Baltimore Bridge Collision and Collapse

[Marc_G]

Oh, so that's why you talk funny. Bal'mer.

(gentle rubbing)

I'm a Baltimoron, through and through!

 

[NTP2]

Oh, so that's why you talk funny. Bal'mer.

(gentle ribbing)

Hold it until you hear me hill Billy accent

 

[cls]

Hold it until you hear me hill Billy accent

My mother's mother's family is from Pocahontas County, WV, it's thick in there!

 

[OverTheTop]

I traveled to Baltimore a couple of years back. No, I didn't get shot.

 

[Tommie D]

Brings back memories of the I-40 Bridge collapse in Oklahoma over twenty years ago.

 

[cls]

Ok, serious article:

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/03/26/baltimore-bridge-disaster-could-it-happen-here/

(Lots of ads and junk on that website, so install uBlock Origin if you haven't already)

Quick survey of SF Bay bridges. All have concrete fenders around the towers. Several noted accidents in recent years.

My experience sailing around the bay is, stay the F away from the piers. The water has standing waves, swirls around and tries to pull the boat in, the wind gets blanked and squirrels around.

My dad and I were out fishing one foggy morning and we heard a big BLAM! A navy jet from Alameda hit the eastern span of the bay bridge.

Aha! Wikipedia says (sorry no direct link to section)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco–Oakland_Bay_Bridge

1968 aircraft accident ​

On February 11, 1968, a U.S. Navy training aircraft crashed into the cantilever span of the bridge, killing both reserve officers aboard. The T2V SeaStar, based at NAS Los Alamitos in southern California, was on a routine weekend mission and had just taken off in the fog from nearby NAS Alameda. The plane struck the bridge about 15 feet (5 m) above the upper deck roadway and then sank in the bay north of the bridge.[86] There were no injuries among the motorists on the bridge.[87] One of the truss sections of the bridges was replaced due to damage from the impact.[88]

 

[cwbullet]

Amazing tragedy. I wonder how long it will take to rebuild or replace.

 

[Rob Campbell]

In 2004, Hurricane Ivan took out several spans of the I-10 bridge over Escambia Bay. It took about 2 years to construct a new bridge. My guess is 2 to 3 years to rebuild

 

[modeltrains]

to be brought out by tugs be feasible or even work?

Tugs are limited to very low speeds while doing their tugging thing, slower than the channel speed - so, a big effect would be the perhaps significant reduction of how many ships can cycle through the passage in 24 hours.

Here watch this, especially just after the 1:31 point,

 

[modeltrains]

See also:

 

[rharshberger]

Amazing tragedy. I wonder how long it will take to rebuild or replace.

Truss style steel bridges like that are pretty quick to build actually. Production of the materials will take the longest time and survey of the damage. The pier may or may not need complete replacement.

 

[cwbullet]

Truss style steel bridges like that are pretty quick to build actually. Production of the materials will take the longest time and survey of the damage. The pier may or may not need complete replacement.

It will definitely hurt the local economy, so I hope it is quick and safe.

 

[rcktnut]

Damn ships and barges always go out of control within reach of a bridge!!

 

[boatgeek]

Damn ships and barges always go out of control within reach of a bridge!!

Every time. In a notable example on the Columbia River, a ship lost steering and hit the bank. In 30 miles of undeveloped riverbank on that side of the river, it happened to hit the cooling water intake for a power plant.

 

[OverTheTop]

Damn ships and barges always go out of control within reach of a bridge!!

Probably not, but they have more notable outcomes.

 

[boatgeek]

Tugs are limited to very low speeds while doing their tugging thing, slower than the channel speed - so, a big effect would be the perhaps significant reduction of how many ships can cycle through the passage in 24 hours.

Here watch this, especially just after the 1:31 point,

I haven’t watched the videos for context, but the speed thing isn’t really an issue. The ship was going 7 knots when it hit the bridge, which is a very comfortable escort speed for a suitable tug. Escorts can be done faster at 10-12 knots, but that gets hairier. Even if you assumed a 10-knot escort out through the Bay Bridge, it wouldn’t cause that much slowdown.

 

[Daddyisabar]

Tugs had already detached once it was in the channel. I heard they got one anchor out and they were initially at eight knots and down to three on impact, still more than enough to plow through most anything at over 100,000 tons.

 

[Bravo52]

Got this from a friend who knows a thing or two about the maritime community. He seems to think this is plausible and accurate. Speaks to several of the questions posed in the thread.

 

[NTP2]

Got this from a friend who knows a thing or two about the maritime community. He seems to think this is plausible and accurate. Speaks to several of the questions posed in the thread.
View attachment 637337

Interesting it sounds like it got power back quickly but it wasn’t intended for heavy duty equipment so it failed a second time.

 

[wsume99]

Once the NTSB investigation is complete I assume they will release a transcript from the VDR. That should be a very interesting several minutes of conversation to read.

 

[cvanc]

A real mess and a tragedy for the lives lost. Obviously the first priority is recovery of their bodies. But what's the second priority after that?

The investigation will be huge and involve many different organizations and maybe months. Also, getting back to a viable bridge at that crossing will take much longer than that.

I am no expert, but I suspect the bridge itself does not need as much post mortem analysis as, after all, it didn't fail - it was knocked down. I predict a gigantic effort to clear away the bridge debris from the central deep channel will come as quickly as they can make it happen. This will get the port open again. The rest of the debris will be removed once the investigation allows it (and I bet it will be there a good long while).

 

[Rob Campbell]

A real mess and a tragedy for the lives lost. Obviously the first priority is recovery of their bodies. But what's the second priority after that?

The investigation will be huge and involve many different organizations and maybe months. Also, getting back to a viable bridge at that crossing will take much longer than that.

I am no expert, but I suspect the bridge itself does not need as much post mortem analysis as, after all, it didn't fail - it was knocked down. I predict a gigantic effort to clear away the bridge debris from the central deep channel will come as quickly as they can make it happen. This will get the port open again. The rest of the debris will be removed once the investigation allows it (and I bet it will be there a good long while).

Second priority is clearing the harbor so shipping can resume.

 

[Capt. Eric]

Lots of interesting comments, some good, some not very accurate. The early video with marine traffic is pretty good. The comments from the Maersk CE is also pretty good.

These things are usually caused by a chain of errors. The investigation will lay that out, and we'll eventually know exactly what happened.

Note that a ship doesn't steer like a car. Change in direction happens relatively slowly.

The smoke was most likely the main engine trying to start. Can't tell if it did or not, but it could have been trying to start in the forward direction since that gives steering control back, assuming the emergency power is on and steering control restored.

Looks like the ship and crew responded very well, and within normal and required time frames, but we'll see. What the procedures do not plan on is for this to occur so close to a bridge. Part of that error chain is the wrong thing happened at the wrong time. 99.99% of the time this happens, no one off the ship would ever know.

There are tens of thousands of ocean-going ships around the world. Ships pass under bridges every minute of every day around the world. Relative to what goes on, these events are very rare. Doesn't mean this isn't a problem, as once is too often, but it is very hard to eliminate every single possible potential accident that can happen.

The takeaway here will likely be that the crew likely did a very good job (and I do not usually say that), especially sounding the alarm to the right folks who quickly shut down the bridge traffic. That was probably done by the pilot and bridge operators. They were the heroes here.

The investigation will tell all, which is why I keep saying "likely". Give it time.

 

[boatgeek]

See also:

This is all technically true, but the risk of capsizing a tug is far, far higher when you're using older, single-screw tugboats instead of modern ship assist or escort tugs. The skippers have the ability to precisely tune how much power they're putting into the props so that they stay out of trouble.

This is a good example in practice, with the tug providing steering forces. They'll tune the drive direction and power so that the tug's deck edge is just barely above the water.


There are also stability criteria that address the issue of tugs getting rolled by their tows, though they are not perfect as evidenced by the casualty record.

 

[rcktnut]

I just saw on CNN a so called expert in construction forensics calling the so-called weight of the ship wrong. He was saying that the ship only weighed 10,000 tons, and that he did not know where everyone is getting 100,000 tons from. He really emphasized that point.
Some expert!

 

[Tractionengines]

Voith Schneider (Cycloida) Drive units are amazing for TUG maneuverability. Thrust an any direction changes almost instantly. Azimuth Drive Pods take time to turn the whole assembly. ( Standard Props are very outdated.)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voith_Schneider_Propeller

 

[boatgeek]

I just seen on CNN a so called expert in construction forensics calling the so-called weight of the ship wrong. He was saying that the ship only weighed 10,000 tons, and that he did not know where everyone is getting 100,000 tons from. He really emphasized that point.
Some expert!

Hoo boy. I was wondering when tonnage was going to come up. Buckle up, this is a thrill ride.

First of all, let's go to the USCG Port State Information Exchange. If you want info on boats or ships that touch US waters, this is a great place to go. Here's the data for this ship:


Over on the right by where I have stuff highlighted, you'll see a bunch of tonnage numbers. The top two (not highlighted) are Convention tonnage, as measured under the International Tonnage Convention. The important thing to remember any time you see Convention Tonnage, gross tonnage, or net tonnage, is that these are measures of volume and not weight. If you see a statement that a ship is a "100,000 ton ship", that is almost certainly convention tonnage. From a basic formula and the convention gross and net tonnages, you can back out the total enclosed volume of the ship (from gross tonnage) and the enclosed cargo hold volume or passenger capacity (from net tonnage). But nobody except regulators, tax authorities, naval architects, and ship owners really care about convention tonnages. At best they're a reasonable proxy for "how big is this ship?"

The next two lines are tonnages in metric tons, meaning weight (strictly speaking, mass, but ships never leave Earth gravity, so we can call it even). Displacement is the total weight of the ship when it's loaded down to its load line. Deadweight is the total displacement minus the lightship weight, which is the weight of the ship itself. In other words, deadweight is the amount of stuff (cargo, tankage, food and stores, spare parts, etc.) that the ship is carrying. The rules for calculating lightship are moderately long, involved, and can be hairsplitting.

So if it was loaded down to its load line, it would have weighed 148,000 and change metric tons. Of course, it probably wasn't since most ships are fully loaded coming to the US (bringing in the $3 plastic crap of legend) and somewhat more lightly loaded leaving. How much lighter? We don't really know. However, lightship is around 32,000 tons, so we know it's definitely not 10,000 tons. Hazarding a guess based on where the bottom paint line is, I'd say it's likely around half loaded or around 90,000 tons.

 

[wsume99]

Oh look, someone using facts to explain something. Unfortunately we're probably not going to get that from the talking heads on any of the cable news channels.

I was surprised to see the ship was built in 2015. Not sure if that is when it began construction or when it was put into service but regardless I would have thought the ship was older than that. Is a 9 year old ship considered relatively new? Wondering what the typical lifespan of a container ship is?

 

[boatgeek]

Oh look, someone using facts to explain something. Unfortunately we're probably not going to get that from the talking heads on any of the cable news channels.

I was surprised to see the ship was built in 2015. Not sure if that is when it began construction or when it was put into service but regardless I would have thought the ship was older than that. Is a 9 year old ship considered relatively new? Wondering what the typical lifespan of a container ship is?

I took a quick trip over to the Class NK register to check on the build date. Keel laid 10/10/2014, launched 12/27/2014, delivered and entered service 3/5/2015. Five months to build that ship, which you can do if you have 12K workers in your shipyard. It's built in Korea, so it's likely also a highly automated yard.

I believe that most of the high-profile operators (like Maersk, who this was chartered to) don't like container ships older than 15-20 years. After that time, they'll either skip down to a lower-tier operator or get scrapped. Container ships especially have issues with cracking because their deck is cut open in so many places for the cargo holds. Other people may know more.

 

[NTP2]

I just seen on CNN a so called expert in construction forensics calling the so-called weight of the ship wrong. He was saying that the ship only weighed 10,000 tons, and that he did not know where everyone is getting 100,000 tons from. He really emphasized that point.
Some expert!

Maybe they should get @boatgeek on their or perhaps @Capt. Eric or me at least I know to shut up on the news if I don’t know what I’m talking about.