on pallets, most are container ships because those go directly to container trailer trucks to be delivered.
Tom Levenson
@catclub: Cholera, not typhoid, but yeah.
I’ll be talking about that incident in my upcoming book, So Very Small, which is a history of germ theory from the discovery of bacteria to the present. The 19th c. was the century of cholera–multiple globe-spanning pandemics that offer a synoptic glimpse of what it took to go from descriptive accounts of disease to causal ones.
Ruckus
@Paul in KY:
Just like going to the self serve gas station.
Pull up to the pump. (refueling vessel)
Shoot light lines to the supply vessel
Handle 3 or 4 lines back and fourth using heavier lines each time till the last line – 1/2 inch steel cable – fix cable to ship – careful that line could easily kill if it gets loose and whips around.
Pull 6 inch supply line down cable.
Put hose in tank – that’s easy it comes in at a rather fast pace into the funnel and locking hose receptacle.
( we didn’t have to pay that was handled separately)
Start flow of fuel ( the supply vessel did that)
Wait for enough fuel to be deposited
Knock the lock bar restraint off with a sledge hammer
Wait for the hose to be recoiled aboard the supply ship
Unlatch the 1/2 inch steel cable the fuel hose was slid down.
Wait a minute or so till the steel cables were pulled far enough away so there is no getting steel cable in the propellers.
Turn away from the supply vessel and proceed on your way.
Easy peasy!
The Lodger
@zhena gogolia: I wonder what it does to Biden’s DC to Delaware commute.
The Lodger
I wonder what it does to Biden’s commute from DC to Delaware.
Another Scott
I would assume that they’re going to have to go to a new design for a replacement for the bridge (higher clearance, farther between support piers). That would seemingly argue for a cable-stayed bridge:
The FSK main span is 1200 feet (366 meters).
I would hope that they will have pleasing, strong designs to choose from when the time comes.
Cheers,
Scott.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Ruckus: ah Unrep! Fun!
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
Yep. We also used to have more than enough land to build horizontally rather than vertically. That is far less true today than 50-60 yrs ago. Now the population of LA County is greater than 40 states. It wasn’t 60 yrs ago.
frosty
@The Lodger: DC to Delaware wouldn’t go over the Key Bridge too much out of the way. It would be through the Ft Mac (I-95) tunnel most likely.
frosty
@Another Scott: Scott (et al). – A local here. It’s the Key Bridge, not the FSK Bridge. I never heard FSK until today. Not a great day to get pedantic, I know.
Ruckus
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone:
You have a strange concept of fun….
Although it was better than a number of chores onboard. I was an IC electrician so as long as I stayed out of sight of the bridge I could listen to the captain talk to whomever on the other ship over sound powered phones. Never any top secret stuff but some admirals seemed to enjoy talking down to, well everyone else. (We refueled from aircraft carriers if in the vicinity or doing plane duty.)
Another Scott
@frosty: D’Oh!
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
rekoob
@frosty: @Another Scott: Key Bridge seems to be the name for both the former bridge over the Patapsco River and the one over the Potomac.
“FSK” is the colloquial name for the Francis Scott Key Auditorium in Mellon Hall at St. John’s College, Annapolis. Key was the founder of the college’s alumni association, of which I am also a member.
If, upon reflection, the good citizens choose to honor another Marylander with a rechristened bridge in due course, I’ll not object.
columbusqueen
@Nina: Didn’t the previous Forth Bridge collapse during a bad snowstorm with crosswinds?
Uncle Cosmo
Maybe Uncle MItt’s still holding out for fulfillment of that White Horse’s Ass Prophecy…
Timill
@columbusqueen: No: that was the Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay! as documented by William McGonagall
columbusqueen
@Timill: Ah! Thank you.
Paul in KY
@Ruckus: Sounds nicer than fuel jobs in ground pounding units. In the Marines (for example) being sent to Bulk Fuels was like being sent to the Eastern Front in WW II. Nasty job that will soak your uni with fuel, no particular promotion prospects, etc. etc.
My cousin had gone AWOL in Marines and when they got him back, after he left the extra boot camp for dumbasses, they sent him to Bulk Fuels unit.
Paul in KY
@Another Scott: Obviously they need to
Make support pillars be in place where a big ship can’t even reach them (would run aground)
Have tugs stay with ship till past anything it could hit.
Seanly
@Another Scott:
Yes, this would likely be a cable stayed bridge nowadays. Continuous through-arches would likely not be as cost efficient as a cable stayed bridge. However, this can also be impacted by the soils at the site – at this size, different types of bridges have very different demands on their foundations.
Most of my bridges are short bridges (individual spans under 200′) and the different types of girders just change the overall weight but all act the same.
One thing I can guarantee is that the new bridge will have a massive dolphin structure