The Baltimore Bridge

[mtpockets]

It must have been hell for the crew on the container ship that hit the bridge in Baltimore. Imagine the feeling of not being able to do anything besides put out a Mayday call and wait for impact knowing that lives may be lost.







Here's a live link if anyone gives a rats ass.

[BlackJack619]

You don’t think there was anything else they could have done, but put out a mayday call? I’m not sure I agree.

[OldFartTom]

The Captain, First Officer and Engineer should be behind bars waiting trial for what they did. The operator company too. The vessel wasn't seaworthy and they knew it. Cutting corners for profit. What a disgrace. RIP to those killed.

[mtpockets]

You don’t think there was anything else they could have done, but put out a mayday call? I’m not sure I agree.

Like what?

The Captain, First Officer and Engineer should be behind bars waiting trial for what they did. The operator company too. The vessel wasn't seaworthy and they knew it. Cutting corners for profit. What a disgrace. RIP to those killed.

I don't know much about it yet, you seem to know much more than me Tom, feel free to share anything that you have. I am very interested.

[mtpockets]

https://twitter.com/i/status/1772675756784505129

[BlackJack619]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1eC3xFG4is




These large ships have ways to control the steering even in emergency’s like loosing power.

[mtpockets]

Thanks for the info BJ, I am not sure that this would help much in an instance where power loss happened in such close proximity to the bridge. Maybe in a more open environment. Physics bro, these are big heavy ships, they can't stop on a dime nor can they turn on a dime. I am not sure what you mentioned would have been enough to save the collision, that is just my opinion, the experts will sort it out though and then we will know for sure..

For a short while I lived in an area where these container ships travelled through a canal and locks getting from one Great Lake to another. The Canal is straddled by lift bridges at various locations. The distance from the ship that these bridges are lifted, stopping traffic when these ships transit would amaze most people. We waited sometimes for 20 minutes or more from the time the bridge went up until the boat passed. (Just to give an idea of how far away they were when the bridge was lifted)

There is a reason for that, these are massive vessels that are near impossible to stop should anything happen. Loss of power or steering etc. I don’t know what happened here and I don’t know what else could have been done especially if it happened at the last minute. I will leave that to the armchair quarterbacks speculation while I wait for the experts' conclusions.

[Mark1T]

Condolences to all who lost their lives and tbeir families.

One thing bugs me. Even if the ship had nothing wrong with it at all, what would have prevented it from hitting the bridge anyway? Full reverse? Or, it seems like it would not have made it anyway, so what the hell was it doing there? Was the ship to stop and wait for the bridge to rise?

[mtpockets]

Condolences to all who lost their lives and tbeir families.

One thing bugs me. Even if the ship had nothing wrong with it at all, what would have prevented it from hitting the bridge anyway? Full reverse? Or, it seems like it would not have made it anyway, so what the hell was it doing there? Was the ship to stop and wait for the bridge to rise?

Yeah, something seems off here.


These boats have Harbor Pilots as required by law for transiting in and out of ports and harbors, they know the waters better than anyone and why they take over.

With that said, the old Air Traffic Controller in me questions the tracking of this vessel. It seems like it was tracking close to that pilon anyway..





The investigation should clear up why it was on that heading instead of closer to the center of the bridge.

[Mark1T]

10-4, mt.

[weiss1967]

I don’t know, I think there were lights on that ship? Hard to see. Ship can’t just lose power and be dead on the water. I am one of those pesky engineers whomst should be jailed, and I agree.

However, there is a lot of automation involved on modern ships, much of which has never been properly tested. Everybody cuts corners, and nobody fully understands how shiit works anymore. Probably not same thing that happened out there with bridge, but just so you can imagine what could that be. I currently work on 4-year old vessel, with critical bugs from shipyard still being identified almost daily. Even when I see the problem, there are no manager who would fully understand what I am talking about. I can only simplify things to a certain point. When I see the fix, I keep my hands off anyway, so that no one would be pointing fingers, when some other unrelated jizmo falls apart and ram another bridge.

This is the reality of marine industry.

[LWW]

That’s the key bridge I-695, I used to take that bridge to get into Dundalk, the cent of poop in the air driving on that bridge.

Crazy.

I worked with a kid who’s daddy was a cop, the kid was a fat little chit who’s dad got him out of all kinds of jams. Anyway he would say if he lost his job he would jump off that key bridge.

He threaten to shoot the supervisor one day and he got fired, the next day the key bridge was closed due to a guy threatening to jump off it.

[mtpockets]

I don’t know, I think there were lights on that ship? Hard to see. Ship can’t just lose power and be dead on the water. I am one of those pesky engineers whomst should be jailed, and I agree.

However, there is a lot of automation involved on modern ships, much of which has never been properly tested. Everybody cuts corners, and nobody fully understands how shiit works anymore. Probably not same thing that happened out there with bridge, but just so you can imagine what could that be. I currently work on 4-year old vessel, with critical bugs from shipyard still being identified almost daily. Even when I see the problem, there are no manager who would fully understand what I am talking about. I can only simplify things to a certain point. When I see the fix, I keep my hands off anyway, so that no one would be pointing fingers, when some other unrelated jizmo falls apart and ram another bridge.

This is the reality of marine industry.

Excellent input Weiss..


I have a question on what your thoughts on the amount of black smoke coming out of the stack just before the collision. Could that be in any way related to going full reverse?

[weiss1967]

Yeah, something seems off here.


These boats have Harbor Pilots as required by law for transiting in and out of ports and harbors, they know the waters better than anyone and why they take over.

With that said, the old Air Traffic Controller in me questions the tracking of this vessel. It seems like it was tracking close to that pilon anyway...

harbour pilots, yeah. They are required by law, and probably make sense for uninitiated. Pilot does not bear any responsibility for whatever happen to any ship. They are advisors only. Pilot cannot possibly know dynamic characteristics of the ship he is on. It is the captain who makes decisions.

I had another look at video. The ship was going too fast. There seem to be a control issue, or perhaps operator error. Imagine, bridge (wheelhouse) at night is darkened, to preserve navigator’s night vision. If helmsman was new, which is likely, considering big port, airport nearby etc, very convenient for a crew change. So if the guy at control was new he could easily mix up which way to yank the joystick. Trying to reverse he could easily be “reversing”, remember that everything is opposite when you are going astern. Also, there might be more than one navigator’s station, with control being passed from one station to another, depending which direction the ship is going. Easy to hit a wrong button in the dark. Pilot would be of no use, he doesn’t know where coffee machine or a chart table.

But, lights went off. Looks like this was indeed a blackout condition. Controls usually are backed by batteries, so the steering (the control input, not the actual steering motor) nav lights, radars etc should have been available. But controls are useless if you have no power to thruster. The ship could be diesel-electric. Steering gear is definitely electric, and it is a huge electric motor, size of a small car. When light came on, those were emergency lights, from emergency generator. Timing is consistent with emergency genny.

Black smoke was indeed engine revving up to full power, with turbochargers not spooling fast enough. Smoke clears in a few seconds, which doesn’t mean the engine wasn’t at full power, it could be running full bore the entire time of the video.

Hard to say what happened. One thing for sure - this wasn’t one little thing that failed. Like with any incident, Swiss cheese of safety holes lined up.

Anchors, somebody suggested. Yes, this is captain’s last resort. At any arrival or departure there is an “anchor watch”, a crew member, or a few, ready to deploy anchor at a word from captain. Anchor cannot stop ship immediately, it has to sink first, and a certain length of chain has to be eased out for an anchor to grab properly. All this time while the ship is flying towards the bridge.

[Gabbar99]

It's pretty clear what happened as described by Weiss. Ship was about to head through, power went out, they drifted off their path, power back on, power back off, drift, power back on but too late.

Bridge is not designed to handle a giant heavy ship smashing into the support.

Same thing happened when I lived in Arkansas: a barge hit the support of an interstate bridge over I-40 and it went down with cars falling into the water.

I don't know much about ships, but I'd assume there was a big mess-up of backup power and redundancy or something.

Terrible.

[weiss1967]

I think I know. At least very likely scenario. The engine was overloaded and stalled. This ship is probably fitted with a controlled pitch propeller. Captain was going astern a bit too fast, and then applied a full pitch ahead. With vessel going so fast in opposite direction, the situation is called “heavy prop”. Puff of black smoke from overloaded engine, nasty alarms, and eventually trip off. Engine stall, and along with it goes a shaft generator, causing a blackout. No propulsion, no steering. Emergency generator is of no use, it cannot spin the prop.

[x-trainer ben]

Was listening to the local news and press conference this morning and it better not take 5 years to replace it.
That is entirely too long and dangerous hazardous materials and 36,000 cars need a way home.
This country takes entirely too long to fix over budget, infrastructure projects.

[OldFartTom]

... ...I don't know much about it yet, you seem to know much more than me Tom, feel free to share anything that you have. I am very interested.

Don't know much, but I know there were witnesses on the news saying the ship had multiple power outages while in port, then they had a power outage when they sailed. Call me Sherlock but I'd say that's relevant. There was some comment with more detail on the news something about their power kept tripping out, but I didn't get chance to hear as I was doing something

[MajorTendonitis]

I heard a retired captain on the news say they typically have tugs tied to the older ships to escort through scenarios like this . Makes perfect sense as this could have been avoided.
And another good thing is to implement huge concrete piers in front of the columns so they can’t be hit directly.
This is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen , thank god it wasn’t during high traffic times.

In b4 the captain of the ship was a diversity hired sloot

[OldFartTom]

MajorT: apparently under Maryland law all those ships need a pilot, so it'd be under the control of a harbour pilot. If tugs are needed or not depends on the ship, but the pilot is a local expert so an error if judgement there seems less likely cause

Weiss: I heard reported they restored all or some power a minute or two before impact but by then it was too late to prevent collision. This is why in the footage there are navigation and other lights

[4Bertuzzi4]

Why didn't they drop Anchor?




Edit* They dropped anchor just before impact. Should have dropped it half a mile sooner, no?

[BlackJack619]

Why didn't they drop Anchor?




Edit* They dropped anchor just before impact. Should have dropped it half a mile sooner, no?

Agreed

[KINGFABIAN]

Conspiracy theorists posting all over social media today talking about planted explosions, cyberattacks & comparing it to the movie “Leave the world Behind “ as planned because the evil Obama directed the movie and a big ship was in it and this was a big ship so it HAS to be connected.


Of course the ones posting this are the anti vax, Alex Jones, Let’s Go Brandon , “it was his second term dammit!” , Q’Anon worshipping bottom most low IQ individuals of society.

[Mark1T]

Look at this snapshot. Power or no power, what the hell was this ship doing there if there was no possible way it could pass through without a catastrophic collision? Look at how tall the storage containers are. The Baltimore bridge is a fixed bridge and not a lifting bridge.

Suspected negligence, even though the power went out.

[paulinkansas]

Where there is chaos, there is cash. That's what I hear from my refinery contractor tenants.

There will be steady work for demolition crews, iron/bridge workers and all the supporting workers for the next few years. They will probably be working 24/7 to get a new bridge up and running. I saw it happen in St Louis back in '95. The company had 30 days to make the repairs. Every day that they were behind was a $1,000,000 penalty. Every day they completed the job early was a $1,000,000 bonus.

It'll probably take 1000-1500 people to build it. People with Airbnb's will make a killing.

[OldFartTom]

Where there is chaos, there is cash...

My grandad (and his generation) had the expression "where there's muck, there's brass"

But not so much for Britannia P&I Club who insure the ship and so may be liable for $1.2Bn for the bridge as well as hammering out the dents in the boat. They're Lloyd's List (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd%27s_of_London) so I'm sure some nearby bars have probably been serving liquid emotional support to those about to pay the bill

[IronCharles]

[LWW]

Where there is chaos, there is cash. That's what I hear from my refinery contractor tenants.

There will be steady work for demolition crews, iron/bridge workers and all the supporting workers for the next few years. They will probably be working 24/7 to get a new bridge up and running. I saw it happen in St Louis back in '95. The company had 30 days to make the repairs. Every day that they were behind was a $1,000,000 penalty. Every day they completed the job early was a $1,000,000 bonus.

It'll probably take 1000-1500 people to build it. People with Airbnb's will make a killing.

Do you think this will be a Union job? And you know why I ask.....I think. Who says “Union Jobs”!

[paulinkansas]

Do you think this will be a Union job? And you know why I ask.....I think. Who says “Union Jobs”!

Most definitely. The cat unit went down at the local refinery on Superbowl Sunday about 10 years ago. $13,000 of product goes through it every minute. I was throwing a Superbowl party at my house with about 20 people.

The first phone call came around noon. I got the superintendent and his foreman a house to stay in.

For the next 8 hours I got a total of 34 people into my furnished houses. They stayed 30 days and got the cat unit up and running.

A year later the superintendent called me again. I was on a vacation. He needed a house. He said "get ready for your phone to ring, I'm calling up the crew of 36 boilermakers to get the cat unit up and running again." I cut my vacation short and drove home and started unlocking doors at the same rental properties.

They were all union.

[paulinkansas]

For those of you who don't know what a cat unit it, it's fluid hydraulic catalytic cracking. I think there are about 12 of these units in the world. It makes high octane fuel on a continuous basis. It's about the size of 40 school busses stacked on top of each other. The process helped the U.S. win World War 2.