THERE HAS BEEN A NEAR TOTAL SHIP-BRIDGE DISASTER!!!!!!

[3WE]

Baltimore, MD 3/26/2024.

Per, you are on the spot as we will be doing outside analysis and liberal recommendations.

Gabriel, are you satisfied with the braking abilities of cargo ships?

I’m blaming a lack of redundancy in control systems.

[J]

There is a lot of coverage about this early morning event but the video in this report seems the most informative. (You can click and enlarge).

The vide appears speeded up a little but you can see the ship approaching from the west and its lights go off and back on twice suggesting some sort of power problem. Then, just before striking the bridge pier, the stack is emitting a lot of black smoke suggesting high power being applied. The article says the ship was constructed in 2015 and under the command of a pilot. Another article said there were two pilots.

There are 4 ways to get across the Baltimore region and the remaining three will have to handle something like 15,000 additional vehicles for several years.
- This Bridge
- Two harbor tunnels
- Beltway around the west side of town

https://www.baltimoresun.com/2024/03/26 ... -patapsco/

[elaw]

https://www.amazon.com/Avoid-Huge-Ships ... 0870334336

Time for Captain Trimmer to write another book: "How to avoid hitting bridges with your huge ship"

[3WE]

We, somewhat routinely run barges into bridges in flyover, and as J alluded to, it's often due to a power failure or a breakaway.

I suppose our saving grace is that the barges are smaller.

Maybe we need new procedures, regulations and oversight for more tugboat presence/assistance. I ASSUME the J's suggestion of a power loss deactivated rudder control.

Of course, there is the possibility of a cheap, composite rudder breaking.

Update: Kudos to the Baltimore Sun. It actually has SOME information, and I didn't note any eyewitness statements, including how they felt about things.

[elaw]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Shittyaskflyin ... ing_their/

[Gabriel]

https://www.amazon.com/Avoid-Huge-Ships ... 0870334336

It's evident that the bridge didn't read the book.

[AnMariner]

There is a lot of coverage about this early morning event but the video in this report seems the most informative. (You can click and enlarge).

The vide appears speeded up a little but you can see the ship approaching from the west and its lights go off and back on twice suggesting some sort of power problem. Then, just before striking the bridge pier, the stack is emitting a lot of black smoke suggesting high power being applied. The article says the ship was constructed in 2015 and under the command of a pilot. Another article said there were two pilots.

There are 4 ways to get across the Baltimore region and the remaining three will have to handle something like 15,000 additional vehicles for several years.
- This Bridge
- Two harbor tunnels
- Beltway around the west side of town

https://www.baltimoresun.com/2024/03/26 ... -patapsco/

Not under the pilot's command, they're considered an "aid to navigation".
The only exception is the Panama Canal.
Per

[3WE]

This may not be 100% accurate, but the ship was apparently able to communicate its emergency and gave law enforcement 90 seconds to block the bridge, and no traffic went down, except for a pothole repair crew of 8, 2 of which were rescued.

[Gabriel]

I have been asking myself this question since I first saw the video early this morning. How come that the bridge doesn't have those reinforced concrete fences in front of the main pylons? Especially such an important bridge in such an important port that has so much traffic of so many huge ships.

This was bound to happen sooner or later. It was not if but when. And it happened before several times (that's how we humanity came up with the concrete fences. I think there was a big one decades ago in some important port in Florida.

Yeah, Tampa in the 80's, just googled it.

[3WE]

Media reports speculation that dirty fuel was involved. They should wait for the final report.

I like Gabieees suggestion and safety tugboat accompaniment.

[elaw]

Yeah, Tampa in the 80's, just googled it.

That and a bunch of others: https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/loca ... s/3575959/

[J]

Thanks, Per, for the correction.
To get an idea of the energy involved, i used the following website with approximate data reported in the press:

95,000 US Tons
9 Knots
538,325,440 foot-pounds

https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/kinetic-energy

In view of the lively debate about braking on the railroad thread, I used representative data for a heavy coal or ore train:

16,000 US Tons
50 MPH
2,674,343,090 foot-pounds

[Gabriel]

Yeah, Tampa in the 80's, just googled it.

That and a bunch of others: https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/loca ... s/3575959/

Oh, I remember this one:

Mobile, Alabama: 1993
Sept. 22, 1993: Barges being pushed by a towboat in dense fog hit and displaced the Big Bayou Canot railroad bridge near Mobile, Alabama. Minutes later, an Amtrak train with 220 people aboard reached the displaced bridge and derailed, killing 47 people and injuring 103 people.

[J]

At Bayou Canot the tow boat operator, operating at night, made a turn into a dead-end branch of the river thinking he was in a different location. Seeing the rail bridge ahead on his radar scope he misinterpreted it as a riverbank and pushed ahead with the intention of pushing against the bank and waiting for better visibly. A lead barge struck a moveable portion of the bridge and shifted it several feet out of alignment. The tow boat operator didn't realize he'd struck a bridge as he was busy getting his bearings but figured it out pretty quickly when the train struck the side girder of the bridge tearing it out. The lead locomotive launched into the air and buried itself in the mud bank at the edge of the bayou. In the image below you can see the locomotive at the upper left part of the image, still on fire hours later. The 3-man crew died instantly from the compressive force of the mud entering the cab.

The bridge spanned a section of the river that was closed to commercial navigation, so it did not have any lights. I can't remember why it was a moveable bridge - I assume there was some old requirement about having to be moveable if it crossed a public waterway.

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https% ... 2e39587b7d

[Gabriel]

Bridges have been killing people for much longer than airplanes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridge_failures

Not_karl, please don't ever talk about banning planes again until you accomplished banning all bridges first.

[Not_Karl]

Not_karl, please don't ever talk about banning planes again until you accomplished banning all bridges first.

Noone would build obstacles several kilocorgies up in the sky. Everybody knows that aeroplanies fly there and there would be a high risk of stupid pilots crashing into them. The fact that we build obstacles on water where shipies -sometimes captained by drunken Norsemen- sail without second thoughts is mind boggling.

[monchavo]

isn't building artificial islands to take the impact/ protect the supports one of the strategies used?

[3WE]

…To get an idea of the energy involved, i used the following website with approximate data reported in the press:

95,000 US Tons
9 Knots
538,325,440 foot-pounds

https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/kinetic-energy

In view of the lively debate about braking on the railroad thread, I used representative data for a heavy coal or ore train:

16,000 US Tons
50 MPH
2,674,343,090 foot-pounds

Those numbers are impressive.

Neither of them brake very well, but I’m not sure what we can or should do about it.

As to Gabriel’s “splitting” mentality on banning bridges, I’ll lump and say they’re the same as airplanes: they put people up in they air, when they should remain on the ground.

[Gabriel]

In view of the lively debate about braking on the railroad thread, I used representative data for a heavy coal or ore train:

16,000 US Tons
50 MPH
2,674,343,090 foot-pounds

Those numbers are impressive.

Neither of them brake very well, but I’m not sure what we can or should do about it.[/quote]

How many wheels and brake pads does that train have again?
How come a sedan, a 18 fully loaded wheeler and a 747 can stop in about the same distance from say 50MPH?

[elaw]

How come a sedan, a 18 fully loaded wheeler and a 747 can stop in about the same distance from say 50MPH?

Because they're not boats?

[Gabriel]

How come a sedan, a 18 fully loaded wheeler and a 747 can stop in about the same distance from say 50MPH?

Because they're not boats?

Yeah, boats (or planes in the air) is an entirely different kind of braking.

But trains at 50MPH, with wheels rolling on a solid surface, is kind of similar to a sedan, 18 wheeler or 747 rolling at 50MPH.
In any event, it shows that the kinetic energy that you want to stop is not a condition for how good or bad it brakes. You have a lot of energy to dissipate? Good, distribute the dissipation points. The limitation is the max static friction, which is reduced in steel over steel compared with rubber on asphalt. But it is still much better than almost no braking whatsoever.

Again, it was more a response for the railroad thread than the maritime thread.

[3WE]

Quote=Gabriel

Train brakes suck.

I blame:

1. Engineers
2. Economics
3. Greedy, profit-driven, Boeing executives
4. The squid
5. Donkeys (the original railroad locomotives)

[elaw]

Quote=Gabriel

Train brakes suck.

I blame:

1. Engineers
2. Economics
3. Greedy, profit-driven, Boeing executives
4. The squid
5. Donkeys (the original railroad locomotives)

And horses!

https://www.facebook.com/story.php?stor ... 38242&_rdr

[Gabriel]

I am not alone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFl412SuWZE

[3WE]

Floatunder.

Looks like we need to get to work installing safety piers…

IMG_0597.jpeg (185.75 KiB) Viewed 107 times

Not_pictured: Almost 20 additional bridges.

Footnote: Gabe, your Hell-Better Bridgeoengineer Buddies can’t seem to agree on the procedures for designing these things.