BRKG Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore has collapsed

Shadow

Shadow

Swift, Silent,...Sleepy
BornFree said:
Yes the pier was damaged severely, but it stopped the ship. It does not look like the hull went past it. So if there had been another sacrificial pier like say 50 feet in front of the one supporting the bridge then the one supporting the bridge would not have been struck at all. I am not sure why that is such a hard concept for people. The moral is that a protective structure some distance from and yet around the critical pier would have saved the day.
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The front of the hull traveled past the pier before it stoped. Wether this distance would have been enough to breach a sacrificial pier and still bring the bridge down is up for grabs.

Perhaps this incident will yield enough information for engineers to design a sacrificial pier sufficient for this size ship. It seems shipping, like the airline industry, reacts after accidents rather than proactively.

Shadow
 
nomifyle

nomifyle

TB Fanatic
Shadow said:
If that is the case, and they wanted to get away with not fixing it, (not condoning that) the whole crew should have been on duty. The aux steering and anchor systems should have been maned, all generators should have been running and crew should have been at the electrical breakers. Refrigerated boxes could have been taken offline temporarily until they were out of the port. It looked like the aux generator did not start until after the first power failure.

This is sounding like gross negligence.

Shadow
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Nothing to see here just move on. obviously that statement is BS. At first I was taking a wait and see attitude, now my spidey sense is getting worked up. There may be something rotten in denmark here.
 
B

bluelady

Veteran Member
Time line from press conference:
12:39 departure from terminal
1:07 entered channel
1:24 underway on true heading ~141, overground speed ~8 knots (9.2 mph)
1:24:59 numerous audible alarms recorded on ship's bridge audio
VDR sensor data ceased recording; audio continued to record using redundant power source
1:26:02 VDR resumed recording sensor data. During this (?) time steering commands & rudder orders recorded on audio
1:26:39 ship's pilot made VHF radio call for tugs in vicinity to assist.
Pilot's assoc. dispatcher phoned MDTA duty officer regarding blackout
1:27:04 Pilot ordered Dali to drop port anchor; also additional steering commands
1:27:25 Pilot issued VHF radio call reporting that Dali had lost all power and was approaching the bridge
MDTA data shows duty officer radioed their 2 units at either end of the bridge to close traffic on bridge
~1:29 speed <7 knots (8 mph)
From this time until....
1:29:33 ...VDR recorded sounds consistent with collison of the bridge
MDTA dash cams show bridge lights extinguishing

So... **~4 to 4-1/2 minutes between alarms and the crash
** crash was at <7 knots, not 2 as some said

Exact time of contact between Dali and bridge will be determined by comparing VDR w/other data.
 
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bw

bw

Fringe Ranger
bluelady said:
~1:29 speed <7 knots (8 mph)
From this time until....
1:29:33 ...VDR recorded sounds consistent with collison of the bridge
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If this is true, then the image I've been relying on can't be trusted. I have no expertise in this area.

index.php
 
B

bluelady

Veteran Member
Shadow said:
What I am stuck on is what commanded the turn 2 minutes before the crash. It was not contaminated fuel.

Shadow
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No one commanded it. From what I've seen a lot of it had to do with dropping the anchor, which did happen about two minutes prior. It does say additional steering & rudder commands which aren't specified on the brief press conference timeline.
 
S

SurfaceTension

Veteran Member
Kayak said:
Take a look at all that protection around the power pole, and compare that to NOTHING protecting the bridge. It seems we have idiots running the asylum. I realize the power poles went in after regulations changed, but someone with authority should've realized we should be protecting the mutil-billion dollar bridge better than we were protecting the power pole right beside it.

Here on the Tennessee River, we don't have ships anywhere near that big, and we have these huge honking concrete supports on our bridges. No protection, but they've been hit a few times by barges and laughed at them.

View attachment 467470
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There's not "NOTHING" protecting the piers - there are dolphins on each waterway approach and a fender around the actual piers:
1711589771939.png
The veering of the ship at just the wrong moment appears to have missed the dolphins & plowed full-force into the bridge pier. Adequate protection? Obviously not, especially if the right set of circumstances occur, which we witnessed. More modern structures have better protection built-in, e.g. the new WW Bridge south of DC:
1711590436080.png

But, these are only at the channel, not every pier. This is part of the normal probability-impact-cost risk assessment engineers make every day. And politicians (and by extension, the public) decides to fund. If I had started screaming six months ago that we need to spend trillions to upgrade all pier protection on all old bridges, I'd have been accused of being a paranoid alarmist just wanting to waste money and line somebody's pockets.

As bridges are replaced they do get more modern safety features. And modern price tags.

Done ranting, going to bed. :)
 
B

bluelady

Veteran Member
bw said:
The color of the track indicates the speed. Per the legend, it's about two knots just before the collision. The relevant question here is how many data points are represented, and on that I have no idea.
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Ah, got it. Yeah, the press conference said the information is preliminary until they verify and check it with other data.
 
T

tinfoil

Senior Member
Profit of Doom said:
There may be engines that power their own lube and fuel pumps. Have heard of engines that somehow go into runaway, and the only way to stop them is loosening the fuel filter and break its suction from the fuel tank.
Click to expand...
(Disclaimer: I’m not too well versed in Diesel engines, but I have seen a runaway in person, and I watch YT videos of runaway Diesel engines.). Runaway engine was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw the video with the high volume black smoke coming out of the stack.


Slydersan said:
The way they hooked the lines and insulators up was NUTS! They had 2 guys attached some way to the cross arms of the power poles and a helicopter would hook up an insulator (they are at least 10 ft tall) to a cargo line and lift it up to where the guys were. They would attach it, helicopter would fly back, grab another one, rinse repeat. When it came time to run the wires. There were 2 guys attached to some kind of seat that would dangle about 50ft under the copter. Pilot would drop down to where those guys could reach/attach the wire...over and over. Even in light winds. During the day with traffic right beside them on the bridge. I can't believe there weren't any accidents from people (like me!) staring in dis-belief at what I was seeing for days at a time. That pilot and the workers have BIG, BRASS ones... and I hope they make a TON of money.
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They do make good money. And they do have giant brass ones. And they are nuts (the good kind of nuts). And they do one of the most dangerous jobs in the world.
 
AlfaMan

AlfaMan

Has No Life - Lives on TB
Tex88 said:
Like 98 percent of it globally is used for animal food.
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It's probably being used to feed the human population of Sri Lanka. If I remember correctly the country went to a no pesticides/no artificial anything with regards to crops being grown in the country. IE the agricultural sector there went "green".

And it wrecked their economy and their new "green" crops didn't produce enough food for the country to eat. It really buggered up that country.
 
W

Walrus

Veteran Member
somewherepress said:
At a minimum it's evidence that suggests that whatever actions the crew did or didn't take were exactly the wrong actions...and appear to have contributed to driving the ship directly toward the bridge's support...
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I don't personally see that the crew - considering what was happening to them with things going to crap one thing after another in quick succession - did much of anything wrong. They and the ship's officers seem to have reacted with incredible quickness, which speaks well of the captain's training of them in emergency response.

I think it's pretty amazing, for instance, that the crew on the front anchor windlass got that anchor dropped. Think about it - they're exposed on that front deck with the bridge looming ever larger in their sight, and they get the chock removed and the anchor dropped, before running for their lives. That bridge ended up right where they had to be standing at their emergency stations.

The engineering crew also gets my respect. When the ship went dark, they got the switchgear re-energized so the ship's power was momentarily restored, before it failed again. They didn't have time to do it again before it had hit the pier. But they reacted well. I read somewhere that the crew was primarily Indian.

The Ukrainian captain and bridge crew get my respect as well. Not only did he execute a crash reverse when the power was restored, he got off a mayday message when the initial problem was detected and apparently sounded the ship's horn when it became obvious they were going to collide with the bridge.

Finally, I've got to hand it to the Port Authority communications dispatcher and the Baltimore police force. They did an incredible job passing through the mayday message, and the cops responded incredibly fast to seal off the bridge approaches. They were trying to get someone out to warn the construction workers (who have been reported as heroes but they're really just victims) to get out of there.

I'm sure there'll be some outstanding yeoman work done in the next couple weeks to clear the channel so the port traffic is restored as much as it can be.

But there's a bunch of attaboys which need to be acknowledged out there in the midst of assigning blame.
 
AlfaMan

AlfaMan

Has No Life - Lives on TB
The governor of the people's democratic republic of Maryland, Paul Weiderfeld (MD DOT commissioner, used to be the director of the DMV Metro system-he was a complete failure) and Ben Cardin (communist people's republic representative in congress) have all mentioned the first priority is to clear the ship channel. Maryland needs the tax revenues. Made clearing the channel sound like the only priority to me.

The two bodies that were found today are probably going to be the last for a while. Dive teams actually air bagged the truck the vics were in and attached it to a tug to pull it in with the vics in place. Didn't work, so they just removed the bodies and I assume let the truck sink back to the bottom.

Authorities won't be trying to recover any more victims until the debris is cleared from the channel. Per the presser at 1800 the remaining victims/ vehicles are all in the area of the bridge piling the ship hit. Those cars and victims are supposed to be under all that concrete and rebar.
 
W

Walrus

Veteran Member
AlfaMan said:
The governor of the people's democratic republic of Maryland, Paul Weiderfeld (MD DOT commissioner, used to be the director of the DMV Metro system-he was a complete failure) and Ben Cardin (communist people's republic representative in congress) have all mentioned the first priority is to clear the ship channel. Maryland needs the tax revenues. Made clearing the channel sound like the only priority to me.

The two bodies that were found today are probably going to be the last for a while. Dive teams actually air bagged the truck the vics were in and attached it to a tug to pull it in with the vics in place. Didn't work, so they just removed the bodies and I assume let the truck sink back to the bottom.

Authorities won't be trying to recover any more victims until the debris is cleared from the channel. Per the presser at 1800 the remaining victims/ vehicles are all in the area of the bridge piling the ship hit. Those cars and victims are supposed to be under all that concrete and rebar.
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They could very well be fish food before they're recovered. Thanks for the update, AlfaMan; your thoughts are always welcome and relevant.
 
W

Walrus

Veteran Member
Millwright said:
I'd guess they are working on getting a gimongous crane on site.

Snatch the big chunks of bridge up and get that waterway open.

You don't just call them like a wrecker tho.

May have to come from the oil patch in the gulf.


OIP.twULPzuwUwcqeu2Hf8QYFAHaGV
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I'd be willing to bet that the Navy has a couple heavy lifters somewhere close. But yeah, if you want the big iron, call the boys in the Gulf.
 
Macgyver

Macgyver

Has No Life - Lives on TB
www.thegatewaypundit.com

NTSB Releases Data on DALI's Black Box, Reveals No CCTV Footage Found, Sensors Cut Off and Turned Backed On, Voice Recorder Disrupted By Background Noise | The Gateway Pundit | by Anthony Scott

As The Gateway Pundit reported earlier the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chair Jennifer Homendy announced the voyage data recorder known as the “black box’ was recovered from the DALI cargo ship that crashed into the Francis Scott Key bridge early Tuesday morning.
www.thegatewaypundit.com www.thegatewaypundit.com

NTSB Releases Data on DALI's Black Box, Reveals No CCTV Footage Found, Sensors Cut Off and Turned Backed On, Voice Recorder Disrupted By Background Noise​

As The Gateway Pundit reported earlier the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chair Jennifer Homendy announced the voyage data recorder known as the “black box’ was recovered from the DALI cargo ship that crashed into the Francis Scott Key bridge early Tuesday morning.

On Tuesday evening, Homendy and NTSB investigator Marcel Muise held a press conference to reveal the data on the DALI’s black box, also known as the Voyage Data Recorder (VDR).

NTSB investigator Marcel Muise revealed there were about six hours of VDR on data and included a timeline of midnight to 6 am.
Before revealing the data on the VDR, Muise warned that the quality of the voice recording and radio data was hard to comprehend due to background noise.

Muise then shared that the “VDR sensor data ceased recording. The VDR audio continued to record using the redundant power source.”
“VDR resumed recording sensor data, and during this time, steering commands and rutter orders were recorded on the audio,” added Muise.

Muise continued, “The ship’s pilot made a very high-frequency radio call for tugs in the vicinity to assist. About this time, the pilot dispatcher phoned the Maryland Transportation Authority duty officer regarding the blackout.”

He concluded his statement by adding that “The ship’s speed over ground was recorded at just under 7 knots. From this moment to approximately 1:29:33, the VDR audio recorded sounds consistent with the collision of the bridge.”
WATCH:

Before the content on the black box was revealed, Homendy noted a group of operations and engineering groups boarded the DALI to do a walk-through of the ship’s bridge and engine room to find any electronic recorders, cameras, or CCTV footage but could not find any.
WATCH:

The alarms first sounded on the Dali around 1:24 a.m. Tuesday, an NTSB official said in a Wednesday evening news conference, citing preliminary information from the container ship’s voice data recorder.

About a minute and a half later, the ship’s pilot used a high-frequency radio to request assistance, helping to alert the on-duty Maryland Transportation Authority officer. The pilot called for “tugs in the vicinity,” which help vessels leave the port and get into its main channel. Before the Dali hit the bridge, it had no tugs. Thirty seconds later, the pilot ordered the ship’s anchor to be dropped and gave “additional steering commands,” said Marcel Muise, the lead investigator.
At 1:27 a.m., the pilot reported that the Dali had lost all power and was approaching the bridge, Muise said. At the time, there were two Maryland Transportation Authority units at the scene because of the ongoing construction, and those units shut down all lanes of traffic on the bridge, according to Muise.
He said the voice data recorder captured “sounds consistent with the collision” at 1:29 a.m. Around this time, the lights on the Key Bridge also went out.
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Watch the entire press conference below:
 
jward

jward

passin' thru
Sal Mercogliano (WGOW Shipping) ⚓‍☠️
@mercoglianos

Baltimore port bridge collapse: Global ocean carriers put U.S. companies on hook for urgent cargo pickup

Some ocean carriers are invoking 'force majeure' as a result of the Port of Baltimore bridge collapse and telling shippers including U.S. retailers that once cargo is dropped at alternate ports, it's no longer their responsibility.

Logistics companies tell CNBC the next 36 hours are critical in tracking the diverted trade and information is hard to get from container vessel companies, and could result in port penalties if they don't pick up shipments quickly.

www-cnbc-com.cdn.ampproject.org

Baltimore port bridge collapse: Global ocean carriers put U.S. companies on hook for urgent cargo pickup

Ocean container vessel giants including CMA CGM and COSCO are declaring force majeure due to Baltimore port bridge accident, leaving shippers on hook for cargo.
www-cnbc-com.cdn.ampproject.org www-cnbc-com.cdn.ampproject.org

9:58 PM · Mar 27, 2024
13.1K
Views
 
B

bluelady

Veteran Member
Macgyver said:
www.thegatewaypundit.com

NTSB Releases Data on DALI's Black Box, Reveals No CCTV Footage Found, Sensors Cut Off and Turned Backed On, Voice Recorder Disrupted By Background Noise | The Gateway Pundit | by Anthony Scott

As The Gateway Pundit reported earlier the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chair Jennifer Homendy announced the voyage data recorder known as the “black box’ was recovered from the DALI cargo ship that crashed into the Francis Scott Key bridge early Tuesday morning.
www.thegatewaypundit.com www.thegatewaypundit.com

NTSB Releases Data on DALI's Black Box, Reveals No CCTV Footage Found, Sensors Cut Off and Turned Backed On, Voice Recorder Disrupted By Background Noise​

As The Gateway Pundit reported earlier the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chair Jennifer Homendy announced the voyage data recorder known as the “black box’ was recovered from the DALI cargo ship that crashed into the Francis Scott Key bridge early Tuesday morning.

On Tuesday evening, Homendy and NTSB investigator Marcel Muise held a press conference to reveal the data on the DALI’s black box, also known as the Voyage Data Recorder (VDR).

NTSB investigator Marcel Muise revealed there were about six hours of VDR on data and included a timeline of midnight to 6 am.
Before revealing the data on the VDR, Muise warned that the quality of the voice recording and radio data was hard to comprehend due to background noise.

Muise then shared that the “VDR sensor data ceased recording. The VDR audio continued to record using the redundant power source.”
“VDR resumed recording sensor data, and during this time, steering commands and rutter orders were recorded on the audio,” added Muise.

Muise continued, “The ship’s pilot made a very high-frequency radio call for tugs in the vicinity to assist. About this time, the pilot dispatcher phoned the Maryland Transportation Authority duty officer regarding the blackout.”

He concluded his statement by adding that “The ship’s speed over ground was recorded at just under 7 knots. From this moment to approximately 1:29:33, the VDR audio recorded sounds consistent with the collision of the bridge.”
WATCH:

Before the content on the black box was revealed, Homendy noted a group of operations and engineering groups boarded the DALI to do a walk-through of the ship’s bridge and engine room to find any electronic recorders, cameras, or CCTV footage but could not find any.
WATCH:


Watch the entire press conference below:
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The NTSB woman also said that the VDR isn't like the black boxes on planes; apparently gives less information.
 
S

summerthyme

Administrator
_______________
bev said:
I heard on the radio the nationalities of four deceased, and they were all countries that are majorly represented right now on the southern border. :eek:

I tried a search to see if this had been reported, but no luck.
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Yeah, they are all apparently illegals... er, migrants. Asylum seekers. Replacement workers and voters. But the media is doing its best to hide that fact... Unless they've decided they'll get paid more to play up the sympathy baloney, crying about these poor, saintly, hardworking men who died because...well, I dunno, but it's gotta be some White conservative male's fault. And all they wanted was to live free... really, being paid good wages in the jobs that were taken from some citizen, while collecting stipends for rent, food, clothing, free medical care....

Basic humanity makes me feel for the families, but I'm also thinking if they had just gotten in line and tried to come here legally... they'd still be alive in their home countries.

Summerthyme
 
W

Walrus

Veteran Member
Comment from a discussion with a civil engineering colleague who is well versed on historical and modern bridge and dam design, etc., but his comment really wasn't about bridges as much as it was about pudding man and the demonrats plus the uniparty:

Bet they don't try to save a dime on this reconstruction. If the demonrats have their way, it'll be a monument to gross excess and union ass kissing.
 
K

KFhunter

Veteran Member
Profit of Doom said:
There may be engines that power their own lube and fuel pumps. Have heard of engines that somehow go into runaway, and the only way to stop them is loosening the fuel filter and break its suction from the fuel tank.
Click to expand...

runaway diesels start burning their own engine oil until they either run out of oil for lubrication and seize up, or they catastrophically fail - most commonly runaway's happen on a turbo engine (turbo shaft sheer, oil seal/bearing failure)

The only way to stop a runaway is an air cutoff, most engines do not have an air cutoff so people try to pinch off the air by collapsing the tube, or block it in front of a turbo, shift to a high gear and stall it out, or run and seek shelter lol

Stopping the suction from the fuel tank isn't pertinent to a runaway condition, because the runaway condition is only after diesel fuel has already been stopped.


I don't think this is relevant though, to this incident.
 
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Countrymouse

Countrymouse

Country exile in the city
Countrymouse

Countrymouse

Country exile in the city
Millwright said:
Most peeps don't have a grasp of how big these engines are.

Here's a 5 min. walkaround of one like in the Dali.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuEHNCIBH9o



10 min of engine starting procedures on a similar engine.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8tAGh4-Uy8
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So as for the second video---

TOTAL loss of power means ALL these computers go down--and you're sitting in a silent engine room in the dark--right?

And some here are asking WHY they didn't do this, that, and the other?

They did WELL to do what little they WERE able to do!
 
Countrymouse

Countrymouse

Country exile in the city
Walrus said:
I don't personally see that the crew - considering what was happening to them with things going to crap one thing after another in quick succession - did much of anything wrong. They and the ship's officers seem to have reacted with incredible quickness, which speaks well of the captain's training of them in emergency response.

I think it's pretty amazing, for instance, that the crew on the front anchor windlass got that anchor dropped. Think about it - they're exposed on that front deck with the bridge looming ever larger in their sight, and they get the chock removed and the anchor dropped, before running for their lives. That bridge ended up right where they had to be standing at their emergency stations.

The engineering crew also gets my respect. When the ship went dark, they got the switchgear re-energized so the ship's power was momentarily restored, before it failed again. They didn't have time to do it again before it had hit the pier. But they reacted well. I read somewhere that the crew was primarily Indian.

The Ukrainian captain and bridge crew get my respect as well. Not only did he execute a crash reverse when the power was restored, he got off a mayday message when the initial problem was detected and apparently sounded the ship's horn when it became obvious they were going to collide with the bridge.

Finally, I've got to hand it to the Port Authority communications dispatcher and the Baltimore police force. They did an incredible job passing through the mayday message, and the cops responded incredibly fast to seal off the bridge approaches. They were trying to get someone out to warn the construction workers (who have been reported as heroes but they're really just victims) to get out of there.

I'm sure there'll be some outstanding yeoman work done in the next couple weeks to clear the channel so the port traffic is restored as much as it can be.

But there's a bunch of attaboys which need to be acknowledged out there in the midst of assigning blame.
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BINGO to all comments! More common sense!

Now if we can just get the few folks left who keep asking "BUT WHY did it HEAD FOR the bridge?" to understand the simple meaning of a SHIP, DRIFTING..............with no power...............
 
H

Housecarl

On TB every waking moment
SurfaceTension said:
There's not "NOTHING" protecting the piers - there are dolphins on each waterway approach and a fender around the actual piers:
View attachment 467512
The veering of the ship at just the wrong moment appears to have missed the dolphins & plowed full-force into the bridge pier. Adequate protection? Obviously not, especially if the right set of circumstances occur, which we witnessed. More modern structures have better protection built-in, e.g. the new WW Bridge south of DC:
View attachment 467515

But, these are only at the channel, not every pier. This is part of the normal probability-impact-cost risk assessment engineers make every day. And politicians (and by extension, the public) decides to fund. If I had started screaming six months ago that we need to spend trillions to upgrade all pier protection on all old bridges, I'd have been accused of being a paranoid alarmist just wanting to waste money and line somebody's pockets.

As bridges are replaced they do get more modern safety features. And modern price tags.

Done ranting, going to bed. :)
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Yeah, what was there might have been able to handle the majority of ships operating in the early 1970s, but with today's merchant ships being the size they are today, never mind the future, it was inadequate based on the outcome of the collision.

I have to wonder if there is any paper trail out there where such concerns over the bridge's passive collision resistance were discussed?
 
Doc1

Doc1

Has No Life - Lives on TB
Walrus said:
They could very well be fish food before they're recovered. Thanks for the update, AlfaMan; your thoughts are always welcome and relevant.
Click to expand...

I've been on body recovery job(s). What usually gets the cadavers is crabs, not fish, at least initially. When rigor mortis sets in, it's compounded by the cooler sea water and the bodies become almost rock hard. On one job I saw the body pulled over the work boat's gunwale and it didn't flex at all. When it was dropped on the steel deck, it sounded like a log or concrete piling had fallen, making a loud, hollow "boom" on impact.

It doesn't take very long for for marine life and decomposition to start doing their grisly work and if bodies aren't recovered quickly, you are looking at closed coffin funerals.

Best
Doc
 
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