Somebody pointed it is a toll bridge. That probably makes stopping traffic much easier.

Well this will probably add to the conspiracy theorists, but was blamed on the captain and pilot...

Quote:

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The same vessel that hit the Baltimore Key Bridge on Tuesday, destroying it and sending people and vehicles tumbling into the water, was also involved in a collision while leaving the port of Antwerp, Belgium, in 2016.

According to Vessel Finder and the maritime incident archive Shipwrecklog, the Dali a 948ft (290-meter) cargo ship with a capacity of 10,000 containers was leaving the container terminal of Antwerp heading to Bremerhaven.

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/26/baltimore-bridge-ship-previous-collision-antwerp-2016

yeah, of all the times/locations to lose power, this was worst case and will likely lead the conspiracy claims.

What does everyone think of the timeframe to open up the shipping lane again? Hearing some of my logistics companies already declare "3-6 months" but that seems too long a time for shutting down an important piece of the economy there......maybe containers barges can get around the outside of the main span since they are lower in the meantime?..

Oh joy, President Potato is about to hold a press conference about the bridge collapse.

jlAG97 said:

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yeah, of all the times/locations to lose power, this was worst case and will likely lead the conspiracy claims.

What does everyone think of the timeframe to open up the shipping lane again? Hearing some of my logistics companies already declare "3-6 months" but that seems too long a time for shutting down an important piece of the economy there......maybe containers barges can get around the outside of the main span since they are lower in the meantime?..

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They may not be dredged enough?

CanyonAg77 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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Saw this on Engineering Disasters a while back, before the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows bridge thrill seekers would speed across it in their cars while the roadway twisted and turned in the wind. No way I would have had the testicular fortitude to try that.

Steering on these ships is electro-hydraulic.

If you lose electrical power those hydraulic pumps stop and the rudder says put in the last position it was when power was lost.

When you lose electrical power on a ship like this you've got a certain amount of time before an emergency diesel generator starts up automatically and comes online to provide electrical power to critical systems including the steering pumps.

So when we see a plume of smoke coming out of the stack after electrical power was lost, this was probably the EDG or EGT starting up automatically.

The next thing that would happen is the engineers would go to work trying to get one of the two main diesel generators back online.

This has to be done 100% right and it's easy to **** this up, especially if done under pressure.

The reason is you've got an emergency generator supplying power to the ship. Switching power from the EDG back to the main SSDG has to be done in a specific way. If you do it wrong you stand the risk of tripping both generators back offline, and that may have been what happened here with the subsequent loss of electrical power after the EDG initially came online.

jlAG97 said:

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yeah, of all the times/locations to lose power, this was worst case and will likely lead the conspiracy claims.

What does everyone think of the timeframe to open up the shipping lane again? Hearing some of my logistics companies already declare "3-6 months" but that seems too long a time for shutting down an important piece of the economy there......maybe containers barges can get around the outside of the main span since they are lower in the meantime?..

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1-2 months to clear a ship channel is my best guess. I talked with a couple of logistics people I know (used to help run 3PL and worked with a lot of ocean, LTL and FTL carriers) and it will be 3-6 months to clear all the debris but they expect that basic operations for smaller ships will be open (periodically as they'll have to close the channel to continue clearing) in that time frame but that full access to the channel will take closer to that 6 month time frame with very limited access to larger ships in the mid frame. The stuff needed to clear that much stuff will take time to get to Baltimore, and you'll have to deal with various government groups doing investigations so they may delay how it comes out and you'll also be dealing with weather and personnel delays and the expense will be so high you'll probably have to have Congress and Maryland outlay money that is beyond the current Fed and State DoT funds for clearing and rebuilding. Probably 18-24 months for a new bridge so you can bet it will be 2026 before Key bridge is back open. Locals will be pretty gun shy about bigger ships in the channel depending on weather until they can clear a pretty big area of the channel.

Wow, 233 million pounds going 6 knots an hour. Man, thats some power

BassCowboy33 said:

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Al Bula said:

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Frank Sobotka when he heard the news:



Bill Rawls says this happened on the wrong side of the bridge. McNulty is mad for sure.

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This definitely crossed my mind

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especially since the bridge where Frank was meeting the Greek and was killed was the Key Bridge.

When ships are operating in restricted waters they typically run both main generators at the same time. In other words running the generators in parallel. Each generator has exactly half the load and both are in sync.

This is done so that if one generator fails or trips offline the other generator takes over the load without interruption of electrical power or loss of critical systems like ships steering for example.

Also of note that when entering and leaving port, some ships will run both steering pumps at the same time. This is done for the same reason. If one pump fails you still got another pump supplying pressure to the hydraulic steering. Also some ship run two pumps when entering an leaving port because it makes the hydraulic steering more responsive than running a single pump.

So if you lose electrical power the hydraulic steering loses pressure and you instantly have no steering with the rudder stuck wat whatever the last input was.

If the ship is moving through the water when this happens the ship will track wherever the rudder was when steering was lost and go for some distance under its own momentum, which in this case was directly into a bridge piling.

bonfarr said:

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CanyonAg77 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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Saw this on Engineering Disasters a while back, before the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows bridge thrill seekers would speed across it in their cars while the roadway twisted and turned in the wind. No way I would have had the testicular fortitude to try that.

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I remember seeing that Schwarzkopf conference (either live or on the news) back during the Gulf War....

Our dear leader is speaking.

So weird, I had a long reply to ThunderCougarFalconBird asking me a question and when I hit reply it said the content was unavailable to me. Sucks because it was a pretty long one.

CDUB98 said:

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Something I have yet to see explained:

The construction company halted traffic onto the bridge presumably from the mayday call.

Why were there still people on the bridge working? Why were they not immediately evacuated?

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It's a long bridge.

What could have caused loss of electrical power and subsequently steering in this situation?

Fuel quantity (some sort of valve misalignment or restriction of fuel flow to the main SSDG fuel systems)

Fuel quality (contaminated ULSD)

Electrical fault causing the generators to trip offline.

Also some sort of inadvertent or accidental activation of an emergency system that cuts fuel to the engineering space where the generators are located. Some ships are outfitted with an automatic or manual guillotine valve that cuts fuel to a particular piece of equipment. When activated it ****s fuel supply off completely in the event of a fire, runaway engine or other catastrophic failure. Sometimes these emergency valves are automatically or manually operated. Accidental of a fire detection system can sometimes activate the emergency fuel shutoff or emergency air damper

If emergency fuel shutdown is inadvertently activated a guillotine valve has got to be manually reset. And activation of a guillotine valve at speed could damage the engine itself because it's designed for emergency use only.

Point is that if some emergency system was inadvertently activated it could cause loss of main source electrical power causing the emergency generator to activate.

Key here is whether the ship was running both generators when entering and leaving port, and if so why did both fail at the same time. If both generators failed and shut down then its fuel related.

If the generators stayed running its proabably the result of an electrical fault that tripped the generators offline so although they remained running, the weren't supplying power to the ship.

I heard that the ship issued a distress call to the bridge and they tried to stop traffic and get the construction workers off the bridge. Casualties would've been worse without this distress call.

MV Dali Hitting Key Bridge in Baltimore - Track and Video Analysis (youtube.com)

pretty good video and analysis

How large of an insurance carrier do you have to be to underwrite coverage for a ship like this one? This has to be a very bad day for this insurance company.

Are they not fed from separate sources?

It's unknown whether the ship lost main propulsion AND electrical power at the same time.

No electrical power = instantaneous loss of steering.

Some ships are designed with main propulsion independent of the ships main electrical system. So you could conceivably have main propulsion and manually lock the rudder or activate some manually operated steering system. But there was certainly no time for that here. Thats only in the case of some sort of failure in open ocean as a get home procedure. Emergency steering for a vessel of this size would not be possible in this situation.

jt2hunt said:

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How large of an insurance carrier do you have to be to underwrite coverage for a ship like this one? This has to be a very bad day for this insurance company.

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Lloyds?

It may very well not be terrorism, and I hope it's not, but to make that statement so quickly, just hours later, seems ill-advised.

It's funny how the media these days tend to amplify certain things and downplay others, depending on the outcome they seemingly want.

For example, the color of mass shooters seems to have become a very big thing.

Edited.

FBI says it has found no evidence of terrorism linked to the Baltimore bridge collapse. pic.twitter.com/kS9itOlxkl

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) March 26, 2024

Sea Speed said:

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So weird, I had a long reply to ThunderCougarFalconBird asking me a question and when I hit reply it said the content was unavailable to me. Sucks because it was a pretty long one.

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I hate that. I always try to copy something when I've gone that long as I go. That way you have most of it.

Psycho Bunny said:

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Our dear leader is speaking.

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It was actually an okay press conference, by Biden standards.

Of course he had to make it about himself several times, but most of it was what one would expect a President to say.

Sounded like they gave him a good shot of something to get him going.

Fuel for both ships service generators typically comes from the same tank. Called a day tank or belly tank located under the engine room that supplies fuel to operating equipment in the engine room. So if you have some sort of fuel contamination or restriction of fuel supply it can affect all systems at the same time which is worst case scenario,

Emergency generators are isolated and typically have their own fuel tank.

BassCowboy33 said:

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BoxingAg84 said:

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hi! former naval engineer here! no bridge is designed to take a laden container ship *under its own power* just fuckin' piledriving main supports intersecting the bridge body. the material you want that does this is called land. no material is eating 116,851 tons moving at 6 kts! https://t.co/lse8paPwRA

— hollow earth girlboss cruella de vril (@carpethefish) March 26, 2024

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In our news meeting this morning, there was discussion about possibly doing a story on bridge inspections and safety. I literally said, "Guys, it doesn't matter how up to code your bridge is, it's not surviving a 950 ft, fully-laden container ship slamming it at 6 knots."


That ended the discussion.

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Fully laden. Holy Grail joke incoming.

Boatie Mcboatface would've navigated it.