It's going to be interesting to see what an investigation finds. Why did it lose power? Was someone drunk? etc etc
There are going to be multiple news stories of how poorly maintained these ships are. How undertrained the crews are. Previous close calls. Etc. There will be congressional hearings but in the end, no meaningful changes will be made. That's why I made my comment about Boeing. This will take a lot of attention from them.
Kinda like our rail roads. Nobody wants to invest in infrastructure anymore.... and it's significantly more expensive. We don't have all the dirt cheap labor that we used to have.
Biden just said the Army Corps of Engineers will clear the channel and the feds will pay for the bridge to be rebuilt.
Terrible. My thoughts are with the victims and their families. I'm confused. Was it closed for construction work?
It'll be interesting to see the MAGA response to that. Especially since they'll be against it but will take credit for it if it's popular
Probably not but many bridges have bumpers/deflectors so those are hit instead of the superstructure.
That's all very possible, since few ships are US flagged and the countries that do flag them have far less stringent standards than a US flagged ship. But, based on my Navy experience, it isn't uncommon for a ship to suddenly "lose the load". Could have been a bad breaker or any number of things. I was on one of the newest, most well kept ships in the Navy at that time and we lost power more than a few times. The difference is probably in how the crew responds. I'd bet that USN sailors are far more capable than a merchant crew (especially if the crew is made up sailors all speaking different languages). Once was in the middle of a channel we lost the load, with a shitload of families on the dock waiting for us. It was amazing how quickly a motivated crew got us going again and to the dock on time. Judging by how long that ship was adrift, it is likely that the crew had little if a clue as to how to resolve the problem......
Seems crazy that a bridge designed for ships to pass under falls like a line of dominos from one end to the other when a single pile/pier is compromised. I’m not an engineer but maybe a better design could be drawn up for it’s replacement.
Apparently the ship was sending maydays and they closed the bridge which helped prevent deaths. https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/baltimore-bridge-collapse-03-26-24-intl-hnk/index.html
Check out the size of container ship in 1972 ( The Key bridge is from 1971) compared to 2018. https://infrastructurereportcard.org/container-ship-size-through-the-years/ I'm guessing the new bridge will look very different.
