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.
The investigation report is going to be interesting. While bridges can only take so much punishment, they are usually designed to survive some collisions with their pylons. I wonder what the state of the bridge was, prior to the collapse. If it’s anything like the rest of the infrastructure in the US, it was probably not good. Though, this may also be a case that the designers in the 70’s planned for a collision with a cargo vessel of the times, which were tiny bath tub boats compared to the super container ships we have now. The Dali was built in 2015 she is a 300m ship capable of carrying 116851 tons. That’s a lot of mass for the pylon and it’s barriers to stop.
I’m pretty sure no bridge is designed to survive a collision with a large cargo ship, even a brand new one. It would balloon the cost so much nobody would be willing to pay it.
New bridges are built with protections such as pylons to prevent ships from even getting close to bumping into the bridge after the sunshine skyway bridge collapse of 1980.
In this case I’m not sure it would have mattered. This wasn’t a bump or a glancing blow. There’s not much which will deflect or absorb that much energy head on.
I disagree, the geometry of protection dolphins use would deflect the ship enough to change its trajectory towards the walls of the channel bed where the ship would run aground before striking the bridge even from a head on collision.
What is a geometry protection dolphin?
They are concrete or wooden structures that are piled deep into the ground like fondation foundation pylons on skyscrapers. The geometry part I was just referring to how they are angled in such a way it ricochets the ship away from the structure it’s protecting or towards the channel.
So why on earth didn’t the bridge have these?
A. It did, just only a few and the investigation will probably reveal not enough based on giant ships these days.
B. It was built before the Sunshine bridge collapse in 1980 so before the standards were updated.
If I had to speculate? Cost savings… The bridge already had a history of cost reductions such as originally being built with a shared approach way which vastly increased the risk of head on collisions.
I believe it refers to this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin_(structure)
This is the absolute dumbest shit I’ve seen in a while. And it’s said so confidently, kind of amazing.
Why do you say that?
This structure was hit head on by a laden container ship. Container ships weigh between 50,000 and 200,000 tons depending on size and cargo. There is not a structure capable of being created by man which could sustain that amount of force, head on, and retain its structural integrity.
Buncha armchair idiots think they know more about bridge construction than civil engineers. Gods, this place is just more and more like Reddit by the minute.
The amount of force needed to deflect a large object is much smaller than to stop it. In fact, if done over a large enough distance, a tiny amount of force is sufficient.
Need an example? Imagine your big brother is skating down a slope. Could you block him, head on? Probably not. But what if your sister, who was skating next to him, were to slightly steer him out of the way so that he doesn’t hit you?
As an alternative, you can also slow him down over a long distance, requiring the same(?) force but applied in a smaller amount, longer.
It takes a pretty special kind of small mindedness to think that this accident will be uninteresting to engineers because container ships are simply too heavy to consider building against.
Kinda crazy how those same construction and civil engineers are going to be investigating if the normal means of protection for this very foreseeable event was done correctly, because we design things to avoid these head on collisions:
https://wjla.com/features/i-team/questions-investigators-will-be-asking-about-francis-scott-key-bridge-collapse-baltimore-container-ship-collision-port-engineering-economy-shipping-hub
Also, not for nothing but even if they find out the dolphins in place were sufficient based on prior standards…this event will likely update the standards, same as the sun bridge in the 80s. Regulations and best practices are written in blood.
Oh my god! No way! They’re going to investigate and learn from a rare event! That’s shocking!
We study things all the time. Your extrapolation that an investigation means something was preventable is evidence that your higher brain function has been damaged.
You: "There is not a structure capable of being created by man which could sustain that amount of force, head on, and retain its structural integrity.
Actual engineers in the linked article: literally describe how to build secondary structures to deal with giant ships and prevent head on collisions on bridges.