Absolutely horrific news coming out this morning along with terrifying footage of a containership hitting one of the main bridge pier's and then the bridge itself collapsing into the water. Baltimore Key Bridge collapse: 'Odds not good' for survivors in freezing water That this happened in the wee hours of the morning is I guess a blessing as the number of casualties if this had happened at another time would be more than 10 times the numbers of those that they're currently looking for
Baltimore Key Bridge: Rescuers searching river after Baltimore bridge collapse - BBC News Mental scenes. Just seen it on the news.
The timing of it was absolutely a blessing in disguise. I dread to think how many cars would be on that bridge during rush hour. There must have been something wrong with the ship for it to go off course that badly.
The tracking reports seem to show the tanker ship slowing and veering off track in the minutes before the collision and also some reports of the lights going out and smoke - something pretty much unheard of on a ship like this with 2 pilots on the bridge. Some news reports are saying the ship had communicated that they'd lost control of the ship, others that the access to the bridge might already have been closed before the collapse hence the 'looking for 20 people' reports which seem to relate to workers on the bridge I'm sure in the coming days the how and why will become more clear. As 'mass casualty events' go though this one is definitely heartbreaking and tragic but also in the could have been far far worse category
Only heard about it on BBC 1pm news. Unbelievable scenes. Fell like it was made of paper. What chance does a bridge have against a huge tanker weighing a few thousand tons.
Well it's terrible for the people who have died but also the entire areas economy will be in ruins as the port is blocked so 1000s more lives are going to be hammered as a result of this.
I imagine the ships pilot will have plenty of future holidays available to them . With all the digital technology available it's hard to fathom how something like this can happen , you can see a dinghy on a radar so a 1.6 mile long bridge & its pylons should be visible whatever time of the day / night . Six people are still unaccounted for & it must be weird for a local that a visible structure you see & or cross in some cases on a daily basis is now no more .
Speaking with the benefit of all my engineering expertise (none) you have to wonder why the bridge towers were vulnerable to being struck by a ship, and why having been struck the bridge collapsed in seconds along its whole length. As others have said the one saving grace is that this didn't happen in rush hour.
As it was built nearly 50 years ago, maybe they didn't have container ships of that size in those days? Or certainly not as many of them as they've proliferated over the last 20 years or so as manufacturing has moved from West to East and the whole online shopping market has boomed. It does seem like the bridge went down a little too easily though and that surely there could have been some defensive bollards put in place around the concrete towers to try and deflect an out of control ship away? It's a total disaster regardless and is going to knacker Baltimore for years to come and probably have big knock on effects to shipping routes in the region. No doubt this will be another excuse for prices of things to rise.
Sadly looks like the people missing are now being presumed dead. Indian nationals crewed the ship but are being talked about as heroes rather than being blamed and it seems like they sent our a warning just in time that prevented more cars from entering the bridge.
I don't want to seem like I'm stating the obvious, but bridges aren't (and can't be) designed to be hit by 200,000+ tonne container ships. Defensive bollards would've done very little, the boat would've just broken straight through them with very little resistance. I think the only thing that could've realistically stopped it is having islands around the bottom of the towers, and even that I'm really not confident on and certainly wasn't the standard when this particular bridge was built. Also just a note, the bridge didn't collapse along it's whole length. The bridge is 1.6 miles long and the only section that collapsed is the section with the truss support above and below, these sections of bridges are reliant on each component of the truss. If you knock out one of the main support columns/towers then it's not at all surprising that the rest of that supported structure came down.
I think @Papa Francesco has basically covered everything there. A truly horrific incident but if you're trying to pluck positives from it, an incident that could have been so much worse at a different time of day and seemingly if it wasn't for an emergency reaction to the unfolding situation that meant the bridge was relatively empty - not that this will be comfort to the families of those missing. A bridge engineer has posted a thread on twitter and in it he states that the static force of the collision would have been in excess of 3 million pounds. He's also confirmed what PF said above about the sections basically behave as one and that's why the lot came down as it did. No doubt a fuller picture will come out in the coming days/weeks/months and the sooner the better considering some of the loony conspiracy theory accounts on twitter currently having a field day with this
Agree, but the obvious 'solution' as you suggest, would be to protect the bridge structure by surrounding the supports with piers (concrete islands) that would deflect anything that hit them. That said I don't recall any other incidents like this one so perhaps it's not considered a cost effective measure. Perhaps the biggest shock is that this has never happened before.
I would imagine this is unprecedented and I am sure engineers around the world will now be looking at bridges worldwide as they try and come up with some sort of solution. The reality is though, how far would the level of protection need to go to protect from a 200,000+ tonne container ship with a static force of over 3 million pounds when coming into contact with another object? Surely an out of control vessel will just continue to try and move in the direction it is travelling, thus increasing the force on the structure, as opposed to simply deflecting off it! The other issue is space as rivers are all limited by a width - if you start to add in massive islands at the base of bridges, how much clearance will that then leave a massive container ship to actually pass through?
Not sure how hold the Dartford Bridge is, but its piers are protected by islands. Again not sure if it would’ve been enough to protect it from a similar impact.
I just don't think it would be remotely effective nevermind cost effective. You'd probably need banks and banks of them to have a significant impact on that ships momentum.
