YouBet said:

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BassCowboy33 said:

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bonfarr said:

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To my untrained eyes that bridge appears low for the volume of the port. A guy interviewed on the radio said he was on a cruise ship passing under the Key Bridge and it had to take on water to clear it. Is that unusual or is that something that has to be done in a lot of ports where entry/exit is spanned by a bridge?

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Not uncommon. Depending on tides and draft, sometimes ships pass under bridges with surprisingly little clearance.

Plus, cruise ships have ENORMOUS sail area. So, they'd definitely need to flood the ballast tanks.

A lot of these bridges were built in eras of smaller ships. I believe Corpus built an entirely new bridge a decade or so back so it's terminal could handle larger ships.

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Um, yeah, it's still being built. They had to pause for a year or so because the builder f'ed up and they had to huddle for a while to figure out how to course correct and make it safe.

For those who have never seen it, it's massive. It has to be one of the biggest bridges being built in the US if not the biggest. Granted, there aren't always massive projects like this going on, but still, it's huge.

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The first pause was because the bridge in Florida collapsed and it was the same company building the Harbor bridge. Stopped to make sure there were no systemic issues.

YokelRidesAgain said:

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fc2112 said:

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Can you imagine being one of the last cars across that bridge, seeing it collapse right behind you in the rearview mirror?

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Reminds me of the guy who managed to stop just in time during the Sunshine Skyway collapse in 1980 (a similar incident, albeit caused by weather conditions).

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Is this where the Skyway bridge was built South of St. Petersburg, FL? I always through a ship hit this bridge?

Muy said:

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YokelRidesAgain said:

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fc2112 said:

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Can you imagine being one of the last cars across that bridge, seeing it collapse right behind you in the rearview mirror?

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Reminds me of the guy who managed to stop just in time during the Sunshine Skyway collapse in 1980 (a similar incident, albeit caused by weather conditions).

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Is this where the Skyway bridge was built South of St. Petersburg, FL? I always through a ship hit this bridge?

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It did. MS Summit Venture hit it during a storm.

Muy said:

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YokelRidesAgain said:

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fc2112 said:

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Can you imagine being one of the last cars across that bridge, seeing it collapse right behind you in the rearview mirror?

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Reminds me of the guy who managed to stop just in time during the Sunshine Skyway collapse in 1980 (a similar incident, albeit caused by weather conditions).

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Is this where the Skyway bridge was built South of St. Petersburg, FL? I always through a ship hit this bridge?

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A microburst event knocked the ship off course enough to hit the bridge supports.

YokelRidesAgain said:

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LMCane said:

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if it was deliberate sabotage, it would have been a much better target to take out the bridge across the Potomac in Washington DC and then try to beach the ship in the middle of Georgetown.

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Uh, a container ship would look just a little out of place heading up the Potomac.

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which is why I stated "IF IT WAS DELIBERATE SABOTAGE"

how would a power outage cause a container ship to turn sharply? There's gotta be electrical redudancy in place, power backups in the bridge... A steering wheel that can actually be steered? The whole power outage thing looks like a coverup for what was an intentional hit on the bridge. By the way, no bridge should ever lose the whole span like that. it should have breakpoints that sever under massive force to prevent what we're seeing. Lives were lost due to this poor design.

Logos Stick said:

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This is interesting.

As @JeffFisch notes, the collapse of the Key Bridge means that the Baltimore Port will be unusable for many months.

It's the 13th most important US port for foreign trade

The economic impact on the city, which is already plagued by social misery and violent crime, will be huge pic.twitter.com/ZpPcb4Ombs

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) March 26, 2024

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The guess is traffic gets diverted to Norfolk and Charleston.

Yeah but sabotage of what? There's no port to close on the Potomac. Crashing into a bridge to somewhere inconvenience D.C. commuters? It's dumb.

Yes. Don't hate the player, hate the game........

People like this will make sure there are large payments to anyone that drove over that bridge within 10 mins of the accident.

C@LAg said:

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bonfarr said:

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To my untrained eyes that bridge appears low for the volume of the port. A guy interviewed on the radio said he was on a cruise ship passing under the Key Bridge and it had to take on water to clear it. Is that unusual or is that something that has to be done in a lot of ports where entry/exit is spanned by a bridge?

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it just appears low because the bridge is laying on the deck of the ship.

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That made me laugh. Then, I immediately felt bad.

AggieZUUL said:

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how would a power outage cause a container ship to turn sharply? There's gotta be electrical redudancy in place, power backups in the bridge... A steering wheel that can actually be steered? The whole power outage thing looks like a coverup for what was an intentional hit on the bridge. By the way, no bridge should ever lose the whole span like that. it should have breakpoints that sever under massive force to prevent what we're seeing. Lives were lost due to this poor design.

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As mentioned earlier. If the rudder is at an angle, which it almost always is, a loss of power could stick it in place.

You're also at the mercy of the wind without power.

And there isn't as much redundancy as you might expect.

BassCowboy33 said:

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Logos Stick said:

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This is interesting.

As @JeffFisch notes, the collapse of the Key Bridge means that the Baltimore Port will be unusable for many months.

It's the 13th most important US port for foreign trade

The economic impact on the city, which is already plagued by social misery and violent crime, will be huge pic.twitter.com/ZpPcb4Ombs

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) March 26, 2024

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The guess is traffic gets diverted to Norfolk and Charleston.

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But do they have the spare capacity, labor, etc to absorb it? That remains to be seen.

Logos Stick said:

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BassCowboy33 said:

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Logos Stick said:

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This is interesting.

As @JeffFisch notes, the collapse of the Key Bridge means that the Baltimore Port will be unusable for many months.

It's the 13th most important US port for foreign trade

The economic impact on the city, which is already plagued by social misery and violent crime, will be huge pic.twitter.com/ZpPcb4Ombs

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) March 26, 2024

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The guess is traffic gets diverted to Norfolk and Charleston.

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But do they have the spare capacity, labor, etc to absorb it? That remains to be seen.

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Some crowded anchorages for sure.

GAC06 said:

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Yeah but sabotage of what? There's no port to close on the Potomac. Crashing into a bridge to somewhere inconvenience D.C. commuters? It's dumb.

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That might be because the Potomac in D.C. is, like, 4 feet deep.

Due to how important this shipping lane is, there is a strong chance that they will reopen the channel as soon as they clear the debris in the immediate area and in the channel.

Mobilizing the specialized ships to pull the junk from the bottom might take longer than the actual clean up.

If a boat of any size loses power it's at the mercy of the wind, currents, etc. You're as they call it...Dead in the water.

Now factor in the size of this ship and it's quite easy to see how this could happen.

I'm not an expert like a couple posters on here but I imagine any backup power isn't gonna just immediately turn on and be good to go within 2 mins. I'm guessing those elaborate systems take some time to turn, fire up, and be useful.

Good point. Don't know how far up the Potomac it could even potentially get

Fenrir said:

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ETA: just saw Yokel post about it.

That's nightmare fuel.

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You want some nightmare fuel, I read a story about this doc who lived right across the way from the bridge when it collapsed and said, hey, I gotta see that. So he gets his kid to come with him and they park at the edge of the massive traffic jam and proceed to walk all the way up the collapsed bridge to the edge, where they proceed to hang around for an hour or so until the cops finally tell them to leave.

(BTW, as evident from the photo, the roadway of the old Skyway was steel, with gaps where you could look down 180 feet to the water below. It was scary as hell to drive over, and walking up that thing (even without the small issue with MOST OF IT BEING GONE) is a whole lot of nope nope nope.)

Kid still has nightmares 40 years later.

If someone was going to hack the ship, I don't think they'd do it at 1:30 am.

Ships have redundant systems, plus there is the anchor.

Truth is MSM will cause conspiracies. FJB ...build back better was never a choice. Try to define better.

GAC06 said:

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Good point. Don't know how far up the Potomac it could even potentially get

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The I-495 (Wilson) Bridge in Alexandria, south of National Airport, has a clearance of like 70 feet. I don't know how close you can get a vessel of any size to that point, but you're definitely not going any farther.

Bruce Almighty said:

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If someone was going to hack the ship, I don't think they'd do it at 1:30 am.

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Is there a preferred ship hacking time?

Funky Winkerbean said:

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Bruce Almighty said:

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If someone was going to hack the ship, I don't think they'd do it at 1:30 am.

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Is there a preferred ship hacking time?

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If you're wanting mass casualties, then yes.

TREX01 said:

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It's Baltimore, they knocked down the Key bridge so they can replace it with whoever penned the Black National Anthem

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Beau Biden Memorial Bridge

CDUB98 said:

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Due to how important this shipping lane is, there is a strong chance that they will reopen the channel as soon as they clear the debris in the immediate area and in the channel.

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This is a good point. Once the ship is removed and the part of the bridge that fell into the channel is cleared, they can open back up. The container ship did a pretty good demo job in that area.

CDUB98 said:

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Due to how important this shipping lane is, there is a strong chance that they will reopen the channel as soon as they clear the debris in the immediate area and in the channel.

Mobilizing the specialized ships to pull the junk from the bottom might take longer than the actual clean up.

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They will almost certainly have draft restrictions for a long while until they can survey. It is pretty crazy how fast they can get things reopened though. Ports are cash cows and don't do anyone any good closed.