BreezyBaltimore bridge struck by boat and collapses
TransplantedSconieHoly fuck! It took the whole thing down! That shipping company is going to be sued into oblivion
There were people on it! Not a whole lot of cars since it happened a couple hours ago. But there were around 50 people working on it at the time. Its so devastating.
Most likely a lobbying bailout. Kickbacks will then be given to the executives. Only the unfortunate victims shed tears.
jballsThat’s insane. I heard about this on NPR this morning, but I didn’t picture the bridge being so big. Glad it was early when there weren’t hundreds more people on it.
jordanlundWill probably take a couple of insurance companies down too!
At least something good will come of it then
I’m thinking there will be many more parties to that lawsuit… Foremost insurers. And their re-insurers.
However right now it looks like this ship suffered a mechanical failure, so if I had a business in ship building/maintenance you bet I’d be calling everyone in the company to get confirmation that that ship was not on our customer list. And if it was I’d already be in an all-hands meeting with engineering and legal.
If I was in charge of whichever government entity is in charge of maritime traffic, I’d be discretely asking why the fuck boats big enough to bring a bridge down by slowly booping into it were allowed to be boating under the bridge. I would refute responsibility of course… but some maritime traffic rule changes might happen down the line.
To your last comment, ships never just boop. It smothers.
Let’s say 100k tons for a ship, and make it long tons to make it an even 100,000,000kg. This ship was moving roughly 4m/s… Thus the kinetic energy was somewhere around 800 MJ. A stick of dynamite is about 1MJ.
I’m pretty sure 800 sticks of dynamite could’ve fucked that support up pretty good, too, bringing down the bridge deck.
It’s more like either you give up on bridges or give up on ships if you are concerned about the two coexisting and breaking stuff in a low speed collision.
While using energy to measure the destructive power of a collision is… not great, OF COURSE no bridge pillar can withstand a direct collision with cargo ship that size (although I don’t think it would necessarily be unfeasible to build the pillars on artificial concrete islands ? Depending on currents and topology, it might just be very expensive).
There are also ways to mitigate risk (many of which surely are already implemented) around critical infrastructure. Slower speeds, backup generators, and for instance in Suez they have tugboats as well. They had one high-profile incident recently but they have way more traffic in a way more challenging environment.
Whether it makes economic sense to implement new safety measures in Baltimore I suppose depends on how likely such a collision is determined to be. Maybe it was a freak accident. Maybe with the amount of modern shipping traffic it’s bound to happen every few decades, and the risk/reward calculations should change to accommodate mitigation strategies.
ElderWendigoLol, that’s not how capitalism works.
Yeah, it is. They cost other rich people money too.
ИльдарRussians did it!
I read it was a ship from Singapore, idk what they have against us though. Probably russian assets taking revenge for the concert shooting.
I would argue this wasn’t planned. If you want to cause damage, why do it in the middle of the night?
Not sure how full this bridge is during rush hour, but I would imagine quite a lot more than it was when it collapsed now.
Just saying i was being kinda facetious if the implied /s wasnt clear.
Unfortunately, people say shit like this in earnest all the time.
if the implied /s wasnt clear.
It never is.
Poe’s law exists for a reason.
ripcordCool, 20 people died
I think they drank Russian vodka in the hold of the ship - thus the Russians are to blame!
There’s the connection we’re looking for.
FranklinSailing a ship is way more precarious than it may seem at first and if you’re not careful small mistakes can snowball.
This is likely what happened.
Woof… Found a map of the area, and yeah, you can route around the collapse, but the next closest crossing is a ways away…
Oof… the traffic is gonna be hellish there for the foreseeable future.
VieuxQuebNow imagine shipping traffic! Lots of deliveries not happening this week!
TimeSquirrelDundalk and Sparrow's Point is basically all distribution centers now.
you can watch it www.marinevesseltraffic.com/…/type-Port
enable dual track, lots of rescue vessels at the bridge and no merchant traffic it looks like everyone is queueing up outside the harbor figuring out what to do
If you slide down south of the Bay Bridge, there are about 12 ships anchored there. I usually a few when I cross the Bay Bridge, so I’m not sure if that’s a larger-than-usual amount. You have to figure that the ship that was leaving would have triggered another one inbound before long; I doubt they normally leave the dock empty for any longer than absolutely necessary.
And the tunnels (I-895 and I-95) forbid things like propane, so if you have some of that, you’re off to the west side of the Baltimore Beltway, which is already extremely busy. Good luck with that!
(Relatively local person here who travels around Baltimore frequently. I’ve used the bridge that collapsed on several occasions to avoid the tunnels while carrying propane.)
Lem JukesExcept if you’re carrying HAZMATS it’s even worse, they’re not allowed in either of the tunnel crossings, so all that traffic has to reroute aaaaaaall the way off your map via the western half of 695.
HegarWell that's... brutal.
Is that a fireball starting at 0:08? It looks like it's from something that was either at the top of the bridge or on the ship. :/
JodeThis has been a plainly difficult production.
What would you rate this on the scale?
Captain AggravatedBrick Immortar has a video to make.
It is likely to disrupt shipping in a major US port. This will have repercussions throughout the economy until the port is fully reopened.
gregorumThat bridge was also part of I-95, a major northeastern transit corridor. That will also be majorly impacted.
Not exactly. If you’re traveling I-95, you might take this if you’re carrying hazmat and can’t use the tunnels. Or you could go on the other side of the beltway (which I imagine many do, because it avoids the tolls for the bridge). Unfortunately, the west side of I-695 has more traffic than this side.
talgoogle.com/…/data=!4m8!4m7!1m2!1m1!1s0x88f5045d69…
It looks like long-distance traffic would normally take the remaining bridge over I-895 rather than over I-695, though I suppose it’ll be more congested now due to more traffic having to pass over it.
HubiI feel like the whole thing shouldn’t have come down as easy as it did…
Edit: Nevermind, I didn’t realize how large this ship actually is.
Baltimore Truthers, already?
Transporter Room 3I took it as less of “gubment did it” and more “holy shit that bridge seems shoddy as fuck”
A container ship like that weighs more than the bridge tower it hit.
Ann ArchyThey are the same thing.
The crazy thing is it isn’t even the bridge being shoddy. It’s terrifyingly simple physics. High mass objects moving slowly and low mass objects moving quickly are both incredibly destructive. I’m not entirely sure how you build safeguards against a collision like that. It would need military grade protection – assuming even the military has something which could withstand that.
Think of it like this. A bridge is designed to distribute weight and force and stand up. It isn’t designed to take a hit like this.
I don’t think integrity after getting a support annihilated by a massive ship is a reasonable design objective. You’d need way more supports and structure, at least doubling the weight and cost of the structure, I’d guess maybe 4x. As far as stress tests go, getting one of your two supports knocked out is an extremely stressing condition.
I learned recently that in engineering there’s a saying that anyone can build a bridge that will stand, but only an engineer can build a bridge that barely stands.
Which seems dark, but bridges are built on budgets while adhering to aesthetic, material, and site/traffic (on, under, and sometimes over) requirements.
And besides, that ship was between 210 to 257 million pounds, traveling at whatever speed it was going. I’m not a physicist, but I recon that’s enough force to knock down a bridge. (As evidenced.)
Even moving very slowly, that’s a hell of a lot of force exerted on something designed to take a sideways load caused by, at most, wind.
getting one of your two supports knocked out is an extremely stressing condition.
Bridges need therapists too!
steboi feel like giant ships shouldn’t be hitting the supports of a bridge
ivanafterallThat old way of thinking has no place in 2024.
if you ever made a bridge out of toothpicks in school, the lesson is how much force it can hold straight up and down. Something super heavy whacking at its side while also dead on nailing one of the major support structures… yeah thing crumbled like toothpicks
"Thicc boats can't break steel beams."
It’s not just that the ship is as big as it is. A ship half it’s size could have done it too. Bridges like this are very strong in the way of supporting their deck. But the way they achieve it is by spreading the weight out over a very large area. Interrupt that and the whole thing comes down.
the whole thing shouldn’t have come down as easy as it did
Like jet fuel to a steel beam?
(Is it too soon if I was an eyewitness?)
VeedemHoly crap! That went down way more quickly than I expected.
KneeTittsThat went down way more quickly than I expected
Id say it fell at roughly the speed of gravity.
My point is that it didn’t collapse it pieces. It just fell straight down with seemingly no structural resistance.
Bridges aren’t meant to withstand those kinds of forces. I’m actually not sure what is able to withstand them.
JonsJavaUsually, this would be deleted for not being a news article.
OP, please link to the link below, and I’ll let it stay.
Baltimore bridge collapses into river after being hit by cargo ship - Lemmy.World
A portion of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore has collapsed after a large boat collided with it early on Tuesday morning, sending multiple vehicles into the water. At about 1.30am, a vessel crashed into the bridge, catching fire before sinking and causing multiple vehicles to fall into the water below, according to a video posted on X. “All lanes closed both directions for incident on I-695 Key Bridge. Traffic is being detoured,” the Maryland Transportation Authority posted on X. Matthew West, a petty officer first class for the coastguard in Baltimore, told the New York Times that the coastguard received a report of an impact at 1.27am ET. West said the Dali, a 948ft (29 metres) Singapore-flagged cargo ship, had hit the bridge, which is part of Interstate 695.
Im sorry, i wasnt aware of that rule. I just wasnt seeing a video up on here at the time so i grabbed one off the live stream to post for others to see. I posted the link you gave in the description instead of the main url so people can still quickly pull it up. If theres a problem still ill do what i can to change it, or you can go ahead and delete this post since there are now more videos and such up online.
Nope. You did great. Our rules state that a post must contain a link to an article. Keeping the video as primary, and adding a link as the comment suffices. We usually don’t give the warning, but I felt that your post added good context for the news surrounding the breaking news.