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.
There was a live-stream where you can scrub to the minute where the bridge is gone (1:28:43 by the time-stamp inside of the video, not the YT timestamp). The Ship apparently lost all the lights 2-3 times shortly before impact. Maybe it was a problem with that. We also noticed a lot of hacking activities in the last weeks. Maybe it was that.
Wow, that was a wild shot of the collapse.
Better to wait for more details to come out than to speculate wildly.
A guy at work showed me the footage on his phone. Whatever shit news site he was pulling from had the headline, “DEI focus by The transportation department under Pete buttigiege results in bridge collapse”.
They didn’t even wait half a day to start lying.
Sigh.
Yeah, not everything bad that happens is intentional despite how much some people want that to be the case.
Idk I’m going with space lasers and you can’t convince me otherwise.
FBI confirms not an act of terrorism rn
Here’s a quick take on the cause of the crash:
. Ship power cut off and the pilot panicked and threw engines into reverse (as seen by engine exhaust) . ‘Prop walk’ turned the ship starboard into the bridge supportIt doesn’t look like it was lined up right to begin with.
It was. Just a weird angle on the camera.
A portion? That looks like the entire thing dropped.
Everything in camera collapsed, but the whole thing was 1.6 miles.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Scott_Key_Bridge_(Baltimore)
Why is he listed as “amateur poet” if his work was so famous that we named a bridge after him 130 years posthumously.
Francis Scott Key famously wrote the lyrics for the Star Spangled Banner. But professionally, he was a lawyer. :)
That was pretty much the whole thing, looking at a Google Earth image of the thing:
Ah I see!
All lanes closed both directions for incident on I-695 Key Bridge
All lanes no longer in existence on I-695 Key Bridge.
They’re still in existence, just a little wetter than usual.
That’s not very typical, I’d like to make that point.
Well how is it untypical?
What about the environmental impact?
For the uninitiated:
I had to find a map, yeah, this is going to be a major cluster fuck in the morning. It’s possible to route around it, but the next crossing is aways away:
Hazmats are prohibited in both tunnels. About the only option for those is to go all the way around 695, adding the better part of 50 miles.
Just looking at that map makes me crack up as someone from Ireland. Baltimore is a small town here on the south coast of Cork. Dundalk is up in Northern Ireland. Pasadena is a place in California.
I just think it’s funny when America has random place names taken from elsewhere.
We have a London in Canada.
Cultural appropriation is US culture. The UK and Ireland were just some of the earliest donor countries.
Wait until you find out about Springfield…
You do realize how little that narrows things down.
And there’s a Brooklyn Park in Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon, and South Australia.
If you want a laugh, check out cities in Texas. We have a Moscow, Paris, etc.
As does Maine. I’ve never looked it up, but I think Maine might be the state with the most places named after another place.
It also has a place called Ireland.
Just as long as you stay away from Vidor , you’ll be fine. According to the stories they used to have a billboard that said, “Don’t let the sun set on your black ass.”
I’m not black though, so I think I’ll be fine regardless. But thanks for your concern.
California is down in St. Mary’s County
Interestingly, there’s a St. Mary’s church there.
And Florida is cold and snowy
Thank your ancestors for that. Couldn’t think up any new names on their way over so they resused a bunch.
Specifically this guy right here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Calvert%2C_2nd_Baron_Baltimore
Thank your ancestors for that.
Well, his ancestors’ cousins, at any rate.
I wonder how quickly one can get a RORO ferry up and running? That bridge isn’t gonna be rebuilt any time soon.
No joke, and I bet it was heavily used too… Better jump on those infrastructure dollars!
Even the largest ferry can’t come close to matching the capacity of a 4 lane highway bridge.
Wow really? I totally can’t believe that /s
No doubt. I don’t mean to suggest that it’d eliminate issues.
That sounds like a traffic armageddon around Baltimore for the next few years…
Not just Baltimore. This is also a major cargo port. That harbor will be blocked for a long time. Get ready for supply chain disruptions and more rising prices.
I doubt the harbor will be blocked that long, maybe a week or so at most.
Good luck finding the necessary crane capacity. There are a handful of seriously big cranes in the 7000 tons plus range, but they are Dutch or Japanese, primarily. Wherever they are, they are probably busy and will take ages to get there. While the weight/mass of the bridge is not available online, it surely exceeds the weight limits of cranes currently in existence by far, so the bridge segments need to be cut up prior to removal.
Even if the US spends insane amounts of money, this issue will take quite some time to resolve.
You’re not lifting it out of the way, you’re gonna pull it out of the way with a tugboat.
It still is thousands of tons of steel, which will not be pulled that easily. And it is steel that does not swim, but drag along the muddy ground.
You cut it into pieces, add some buoyancy things. Naval operations can be impressive. Hell the Navy probably already has stuff to do this exact thing in case of war and a bridge out of Port gets destroyed. You don’t want your Navy blocked in. You also don’t need to move it far to get shipping back.
some buoyancy things
I get the distinct impression that you have zero engineering knowledge or experience.
Feels like an army corps of engineer training exercise, especially after Biden committed to help rebuild. Be really interesting engineering coming out of both the cleanup, rebuild, and post accident analysis.
The “cut into pieces” will be interesting. There are a shitload of large pieces, and everything is under tension. The links between the pieces are rather large, and a good amount of them are under water. That’s going to be serious work.
The Left Coast Lifter is in NY and can be on site in about 24-30 hours depending on currents going up Delaware Bay. It can make picks up to approx 1,600 tons, it would laugh at what the Key bridge weighs.
At a 1,600 tons limit, one would have to cut the debris into a lot of small pieces. There is no info on the net on how much mass the Key bridge had, but assuming the build and the size, half a million tons is probably not to far off.
That’s a crime scene and a death scene. It’s not going to go quickly. The good news is that it’s a critical roadway and waterway intersection so the feds and state government have motivation to make haste.
The accident didn’t happen in the middle of the navigable channel, so you can maintain the pier and ship while clearing the main span.
As for being a death scene, you likely aren’t going to be able to access the site with divers as it is too dangerous.
Except there is no mystery as to the deaths part. Investigations take a lot of time when there are a lot of questions. The only question here is “why did the boat plow straight into the bridge?”. There’s very little question how/why the bridge collapsed(it got hit directly by a massive cargo ship). No one’s going to question the physics of it. The only question will be “was it captain error or ship error so we know who to fine”. Recovering the ship will be part of answering that and the rest will be communication and maintenance logs.
There’s very little question how/why the bridge collapsed(it got hit directly by a massive cargo ship).
I recently – in the context of IS being in the somewhat bizzare situation of having to argue with the Russian government that they did in fact commit their terrorist act in Moscow – linked to an old The Onion satirical video. It dated to a bit after 9/11 and had the Al Qaeda representative being interviewed – irate at the 9/11 Truther also on the show, who was claiming that the World Trade Center was downed with thermite bombs – using almost the same phrase:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_OIXfkXEj0
“We flew an enormous airplane into a building, okay? I think it is obvious what caused the building to crumble.”
The AP article says the exact opposite, that it is in fact not a major cargo port.
Vehicles from Europe coming via ROROs come to Baltimore primarily. This will impact them as diverting to Jacksonville or Savannah is going through take a lot of landside logistics to figure out.
Port of Baltimore is top ten in the US for international trade. It falls to top 20 when domestic shipping is included, but it’s absolutely a major port.
I think we all know someone who was forced to buy TP on ebay in the early pandemic.
This could send us right back there. Doesn’t much matter why stuff can’t move from A to B, prices will increase and people will take the opportunity to profiteer.
I think we all know someone who was forced to buy TP on ebay in the early pandemic.
No. I don’t know anyone, aside from Internet memes.
You can clear the debris in a week or two. It will take multiple years to build a new bridge.
which is a prime example of a why a bridge built in a shipping lane should be built to stricter standards that would prevent a total fucking collapse from a errant ship.
Your username is quite fitting.
“Bridges should be built to resist entirely predictable accidents”
Lemmy: “angry, incoherent screaming”
I feel like I’m back on Reddit
Eh, on reddit they’d at least have the balls to comment and reveal how fucking stupid their pro-bridge collapse arguments were.
For sure, and furthermore the city should have some sort of tugboats capable of stopping a rogue ship if it had time to give out a mayday. Just attach a line to the back of the hull when it enters the channel and give throttle in the opposite direction to halt it.
Man I wouldn’t want to be this boat’s insurance.
Well that looks expensive
The scale doesn’t even come across in the video.
That bit you see collapse is half a mile long.
half a mile long
I think you mistyped this. It was a mile and a half long.
I live not five minutes away from the Key bridge and the sound of this woke me up last night. My GF takes this bridge to work every day. Driving through the city now for her every morning is going to be fucking awful.
Time to move. Or switch jobs.
Which is super easy to do. /s
If the traffic is bad enough you might not have many options.
Hopefully employers will allow WFH for jobs that can be feasibly done remotely. This will also help reduce traffic for those who cannot WFH.
Sounds like a problem for the people who use cars. Leg commute gang
But people do have dozens of jobs lined up at least, right?
I watched it on the news last night all the way from Australia and I said ‘man they just fucked that whole cities traffic up for a long time’.
Yeah, IIRC it is the route for hazmat trucks. Gonna fuck with a lot of businesses down the line for a bit too.
As an aside, they used to have a rave down in the park under the west side of the bridge a decade or so ago, and it was always awesome being on the beach stage looking at that bridge at night and as the sun would come up.
The construction workers that died is fucking awful. The traffic situation won’t be great, but at least she’s alive with a job to go to.
Most people would take that as a given. He was just pointing out the effect on his own personal life.
It would be pretty annoying if everyone shared their own effect but had to precede it with a standard “I know it’s more awful for those with lives lost, but this affects me because…”
I’m just glad it happened in the dead of night and that the ship sent a mayday several minutes before it happened. State Police were apparently able to close the bridge and clear most of the traffic (it’s 1.6 miles/ 2.6 kilometers long) off of it before it collapsed. It’s sad that there were still construction workers and some cars still left on it, though.
I’m so confused why a mayday wasn’t sent out earlier though. Like they had to have known collision was imminent.
And weren’t there local authorities on board that were guiding them through the waterway?
I’m so confused why a mayday wasn’t sent out earlier though. Like they had to have known collision was imminent.
Prolly something like:
“Aww nah, theres no need m8, I’m sure we’ll figure something out”
I’ve heard the same thing with another issue
They lost power, dropped anchor, and called a mayday. By the sound of it the pilot probably did everything perfect. But whatever caused the power loss and engine failure is gonna be looked at very closely.
I think new procedures for having tugs hooked up until ships are entirely clear of port may be on their way - even if they’re mostly just escorts unless the ship’s engines fail.
There’s gonna be a lot of pointing fingers and yelling, but hopefully in the end things will be safer than they are today. From the sound of it we got really lucky on the “lives lost” side of things.
It’s sad that there were still construction workers and some cars still left on it, though.
Hopefully police told the people to evacuate their vehicles
Unfortunately, it would’ve simply been faster for them to drive to either end of the bridge. The Maryland Department of Transportation had already closed the bridge. The only traffic left on the bridge was the traffic that got through before the closure, but everything happened so fast I don’t think they had time to get off the bridge.
One article I read said that the mayday call, the bridge closure, the collision, and the collapse all happened in the span of about two minutes.
Crazy. Even with the mayday I’m amazed they could get police in position fast enough.
Maryland has the MTA police (tunnel rats) who are in charge of the toll roads (originally just the tunnels but it’s expanded) so I’m sure there there MTA cops lurking about. Thank God they jumped to action.
This has been a plainly difficult production.
It didn’t just collapse ‘after’ being hit. It was destroyed by the collision.
Well yeah, I don’t see how it’s wrong to say it collapsed after being hit by a cargo ship.
I have to agree, if the headline says, “Man dies after drinking Drano,” nobody is under the impression it was a coincidence.
Police audio from the event:
It sounds like police got their just in time to stop traffic. One of the officers says that as soon as backup arrives to take over stopping traffic he would go and evacuate the workers; when we get the report that the bridge is gone.
If you watch the stream of the crash, you can see that traffic was flowing just moments before it fell.
At least it happened in the very early AM hours when traffic was low and there were no visibility problems, unlike the Sunshine Skyway Bridge.
The fact that it was early morning probably saved hundreds of lives, from what I’m reading
