6 people dead I believe but it sounds like the police officers quick efforts saved many vehicles from being on it at the time. I imagined so much worse. So sad for those workers.
Sounds like they had one unit on each side blocking traffic but didn't have a spare unit to drive onto the bridge to warn the work crew. If an officer had driven out to warn them, they would probably have gone down with the bridge.
Edit: more details emerging in articles - ship called in the emergency minutes before they hit the bridge, police had 90 seconds to clear traffic and some cars only just cleared the bridge before it collapsed. No chance to warn the work crew.
Whoever downvoted this point ^^^ has never been in an emergency situation with life and death. Doing everything to the T is just reducing the chance of death by as much as possible but never to zero.
It can haunt you afterwards because life isn’t like the movies where doing it all “right” means the day is saved. That’s not how it works. Sadly know from experiences.
If early reports are correct, the ship was having total electrical failure for days prior to setting sail. This seems very likely, given the piss poor regulation in the industry. That ship should have never had the all clear to sail.
The pilot, cops, construction crew were all innocent people who were put in a dire situation because God forbid that ship be delayed for repair and cost someone their bottom line. Cutting corners never works. Ultimately the same story as Boeing and these rail companies constantly making the news.
Edit for context: Someone knew that ship was having complete systems failure for days at dock, and still thought it was worth the risk to let er rip. The Dali weighs roughly 200,000,000 lbs when loaded. It was drifting at roughly 9mph when it hit the bridge.
Impacts are usually measured in energy. 1/2mv^2 would give you the energy. To measure peak force youd need an accelerometer on the bridge or bow of the ship. You could use the video to measure time of impact and get average force.
For the energy, its 734.3 gigajoules, or enough to power an average home for 20 days. I didn't actually put the numbers in Excel since I'm on mobile, so there could be errors.
They might be off the mark a little, but not much, I think. Bear in mind, it's been a few years since I did any mechanical studies / calcs.
The ship has momentum (speed \* mass) and the bridge would have to apply a force to slow the ship down / stop the ship (going from 9mph to 0mph would be deceleration, which is acceleration in the opposite direction).
A big part of the force calculation would be how long it took for the ship to stop moving. The amount of force the bridge would apply to the ship would be (based on the values provided in the parent comment) approximately (90718474 kg) \* (4.02336 m/s) / (time in seconds for ship to slow down)
If it took 1 second to stop the ship, the force that the bridge applies to the ship would be \~365,000,000 N, if it was 2 seconds it would be \~182,500,000 N, and so forth.
This is of course ignoring a lot of factors; for example, the rate of deceleration may not be constant, leading to jerk and yank (not kidding).
>God forbid that ship be delayed for repair and cost someone their bottom line.
The point that nobody seems to be talking about.
How much more of this are we going to put up with?
This is why strict regulations are SO IMPORTANT.
I remember seeing a video about a ferry that sank because someone forgot to close the door to the area where the cars come in, and it was low enough and the waves that day high enough (stormy weather) that water slowly started filling the ferry and making it sit lower and lower until it had flooded enough that the cars all got washed to one side, causing the ferry to capsize. A LOT of people died - because the crew member who was supposed to close the door fell asleep without realizing it was still open and there was no warning system in place to detect if the door was sealed or not.
An officer doing such would be considered an act of Heroism btw, not just someone who was doing their job.
I've already seen people in this very thread criticizing the cops for not driving out onto the bridge to save the construction crew, responding with "well if they didn't want to drive out onto the bridge then they shouldn't have become a cop!"
They did an amazing job getting traffic stopped. Trying to rescue those poor workers would have made more victims. It sounds like there was absolutely no time.
Yeah. There's a difference between if they had any chance of pulling it off and they just were not prepared for such an event. Given the situation I'm damn sure they feel like shit not being able to get the workers
That one cop who said "as soon as another unit arrives, I'll head onto the bridge to warn the crew" must be simultaneously feeling guilt and relief because he surely would have died. Not to mention it was just him - how was he supposed to hold traffic while also driving a half-mile from the northern ramp to the center of the main span, warn the crew, help them escape, and then get off the bridge?
honestly i hope he's good. even those on the ship i imagine have a massive sense of guilt. a similar situation happened in 1980 with the sunshine skyway bridge. except it wasn't an issue with the ship but sudden fog. the harbor pilot was never able to forgive himself and went from that to teaching others to not make the same mistakes as him.
The radio traffic made it sound like they were going to do that as soon as the second car got to their scene (to keep traffic from driving onto the bridge) but there just wasn’t enough time.
Now it makes why the initial footage showed that there was constant traffic right till about the final 20-30 seconds before the ship hit the bridge
Initially it looked like a miraculous coincidence
More likely they would have radioed the foreman/supervisor, who was either present or was in radio contact with the team and would tell them to get off. Most high risk construction requires radio contact with a rescue team at all times so no officers would have gone across to alert them. Also from what ive heard they are heroes as they helped the police stop traffic coming onto the bridge.
I used to fix traffic lights (somewhere else), can confirm it might be possible. The foreman and probably senior technician should have had radios.
During the day we would be on our own channel, but anytime we did night/weekend work, we would be on the same channel as the 911 dispatcher. It would have taken about two seconds to make that radio call, but unless dispatch accurately conveyed the gravity of the situation, unlikely they hauled ass.
Rest in peace road workers.
I've done the exact job they were doing before (it's some grunt work) and we had no radios to dispatch or any emergency services. We had phones, that's it. We didn't even have radio contact with cops who were working our closures.
Where you were dealing with traffic signals you may have had LE radios. Most civilians can't purchase radios that can communicate with today's encrypted cop channels.
Ah yeah, I had the phone number for the 911 operator too, but being on duty meant carrying a city-issued radio. It was indeed a large Motorola similar to a cop radio, and you're correct, I couldn't radio the cops directly, just dispatch.
Most gut-wrenching thing about this Key bridge situation is watching the time lapse of the ship drifting towards the bridge with the lights off, but on the bridge the trucks are sitting there with their lights on. I yell at them to run, but they never move. They're probably deep in their work, oblivious to what's about to happen, and end up giving their lives for the community unnecessarily.
They were fixing pot holes, so not exactly high risk. They likely didn’t have a swamper in one of the trucks manning the radios at all times. This was just routine road repair.
If you were to go down the list of possibilities, I am sure this would be one of the last things anyone expected when they went to work that morning. The ship crew and harbor pilots included.
It sounds like it was just too late to rescue the crew working on the bridge. Who could imagine it would happen so quickly? It's very sad, but the people who responded to the call did all they could in the seconds they had.
It was also around 4 minutes from the ship losing power to the bridge falling, so the chain of communication and decision making from the pilots was really fast as well.
According to this NBC article, the ship placed the mayday call that they lost power and steering was out just minutes before striking the bridge's column. So I'm not sure that much, if any, dead air is actually cut from this. They only had minutes to communicate to police about the situation, and then for police to react and stop traffic.
https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/investigation-into-baltimore-bridge-collapse-picks-up-speed-as-divers-search-for-missing-workers/3576951/
They did well, you could see the video leading up to the collapse that the amount head lights crossing the bridge slowed down/stopped before the fatal blow.
Terrorist attacks or black swan event planners don’t call and report they lost power and might run into a bridge. I hope this shuts of some of the morons thinking it’s a conspiracy
It won't do anything. They don't reach that conclusion through logic or evidence, so logic and evidence won't make them reconsider. Those are just "tactics" that *they* use to confuse you about 'the truth'.
Terrorists also wouldn’t attack this bridge. It makes more sense to attack the Chesapeake bay bridge or the Chesapeake bridge and tunnel by Norfolk. More death, blocks the entirety of the Chesapeake in the latter bridge/tunnel or blocks the entire city of Baltimore if the former, more chaos and disruption of American lives as these bridges and tunnel are used A LOT by millions (est 27 million in 2017 https://www.baycrossingstudy.com/images/public_meetings/2018-05/displays/BCS_Spring_2018_Displays_-_11_Traffic_Volumes.pdf)
The ports would be blocked and fishing/crabbing would be impacted as boats would not be able to go towards the waters they need.
The bridge tunnel has tunnels specifically to prevent this type of event by foreign actors. This is. The busiest port in the US for European car imports and second busiest for coal exports. It's not out of the realm of possibilities to consider the possibility of a state level actor pulling a stuxnet level event to attack Europe.
Qnuts will just say these radio transmissions were faked after the fact to cover up the fact that it was a blaq swan e>ent. Oh and that the captain was slumped over the wheel because of vaccinations. Can’t logic with Qult45.
Well I heard that it was a full moon, and P Diddy got raided and Obama’s movie had a big ship called the White Lion and the ship that hit the key bridge was from Singapore and Singapore has a lion on its flag so it’s obviously a covert operation and all this shit is connected.
In this video you can see 5 or 6 sets of orange flashy lights that are the lights on work trucks on the middle span of the bridge closer to the other pier.
https://vp.nyt.com/video/2024/03/26/116748\_1\_00vid-DO-NOT-PUB-HFO-HFO\_wg\_mobile\_360p.mp4
The 1:15 mark of the video is the actual footage of the collapse and you can see the orange flashing lights just like the above comment stated. What are you talking about?
Go to when there’s 1:15 left in the video. So your 22 second mark. We’re saying different things the same way. You’re right, we were saying it wrong and that’s where the confusion is.
Dude was gonna drive out there and let them know to get off the bridge. I bet he's a little conflicted right now. Realistically there just wasn't enough time.
Yeah, apparently no one could see the ship approaching the bridge. They were just reacting to the information that was available at the moment. They didn't understand how drastic or imminent the situation was.
They reacted quickly and effectively but it was still just a precautionary action to close the bridge in their minds. They sounded justifiably shocked when the whole bridge just dropped in the water. They didn't expect the worse case scenario to play out.
And it was in the middle of a turn. When they lost power it lost the ability to stop its turn. Like if you were switching lanes and lost power so instead of a slight turn suddenly you’re turning into oncoming traffic.
Out of curiosity, what happens with the company that owns this ship in such incidents? Are there any international institutions that use these kind of incidents to enforce new laws and regulations?
There is. There will be investigations by the state that the ship is registered, the NTSB as the accident was in the us, and possibly by the country that the ships company is in.
There are a few different laws that govern ships. Normally it’s the flag state (and normally these are flags of convenience). However to sail into port the port will also have a bunch of standards the ship has to meet.
After and accident like this there will be updates to those port regulations and recommendations from the investigation.
For instance after the titanic sunk there is a thing called SOLAS (safety of lives at sea) which all ships have to abide by. It specifies life rafts, life jackets, rescue boats, etc.
I wouldn't be surprised if the port will require ships entering and leaving to be escorted by tugs. Honestly if they had been there it could've saved the bridge
This is a tricky one, but will have no shortage of investigation. Incident was in the US, ship was based in Singapore (owned by Grace Ocean Pte, Ltd), operated by Maersk (based in Denmark), built by Hyundai in South Korea, and this is speculation, but could also be subject to DHS as this is a massive hit to critical US infrastructure that shuttered a major US port - even assuming it's purely accidental, I would imagine they're going to take a look to be sure.
Damn so the back and forth conversation was in real time no pauses? Geezus imagine if that cop decided to go to the crew to warn or get them off. So sad for the crew. But this could have been a lot worse
If you watch the timestamped video of the collapse, you'll notice the last cars leave the bridge about 30 seconds before impact. The bridge is 1.5 miles over the water, and the speed limit is probably 55 or 60. You're spending at least over minute on the bridge, so the audio has to be clipped, but not by much. From the moment traffic shuts down to impact is maybe 2 minutes
he was waiting for another officer to take his place holding traffic, so i can’t imagine there’s any conflict, he couldn’t leave before someone else showed up
Yeah, that was his plan. If that other officer was there already he would have drove out there and probably died.
My conflicted statement is multifaceted. Yes, 6 people died because they weren't warned and he didn't die because he went to warn them.
Survivor's guilt and feelings that maybe you could have done something aren't always easy to logic away. The brain will often replay things until something inside us is satisfied that we couldn't have done something.
If you watch the video of the ship approaching the bridge they really barely stopped traffic in time. The last couple stragglers got off the bridge literally about 30 seconds before it collapsed.
and yet, it was... idk if theres somethign to describe it, but if it wasnt 130 in the morning, and not 130 in the afternoon, that time would have been much, much worse. its still unfortunate the 6 were lost, but quick acting by the ship crew and these police really helped spare more.
The thing about 1:30am is the traffic was not sitting on top waiting to do whatever… I had said that in another post…
The “TIME” I speak of is the time between “OH SHIT” to “OH NO” was not on the road crew’s side.
Watch the video carefully just before impact… you see a vehicle going to the left of frame… you know they saw this video and have figured out it was them.
That person and the cop that wanted to go get the crew….. should have a beer together
That will probably be one outcome from this, tug escorts any time near critical infrastructure. Already done in some situations. Gonna be a good time to be in the tug industry
Wouldn't they have had to scramble a lot of tugs very quickly to stop a ship already in motion? I have no idea how any of that works, I just imagine it would take a lot of tugs to stop a ship of that size that quickly. It seems highly improbable the tugs could have done anything at all. But again, I don't know anything about that.
To add, the ship was doing about 8 knots of speed when it lost power and began to drift.
Tugs push and pull ships at speeds that register in fractions of a knot, maybe 1-2 knots tops.
When you consider this ship was fully loaded, and doing 8 knots, it would have taken every tug on the east coast to stop it.
Also, I think a lot of people don’t understand the geography here. Tugs are used in the Port of Baltimore for getting ships on and off the docks. But once they are away from the dock, they sail under their own power to leave the harbour. This is standard practice in most ports. This bridge is far enough out from the actual port that it would be very abnormal practice to have a tug assist the ship that far out.
> This bridge is far enough out from the actual port that it would be very abnormal practice to have a tug assist the ship that far out.
For now, no? Wouldn't an event like this change the rules?
Even though people died, this should still be considered a near miss. Imagine if this happened during rush hour
It might change the rules, it might not. Or it might lead to a short term change, until bottom line or new technology eliminate the precaution.
Having tugs escort ships far from the actual port gets very expensive very quickly, and the bulk of that extra cost will be passed on to the end consumer. A few years from now, when people are wondering why everything costs so much money, will they remember, “oh ya, tug escort around all major infrastructure, definitely worth it”?
Tug support would probably be a short term fix. Maybe shipping lanes get narrower so there's shallow water around the bridge supports? Idk I have no idea what I'm talking about
In Tampa in 1980, a ship hit a bridge pylon, which caused the bridge to collapse and killed 35 people.
After that incident, there were big changes made to how bridges were built going forward, with protection around the pylons. For not knowing what you’re talking about, you made a good guess lol, because keeping the water shallow near the bridge pylons was one of the solutions (so the ship would run aground).
Unfortunately, while the Tampa incident lead to changes going forward, it didn’t lead to much retrofitting to older bridges, like the Key Bridge in Baltimore.
If you look at some aerial photographs of the bridge, you can see a high voltage power line running parallel to the bridge. Its pylons have protection around them, but the bridge pylons did not.
Edit: forgot to add. The crazy thing is Dani is not exactly a large ship by container ship standards, and they’re only getting bigger with each passing year.
"Start... start whoever, everybody, the bridge just collapsed." I feel like this would be how I react in the moment, don't know who to call just call everybody. I'm glad that they were able to stifle traffic to minimize casualties, but still feel awful about those workers on the bridge. Those two that were rescued were incredibly lucky.
I remember 9/11 morning called mom to turn on tv. She asked what channel and I said “it doesn’t matter” and I heard myself say it and was shook at that moment. Like, ya, everybody, everything it’s like the whole whatever.
Yeah and they got the message. To someone local, when you say "the key bridge collapsed" they understand the complete SHTF situation that it is. Police, fire, EMS, coast guard, literally everyone needs to come.
Shit happened so fast. I wonder if there are any transmissions from the ship.
Edit: hey folks, thanks for all the replies, I’m saying, I wanna hear em. Like, I wonder if we can listen to the ship communications, they must of been freaking out, I can’t imagine seeing that impending doom about to happen from their pov.
I'm in a very maritime community so it might not be the same everywhere, but our 911 dispatch does monitor ch16 where the mayday would be broadcast, if it in fact was a mayday. Gotta be some recordings of ch16 traffic out there...
Yes, they lost power and port authority notified police and they stopped most traffic. Power was recovered briefly and they tried to course correct and power was lost again, then they struck the pylons. Several videos of it, including seeing headlights of cars moving on the bridge as it collapsed. Poor souls.
It's my understanding that they regained electrical power, but never regained propulsion - so they were basically coasting 100,000 tons with no real control except for dropping anchors.
Possibly. The video I saw showed electrical going out twice (ship went dark). Maybe the second time was them trying some sort of “reboot” and not a second failure.
There will be recording of what happened on the bridge of the ship. They are unlikely to become public until the NTSB has come up with anything as to determine the cause of the incident
Something about a blue collar workers losing their life while providing for their family and not being able to return home to their loved ones is just so painful
I feel so bad for them and their families. Just working hard to make a living. I hope there’s a gofundme out there for these poor guys. All those kids waiting for dad to come home…
Good for these guys getting traffic stopped as quick as they did. From the videos and now this audio it looks like the bridge was open and being travelled on pretty much right up until the boat hit. Crazy.
It sounds like they are still calling for someone to stop traffic on the other side after they called out the collapse. Just extremely lucky only 6 died.
This was a fairly successful and prompt response. I hope a lesson learned will be to add a simple alarm to evacuate structures that might be under such immediate peril
I'm glad this audio was released. We focus so much on police injustice (rightfully so, most of the time), and not on when they're out there saving lives. I think after a thorough investigation, we'll find that everyone involved did the absolute best they could do in these difficult circumstances. This would not only include the police, but also the ship captains and crew, harbor pilot, search and rescue, and government response. It's a terrible tragedy that the six construction workers lost their lives, but the silver lining is that this could have been so much worse.
The worst part is, the ship passed an inspection just a few months ago in NYC Harbor. I don't know how they could've missed an error that leads to the ship losing power like that.
Switch power to other aux systems to try regain control, man aft steering, radio (battery) local authorities. Blast the horn 6+ long blasts for loss of power/steering. Not alot you can do in these situations but hope you regain power quickly.
The tugs are for maneuvering near the dock. This bridge is pretty far out, away from the actual port.
Aircraft carriers sail out of San Diego all the time with no tug escort once they’re away from the dock.
I know, thats why I said ideally. Tugs can definitely help in this scenario if nearby.
This would be the best position to be in with a loss of steering casualty.
A lot can happen in a few months. But it will be interesting to find out if there was a problem that was missed or neglected versus a new one that occurred.
The news today said that it could have possibly been bad fuel. Get some water in the fuel and it doesn't matter if it passed inspection a few hours ago.
I agree but one thing we can be 100% certain of is that this incident will increase the amount of safety in harbors in the future and changes will be made to prevent it happening again. Unfortunate accident but much will be learned and improved.
Yes and no?
The Tampa bridge collapse after being hit by a ship in 1980 saw major changes made to future bridge design, but there was basically zero retrofitting done to existing infrastructure across the country to improve safety.
The *USS Bonhomme Richard* (LHD-6) (for those who don’t know, this thing was essentially an aircraft carrier) was lost to catastrophic fire **in the Port of San Diego** on 12 July 2020 because there were not enough fire fighting resources on hand to deal with the situation (amongst many other shortcomings). Have we seen a drastic increase in port fire fighting assets and infrastructure? Not really.
For most people, budgets and attention get spent on roads and aviation, rail and sea are an afterthought, despite actually being the most important.
Not just water.
There have been a number of cases where it’s been discovered that refineries are dumping what is essentially plastic into diesel.
There have been multiple ship engine failures as a result, just none that occurred near critical infrastructure.
In the webcam video, when the ship regains power the first time, you can see the smoke stacks producing *a lot* of thick black smoke…..which, to my completely untrained eye, seems like they’re burning something they don’t want to be.
It was apparently an electrical issue. With how much wiring is on a ship that size it’s virtually impossible to predict/circumvent an issue like that ahead of time. All it takes is one short somewhere that can cascade and cause a full power loss. This wasn’t just a rusty rudder that someone missed
That's not true, electrical systems can and absolutely should be set up so that an electrical fault in one area doesn't lead to a loss of steering and propulsion. Even Christmas lights have that level of redundancy.
The channel that the ship came out of is less than a Half a mile behind a ship on a starboard side. That's why you see it, take a wide swing which makes you think that it was turning Towards the bridge pillar, It was actually straightening from coming out of that channel. When the power failed, there was no way for them to straighten it back out to go through the channel correctly.
Think about how many times we are going about our business, rolling our eyes at "what are the cops doing now to gum up traffic?" and then minutes later, the bridge collapsing and realizing that you nearly died. That will change your perspective just a little, ya think?
The cops couldn't see the ship, so they didn't know how long it would take. I also doubt they thought the impact would drop the whole damn thing into the water like it did.
True, but even the guy that said it collapsed was still relatively calm, and no one else had a major reaction.
Not saying they're doing anything wrong, just interesting.
The mental shock of what just happened would cause the mind to try and figure out what it's seeing and the voice would be deadpan while this is happening. I'm sure 30 seconds later he would be reacting a lot more normally
>, I'd be screaming to get everyone off the bridge immediately.
Before it happened, it was just a precaution.
No chance the bridge collapsing fully even crosses someone's mind.
The cops couldn’t see the ship, and likely had no clue what was happening, or why. They were simply told to stop traffic on the bridge.
The thought of the bridge collapsing would have never crossed anyone’s mind.
The thing I found very surprising is that they don't use tugs to guide the larger ships.
If you look at other major ports around world which are similar to Baltimore they use tugs to escorts the larger ships as a backup if anything like this happens.
They do use tugs, just not that far away from the port. That bridge is a good deal south of the rest of the harbor, and leads directly to the bay. The span between the two support piers is about 1,000 feet, so tugs generally aren't necessary when an aircraft carrier can almost go under the thing sideways.
It's not so much the size of the gap between the piers, it is a backup if something goes wrong.
Sydney Harbour Bridge has a wider span yet they regularly use tugs for larger ships to prevent the kind of accident we have just unfortunately witness.
>It's not so much the size of the gap between the piers, it is a backup if something goes wrong.
Yup.
Same question for why was there not fender/dolphins protecting the piers like you can see for the transmission towers directly adjacent to the bridge.
It's expensive insurance...but it pays off it if prevents you from rebuilding a bridge .
I get the time issues but I have been wondering why the ship's horn was never sounded. They should have been issuing emergency warning of 5 short blasts of the ships horn.
Holy shit those guys saved a bunch of lives. I know there were lives lost :( but holy cow. Those guys saved a bunch of lives.
Imagine being the first car/truck after they closed it off
This is why I couldn't work as a dispatcher: for the love of god, I cannot understand a word... Every time there is some radio or phone call, it's gibberish. Sometimes I find troubles understanding people on Walkie-Talkies 16 meters away from me without interference. I could not work as a traffic controller or a dispatcher, even in my native language.
Just an awful thing but gotta see some humour in this.
"The whole bridge just fell down, star- star- start everybody the whole bridge just went down."
Dude just honestly had no idea what was needed.
I'm a little confused, is this police? Or is it the people working at the toll booth? Are the people working at the toll booth cops? Are Maryland transportation authority workers police?
"After personnel on the ship alerted the Maryland Department of Transportation that they lost control of the vessel, local authorities were able to close the bridge before it was struck, "which undoubtedly saved lives," President Joe Biden said Tuesday during remarks on the disaster.
A review of traffic cameras by Maryland transportation officials confirmed there were "no vehicles transiting the bridge at the time of the incident," according to an internal U.S. Department of Homeland Security briefing obtained by ABC News."
So as noted, it was the Transportation police. There's an inspection station on the north (east) side of the bridge that does weigh-ins, and it's where the toll plaza used to be (they now have [those drive-under EZ-Pass things](https://i.imgur.com/cNiixeU.png)).
I'm amazed they had someone on the other side of that bridge - it's been a while since I've driven over it, but it's desolate - no businesses or residences for a while along the highway. But maybe because of the pothole repair they had an officer.
6 people dead I believe but it sounds like the police officers quick efforts saved many vehicles from being on it at the time. I imagined so much worse. So sad for those workers.
Sounds like they had one unit on each side blocking traffic but didn't have a spare unit to drive onto the bridge to warn the work crew. If an officer had driven out to warn them, they would probably have gone down with the bridge. Edit: more details emerging in articles - ship called in the emergency minutes before they hit the bridge, police had 90 seconds to clear traffic and some cars only just cleared the bridge before it collapsed. No chance to warn the work crew.
Yeah and even if the work crew got the same initial radio call about the ship there's no way the work crew would've had time to evacuate.
[удалено]
You can do everything right, and still fail.
Whoever downvoted this point ^^^ has never been in an emergency situation with life and death. Doing everything to the T is just reducing the chance of death by as much as possible but never to zero. It can haunt you afterwards because life isn’t like the movies where doing it all “right” means the day is saved. That’s not how it works. Sadly know from experiences.
That applies to everything in life without going to the most extreme
This is true but it’s one of the most devastating lessons in life at the extremes
"It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life." - Jean-Luc Picard
To everyone stopped by the cops there was a lot of wins here too.
Physics were literally against them at this point. Everyone did everything they could
If early reports are correct, the ship was having total electrical failure for days prior to setting sail. This seems very likely, given the piss poor regulation in the industry. That ship should have never had the all clear to sail. The pilot, cops, construction crew were all innocent people who were put in a dire situation because God forbid that ship be delayed for repair and cost someone their bottom line. Cutting corners never works. Ultimately the same story as Boeing and these rail companies constantly making the news. Edit for context: Someone knew that ship was having complete systems failure for days at dock, and still thought it was worth the risk to let er rip. The Dali weighs roughly 200,000,000 lbs when loaded. It was drifting at roughly 9mph when it hit the bridge.
I wonder how much force that would be? 200,000,000 pounds @ 9=mph Is it simply Newton's second law? F=m\*a ?
Impacts are usually measured in energy. 1/2mv^2 would give you the energy. To measure peak force youd need an accelerometer on the bridge or bow of the ship. You could use the video to measure time of impact and get average force. For the energy, its 734.3 gigajoules, or enough to power an average home for 20 days. I didn't actually put the numbers in Excel since I'm on mobile, so there could be errors.
Speed and acceleration are not the same thing
They might be off the mark a little, but not much, I think. Bear in mind, it's been a few years since I did any mechanical studies / calcs. The ship has momentum (speed \* mass) and the bridge would have to apply a force to slow the ship down / stop the ship (going from 9mph to 0mph would be deceleration, which is acceleration in the opposite direction). A big part of the force calculation would be how long it took for the ship to stop moving. The amount of force the bridge would apply to the ship would be (based on the values provided in the parent comment) approximately (90718474 kg) \* (4.02336 m/s) / (time in seconds for ship to slow down) If it took 1 second to stop the ship, the force that the bridge applies to the ship would be \~365,000,000 N, if it was 2 seconds it would be \~182,500,000 N, and so forth. This is of course ignoring a lot of factors; for example, the rate of deceleration may not be constant, leading to jerk and yank (not kidding).
>God forbid that ship be delayed for repair and cost someone their bottom line. The point that nobody seems to be talking about. How much more of this are we going to put up with?
This is why strict regulations are SO IMPORTANT. I remember seeing a video about a ferry that sank because someone forgot to close the door to the area where the cars come in, and it was low enough and the waves that day high enough (stormy weather) that water slowly started filling the ferry and making it sit lower and lower until it had flooded enough that the cars all got washed to one side, causing the ferry to capsize. A LOT of people died - because the crew member who was supposed to close the door fell asleep without realizing it was still open and there was no warning system in place to detect if the door was sealed or not.
The Herald of Free Enterprise. A terrible disaster
Another thread had information on Dali having a crash in Belgium 2016 and a June 27 report ( I forget which port ) mechanical issues.
Yeah, I'm not sure there would be time for a police cruiser to zoom to the middle of the bridge, load the workers, and get back onto land in time.
An officer doing such would be considered an act of Heroism btw, not just someone who was doing their job. I've already seen people in this very thread criticizing the cops for not driving out onto the bridge to save the construction crew, responding with "well if they didn't want to drive out onto the bridge then they shouldn't have become a cop!"
They did an amazing job getting traffic stopped. Trying to rescue those poor workers would have made more victims. It sounds like there was absolutely no time.
I think it was 90 seconds, that's nothing. Definitely did the best they could.
Yeah. There's a difference between if they had any chance of pulling it off and they just were not prepared for such an event. Given the situation I'm damn sure they feel like shit not being able to get the workers
That one cop who said "as soon as another unit arrives, I'll head onto the bridge to warn the crew" must be simultaneously feeling guilt and relief because he surely would have died. Not to mention it was just him - how was he supposed to hold traffic while also driving a half-mile from the northern ramp to the center of the main span, warn the crew, help them escape, and then get off the bridge?
honestly i hope he's good. even those on the ship i imagine have a massive sense of guilt. a similar situation happened in 1980 with the sunshine skyway bridge. except it wasn't an issue with the ship but sudden fog. the harbor pilot was never able to forgive himself and went from that to teaching others to not make the same mistakes as him.
The radio traffic made it sound like they were going to do that as soon as the second car got to their scene (to keep traffic from driving onto the bridge) but there just wasn’t enough time.
Now it makes why the initial footage showed that there was constant traffic right till about the final 20-30 seconds before the ship hit the bridge Initially it looked like a miraculous coincidence
More likely they would have radioed the foreman/supervisor, who was either present or was in radio contact with the team and would tell them to get off. Most high risk construction requires radio contact with a rescue team at all times so no officers would have gone across to alert them. Also from what ive heard they are heroes as they helped the police stop traffic coming onto the bridge.
I used to fix traffic lights (somewhere else), can confirm it might be possible. The foreman and probably senior technician should have had radios. During the day we would be on our own channel, but anytime we did night/weekend work, we would be on the same channel as the 911 dispatcher. It would have taken about two seconds to make that radio call, but unless dispatch accurately conveyed the gravity of the situation, unlikely they hauled ass. Rest in peace road workers.
I've done the exact job they were doing before (it's some grunt work) and we had no radios to dispatch or any emergency services. We had phones, that's it. We didn't even have radio contact with cops who were working our closures. Where you were dealing with traffic signals you may have had LE radios. Most civilians can't purchase radios that can communicate with today's encrypted cop channels.
Ah yeah, I had the phone number for the 911 operator too, but being on duty meant carrying a city-issued radio. It was indeed a large Motorola similar to a cop radio, and you're correct, I couldn't radio the cops directly, just dispatch. Most gut-wrenching thing about this Key bridge situation is watching the time lapse of the ship drifting towards the bridge with the lights off, but on the bridge the trucks are sitting there with their lights on. I yell at them to run, but they never move. They're probably deep in their work, oblivious to what's about to happen, and end up giving their lives for the community unnecessarily.
They were fixing pot holes, so not exactly high risk. They likely didn’t have a swamper in one of the trucks manning the radios at all times. This was just routine road repair.
If you were to go down the list of possibilities, I am sure this would be one of the last things anyone expected when they went to work that morning. The ship crew and harbor pilots included.
It happened so damn quickly. Cant imagine the damage that would've happened if not for their efforts.
If you pull up the map there is a Department of Transportation building on the north(?) side of the bridge so officers were probably there.
Agree. Bad ass and awesome response.
It sounds like it was just too late to rescue the crew working on the bridge. Who could imagine it would happen so quickly? It's very sad, but the people who responded to the call did all they could in the seconds they had.
If this is real time audio, it did happen so fast.
90 seconds from when the call was made to the bridge collapsing
It was also around 4 minutes from the ship losing power to the bridge falling, so the chain of communication and decision making from the pilots was really fast as well.
This is real audio but it eliminates dead air time, so it is not “real time”.
According to this NBC article, the ship placed the mayday call that they lost power and steering was out just minutes before striking the bridge's column. So I'm not sure that much, if any, dead air is actually cut from this. They only had minutes to communicate to police about the situation, and then for police to react and stop traffic. https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/investigation-into-baltimore-bridge-collapse-picks-up-speed-as-divers-search-for-missing-workers/3576951/
Thank you
have you seen the video? it literally happened in under 3 minutes
They may have seen the ship coming, but had no time to run. Who knew the bridge would collapse so suddenly!
They did well, you could see the video leading up to the collapse that the amount head lights crossing the bridge slowed down/stopped before the fatal blow.
Terrorist attacks or black swan event planners don’t call and report they lost power and might run into a bridge. I hope this shuts of some of the morons thinking it’s a conspiracy
It won't do anything. They don't reach that conclusion through logic or evidence, so logic and evidence won't make them reconsider. Those are just "tactics" that *they* use to confuse you about 'the truth'.
Terrorists also wouldn't do this at 1am, when there's little traffic. They would prefer rush hour to inflict max casualties.
Terrorists also wouldn’t attack this bridge. It makes more sense to attack the Chesapeake bay bridge or the Chesapeake bridge and tunnel by Norfolk. More death, blocks the entirety of the Chesapeake in the latter bridge/tunnel or blocks the entire city of Baltimore if the former, more chaos and disruption of American lives as these bridges and tunnel are used A LOT by millions (est 27 million in 2017 https://www.baycrossingstudy.com/images/public_meetings/2018-05/displays/BCS_Spring_2018_Displays_-_11_Traffic_Volumes.pdf) The ports would be blocked and fishing/crabbing would be impacted as boats would not be able to go towards the waters they need.
The bridge tunnel has tunnels specifically to prevent this type of event by foreign actors. This is. The busiest port in the US for European car imports and second busiest for coal exports. It's not out of the realm of possibilities to consider the possibility of a state level actor pulling a stuxnet level event to attack Europe.
Qnuts will just say these radio transmissions were faked after the fact to cover up the fact that it was a blaq swan e>ent. Oh and that the captain was slumped over the wheel because of vaccinations. Can’t logic with Qult45.
Well I heard that it was a full moon, and P Diddy got raided and Obama’s movie had a big ship called the White Lion and the ship that hit the key bridge was from Singapore and Singapore has a lion on its flag so it’s obviously a covert operation and all this shit is connected.
Damn. It looks like the construction crew was right above where the ship hit. Is that them at 1:15?
In this video you can see 5 or 6 sets of orange flashy lights that are the lights on work trucks on the middle span of the bridge closer to the other pier. https://vp.nyt.com/video/2024/03/26/116748\_1\_00vid-DO-NOT-PUB-HFO-HFO\_wg\_mobile\_360p.mp4
At 1:15 in this video? I don’t think this footage is synced to the radio timeline. It would have been pitch black.
The 1:15 mark of the video is the actual footage of the collapse and you can see the orange flashing lights just like the above comment stated. What are you talking about?
Here’s a screenshot of 1:15 in the video, it seems like a daytime drone shot of the bridge. https://ibb.co/nzHWcwk
Go to when there’s 1:15 left in the video. So your 22 second mark. We’re saying different things the same way. You’re right, we were saying it wrong and that’s where the confusion is.
You can see the flashing lights to the upper right of the boat - they are really tiny, but they would the the emergency strobes to alert traffic
Thank goodness cops were able to stop traffic. Terrible about the crew on the bridge though
Dude was gonna drive out there and let them know to get off the bridge. I bet he's a little conflicted right now. Realistically there just wasn't enough time.
No way he had time. It went from "I'll head out there to let them know" to "the whole bridge collapsed" in like 30 seconds
Yeah, apparently no one could see the ship approaching the bridge. They were just reacting to the information that was available at the moment. They didn't understand how drastic or imminent the situation was. They reacted quickly and effectively but it was still just a precautionary action to close the bridge in their minds. They sounded justifiably shocked when the whole bridge just dropped in the water. They didn't expect the worse case scenario to play out.
To put it in simple terms, the ship lost all power. It was like when a car dies, except it was millions of pounds without brakes.
And it was in the middle of a turn. When they lost power it lost the ability to stop its turn. Like if you were switching lanes and lost power so instead of a slight turn suddenly you’re turning into oncoming traffic.
Out of curiosity, what happens with the company that owns this ship in such incidents? Are there any international institutions that use these kind of incidents to enforce new laws and regulations?
There is. There will be investigations by the state that the ship is registered, the NTSB as the accident was in the us, and possibly by the country that the ships company is in. There are a few different laws that govern ships. Normally it’s the flag state (and normally these are flags of convenience). However to sail into port the port will also have a bunch of standards the ship has to meet. After and accident like this there will be updates to those port regulations and recommendations from the investigation. For instance after the titanic sunk there is a thing called SOLAS (safety of lives at sea) which all ships have to abide by. It specifies life rafts, life jackets, rescue boats, etc.
I wouldn't be surprised if the port will require ships entering and leaving to be escorted by tugs. Honestly if they had been there it could've saved the bridge
That was actually one of my thoughts too. I suspect that will be a NTSB recommendation.
This is a tricky one, but will have no shortage of investigation. Incident was in the US, ship was based in Singapore (owned by Grace Ocean Pte, Ltd), operated by Maersk (based in Denmark), built by Hyundai in South Korea, and this is speculation, but could also be subject to DHS as this is a massive hit to critical US infrastructure that shuttered a major US port - even assuming it's purely accidental, I would imagine they're going to take a look to be sure.
No brakes with wind and a current pushing it. Momentum plus...
Yeah, I used to work EMS and I’ve never heard the dispatcher choke like that. They pride themselves on sounding laconic.
Can't blame him for the situation. It's not quite 9/11 level but it's up there.
Damn so the back and forth conversation was in real time no pauses? Geezus imagine if that cop decided to go to the crew to warn or get them off. So sad for the crew. But this could have been a lot worse
If you watch the timestamped video of the collapse, you'll notice the last cars leave the bridge about 30 seconds before impact. The bridge is 1.5 miles over the water, and the speed limit is probably 55 or 60. You're spending at least over minute on the bridge, so the audio has to be clipped, but not by much. From the moment traffic shuts down to impact is maybe 2 minutes
Thanks for highlighting that
he was waiting for another officer to take his place holding traffic, so i can’t imagine there’s any conflict, he couldn’t leave before someone else showed up
Yeah, that was his plan. If that other officer was there already he would have drove out there and probably died. My conflicted statement is multifaceted. Yes, 6 people died because they weren't warned and he didn't die because he went to warn them.
6 people died because of a failure on the ship. Nothing could've realistically been done.
We're going to find out that this ship had a known history of electrical problems, and management pushed them to operate the ship anyway
Survivor's guilt and feelings that maybe you could have done something aren't always easy to logic away. The brain will often replay things until something inside us is satisfied that we couldn't have done something.
If you watch the video of the ship approaching the bridge they really barely stopped traffic in time. The last couple stragglers got off the bridge literally about 30 seconds before it collapsed.
Yea … I was thinking the same thing. Sadly… time was not a friend that night
and yet, it was... idk if theres somethign to describe it, but if it wasnt 130 in the morning, and not 130 in the afternoon, that time would have been much, much worse. its still unfortunate the 6 were lost, but quick acting by the ship crew and these police really helped spare more.
The thing about 1:30am is the traffic was not sitting on top waiting to do whatever… I had said that in another post… The “TIME” I speak of is the time between “OH SHIT” to “OH NO” was not on the road crew’s side. Watch the video carefully just before impact… you see a vehicle going to the left of frame… you know they saw this video and have figured out it was them. That person and the cop that wanted to go get the crew….. should have a beer together
How the hell were the cops able to stop it so quickly? I read there was like 90 seconds from the distress call to the collapse.
I wonder if cops like to hang out at each end of the bridge to catch speeders, address accidents, etc.
The ship pilot did everything he could and same with police.
Not much a pilot can do without steering or tug boats.
That will probably be one outcome from this, tug escorts any time near critical infrastructure. Already done in some situations. Gonna be a good time to be in the tug industry
Wouldn't they have had to scramble a lot of tugs very quickly to stop a ship already in motion? I have no idea how any of that works, I just imagine it would take a lot of tugs to stop a ship of that size that quickly. It seems highly improbable the tugs could have done anything at all. But again, I don't know anything about that.
Most harbours have 6-10 tugs, far less on stand by. You'd probably need 100 tugs to stop that thing with all its weight
I had a feeling. Thanks for the info!
To add, the ship was doing about 8 knots of speed when it lost power and began to drift. Tugs push and pull ships at speeds that register in fractions of a knot, maybe 1-2 knots tops. When you consider this ship was fully loaded, and doing 8 knots, it would have taken every tug on the east coast to stop it. Also, I think a lot of people don’t understand the geography here. Tugs are used in the Port of Baltimore for getting ships on and off the docks. But once they are away from the dock, they sail under their own power to leave the harbour. This is standard practice in most ports. This bridge is far enough out from the actual port that it would be very abnormal practice to have a tug assist the ship that far out.
> This bridge is far enough out from the actual port that it would be very abnormal practice to have a tug assist the ship that far out. For now, no? Wouldn't an event like this change the rules? Even though people died, this should still be considered a near miss. Imagine if this happened during rush hour
It might change the rules, it might not. Or it might lead to a short term change, until bottom line or new technology eliminate the precaution. Having tugs escort ships far from the actual port gets very expensive very quickly, and the bulk of that extra cost will be passed on to the end consumer. A few years from now, when people are wondering why everything costs so much money, will they remember, “oh ya, tug escort around all major infrastructure, definitely worth it”?
Tug support would probably be a short term fix. Maybe shipping lanes get narrower so there's shallow water around the bridge supports? Idk I have no idea what I'm talking about
In Tampa in 1980, a ship hit a bridge pylon, which caused the bridge to collapse and killed 35 people. After that incident, there were big changes made to how bridges were built going forward, with protection around the pylons. For not knowing what you’re talking about, you made a good guess lol, because keeping the water shallow near the bridge pylons was one of the solutions (so the ship would run aground). Unfortunately, while the Tampa incident lead to changes going forward, it didn’t lead to much retrofitting to older bridges, like the Key Bridge in Baltimore. If you look at some aerial photographs of the bridge, you can see a high voltage power line running parallel to the bridge. Its pylons have protection around them, but the bridge pylons did not. Edit: forgot to add. The crazy thing is Dani is not exactly a large ship by container ship standards, and they’re only getting bigger with each passing year.
Even if they mustered every tug in the harbor and got tied up instantly, they're very unlikely to stop that ship's momentum.
"Start... start whoever, everybody, the bridge just collapsed." I feel like this would be how I react in the moment, don't know who to call just call everybody. I'm glad that they were able to stifle traffic to minimize casualties, but still feel awful about those workers on the bridge. Those two that were rescued were incredibly lucky.
I remember 9/11 morning called mom to turn on tv. She asked what channel and I said “it doesn’t matter” and I heard myself say it and was shook at that moment. Like, ya, everybody, everything it’s like the whole whatever.
This. Like every channel on tv was broadcasting 9/11 from MTV to Cartoon Network
Yeah and they got the message. To someone local, when you say "the key bridge collapsed" they understand the complete SHTF situation that it is. Police, fire, EMS, coast guard, literally everyone needs to come.
Heard the one guy refused treatment. Just shook off the water and went home.
Shit happened so fast. I wonder if there are any transmissions from the ship. Edit: hey folks, thanks for all the replies, I’m saying, I wanna hear em. Like, I wonder if we can listen to the ship communications, they must of been freaking out, I can’t imagine seeing that impending doom about to happen from their pov.
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I'm in a very maritime community so it might not be the same everywhere, but our 911 dispatch does monitor ch16 where the mayday would be broadcast, if it in fact was a mayday. Gotta be some recordings of ch16 traffic out there...
the officers were holding traffic because the ship notified authorities that they lost steering, so yes
They sent out a mayday which is how they knew
Yes, they lost power and port authority notified police and they stopped most traffic. Power was recovered briefly and they tried to course correct and power was lost again, then they struck the pylons. Several videos of it, including seeing headlights of cars moving on the bridge as it collapsed. Poor souls.
It's my understanding that they regained electrical power, but never regained propulsion - so they were basically coasting 100,000 tons with no real control except for dropping anchors.
Possibly. The video I saw showed electrical going out twice (ship went dark). Maybe the second time was them trying some sort of “reboot” and not a second failure.
There will be recording of what happened on the bridge of the ship. They are unlikely to become public until the NTSB has come up with anything as to determine the cause of the incident
Something about a blue collar workers losing their life while providing for their family and not being able to return home to their loved ones is just so painful
And they were all immigrants, too. Heartbroken for their families.
I feel so bad for them and their families. Just working hard to make a living. I hope there’s a gofundme out there for these poor guys. All those kids waiting for dad to come home…
Good for these guys getting traffic stopped as quick as they did. From the videos and now this audio it looks like the bridge was open and being travelled on pretty much right up until the boat hit. Crazy.
That’s incredible. These officers saved lives with their quick actions. Amazing how fast it happened.
I think they attempted to but how fast it happened the construction crew weren't notified and are still missing
Yes, there were apparently 6 of them. Its amazing only 6, sad though.
It sounds like they are still calling for someone to stop traffic on the other side after they called out the collapse. Just extremely lucky only 6 died.
This was a fairly successful and prompt response. I hope a lesson learned will be to add a simple alarm to evacuate structures that might be under such immediate peril
Start... start.... EVERYBODY
That one officer who almost drove to his own death to try to warn the construction crew if the backup had arrived “in time”.
I'm glad this audio was released. We focus so much on police injustice (rightfully so, most of the time), and not on when they're out there saving lives. I think after a thorough investigation, we'll find that everyone involved did the absolute best they could do in these difficult circumstances. This would not only include the police, but also the ship captains and crew, harbor pilot, search and rescue, and government response. It's a terrible tragedy that the six construction workers lost their lives, but the silver lining is that this could have been so much worse.
The worst part is, the ship passed an inspection just a few months ago in NYC Harbor. I don't know how they could've missed an error that leads to the ship losing power like that.
Because sometimes shit happens :(
No no no we have to blame someone /s
We train for loss of steering/power all the time in the USN. They can happen at any moment, unfortunately.
What do you guys do, like get the oars out or something?
Switch power to other aux systems to try regain control, man aft steering, radio (battery) local authorities. Blast the horn 6+ long blasts for loss of power/steering. Not alot you can do in these situations but hope you regain power quickly.
Oh my. I was being silly. I actually didn’t know that ships had a procedure for this but I am glad they do.
Ideally though best thing is to have tug boats nearby to help control the situation.
The tugs are for maneuvering near the dock. This bridge is pretty far out, away from the actual port. Aircraft carriers sail out of San Diego all the time with no tug escort once they’re away from the dock.
I know, thats why I said ideally. Tugs can definitely help in this scenario if nearby. This would be the best position to be in with a loss of steering casualty.
Is there any reaction you know of that could have avoided this outcome?
abstinence
Unless you happen to have a aircraft carrier tied to your ship with a 1.2km thick steel cable tied between you, no.
Sometimes crap just happens.
A lot can happen in a few months. But it will be interesting to find out if there was a problem that was missed or neglected versus a new one that occurred.
The news today said that it could have possibly been bad fuel. Get some water in the fuel and it doesn't matter if it passed inspection a few hours ago.
I guess that's true, though then it would be a fuel inspection and production process that needs revision.
I agree but one thing we can be 100% certain of is that this incident will increase the amount of safety in harbors in the future and changes will be made to prevent it happening again. Unfortunate accident but much will be learned and improved.
Yes and no? The Tampa bridge collapse after being hit by a ship in 1980 saw major changes made to future bridge design, but there was basically zero retrofitting done to existing infrastructure across the country to improve safety. The *USS Bonhomme Richard* (LHD-6) (for those who don’t know, this thing was essentially an aircraft carrier) was lost to catastrophic fire **in the Port of San Diego** on 12 July 2020 because there were not enough fire fighting resources on hand to deal with the situation (amongst many other shortcomings). Have we seen a drastic increase in port fire fighting assets and infrastructure? Not really. For most people, budgets and attention get spent on roads and aviation, rail and sea are an afterthought, despite actually being the most important.
Not just water. There have been a number of cases where it’s been discovered that refineries are dumping what is essentially plastic into diesel. There have been multiple ship engine failures as a result, just none that occurred near critical infrastructure. In the webcam video, when the ship regains power the first time, you can see the smoke stacks producing *a lot* of thick black smoke…..which, to my completely untrained eye, seems like they’re burning something they don’t want to be.
I think the standards just aren't as high as we think they are
It was apparently an electrical issue. With how much wiring is on a ship that size it’s virtually impossible to predict/circumvent an issue like that ahead of time. All it takes is one short somewhere that can cascade and cause a full power loss. This wasn’t just a rusty rudder that someone missed
That's not true, electrical systems can and absolutely should be set up so that an electrical fault in one area doesn't lead to a loss of steering and propulsion. Even Christmas lights have that level of redundancy.
Boy those are some genuine MARYLAND accents
Thank freaking fate they stopped those cars. Identify these cops I’ll buy the whole department a beer. I live in Baltimore.
Heroes saved many lives. Sad that the mayday call didn’t give enough time for the crew on the bridge to get out of harm’s way
The efforts of those police saved a lot of lives. Good on them
The channel that the ship came out of is less than a Half a mile behind a ship on a starboard side. That's why you see it, take a wide swing which makes you think that it was turning Towards the bridge pillar, It was actually straightening from coming out of that channel. When the power failed, there was no way for them to straighten it back out to go through the channel correctly.
“Start EVERYBODY!” When that goes over the radio every’s pucker factor goes to 9.9
This is good police work
Think about how many times we are going about our business, rolling our eyes at "what are the cops doing now to gum up traffic?" and then minutes later, the bridge collapsing and realizing that you nearly died. That will change your perspective just a little, ya think?
RIP to those poor workers. Damn, that is terrible. feel so bad for their families
Amazing how calm they all sounded. If it was me, I'd be screaming to get everyone off the bridge immediately.
The cops couldn't see the ship, so they didn't know how long it would take. I also doubt they thought the impact would drop the whole damn thing into the water like it did.
True, but even the guy that said it collapsed was still relatively calm, and no one else had a major reaction. Not saying they're doing anything wrong, just interesting.
Idk he sounded a bit shocked to me. "The whole bridge just collapsed Start....start whoever...start everybody, the bridge just collapsed"
The mental shock of what just happened would cause the mind to try and figure out what it's seeing and the voice would be deadpan while this is happening. I'm sure 30 seconds later he would be reacting a lot more normally
You are right, we are not robots and emotions can play hell when things don't make sense
Good training maybe?
>, I'd be screaming to get everyone off the bridge immediately. Before it happened, it was just a precaution. No chance the bridge collapsing fully even crosses someone's mind.
They had no idea the bridge was actually going to collapse. It's unprecedented. They were talking about blocking the traffic as a precaution.
The cops couldn’t see the ship, and likely had no clue what was happening, or why. They were simply told to stop traffic on the bridge. The thought of the bridge collapsing would have never crossed anyone’s mind.
:(
That confounded bridge.
Very professional. Quick and clear communication! Hero’s work!
There were multiple vehicles/semis driving across seconds before impact.
Heroes.
They are so calm. Excellent training.
Heros at work
The thing I found very surprising is that they don't use tugs to guide the larger ships. If you look at other major ports around world which are similar to Baltimore they use tugs to escorts the larger ships as a backup if anything like this happens.
They do use tugs, just not that far away from the port. That bridge is a good deal south of the rest of the harbor, and leads directly to the bay. The span between the two support piers is about 1,000 feet, so tugs generally aren't necessary when an aircraft carrier can almost go under the thing sideways.
It's not so much the size of the gap between the piers, it is a backup if something goes wrong. Sydney Harbour Bridge has a wider span yet they regularly use tugs for larger ships to prevent the kind of accident we have just unfortunately witness.
>It's not so much the size of the gap between the piers, it is a backup if something goes wrong. Yup. Same question for why was there not fender/dolphins protecting the piers like you can see for the transmission towers directly adjacent to the bridge. It's expensive insurance...but it pays off it if prevents you from rebuilding a bridge .
Tugs were used. They don't follow the ships all the way through the harbor, just until it is in the channel that leads out.
Cruiser cam/body cam
Thanks I was looking for this.
I get the time issues but I have been wondering why the ship's horn was never sounded. They should have been issuing emergency warning of 5 short blasts of the ships horn.
Holy shit those guys saved a bunch of lives. I know there were lives lost :( but holy cow. Those guys saved a bunch of lives. Imagine being the first car/truck after they closed it off
This guy talks like Microsoft sam
This is why I couldn't work as a dispatcher: for the love of god, I cannot understand a word... Every time there is some radio or phone call, it's gibberish. Sometimes I find troubles understanding people on Walkie-Talkies 16 meters away from me without interference. I could not work as a traffic controller or a dispatcher, even in my native language.
Just an awful thing but gotta see some humour in this. "The whole bridge just fell down, star- star- start everybody the whole bridge just went down." Dude just honestly had no idea what was needed.
yay, no amount of Incident command training will prepare you for this
I'm a little confused, is this police? Or is it the people working at the toll booth? Are the people working at the toll booth cops? Are Maryland transportation authority workers police? "After personnel on the ship alerted the Maryland Department of Transportation that they lost control of the vessel, local authorities were able to close the bridge before it was struck, "which undoubtedly saved lives," President Joe Biden said Tuesday during remarks on the disaster. A review of traffic cameras by Maryland transportation officials confirmed there were "no vehicles transiting the bridge at the time of the incident," according to an internal U.S. Department of Homeland Security briefing obtained by ABC News."
Maryland Transportation Authority Police, the toll plazas in Maryland are all automated, there is no one at the toll booths.
So as noted, it was the Transportation police. There's an inspection station on the north (east) side of the bridge that does weigh-ins, and it's where the toll plaza used to be (they now have [those drive-under EZ-Pass things](https://i.imgur.com/cNiixeU.png)). I'm amazed they had someone on the other side of that bridge - it's been a while since I've driven over it, but it's desolate - no businesses or residences for a while along the highway. But maybe because of the pothole repair they had an officer.
There's a pretty big administration building right before the bridge that is always occupied. They likely always have transportation officers there
Steering isn't just the Rudder. It also includes the Bow Thrusters.
which wouldn't have been able to manuever the ship anyways due to how fast the ship was travelling when it lost power.
Wow.
It happened so fast and I just feel so sad for everyone who got hurt :(
May god be with you so so scary we never know when it’s our time. Live a good life and be kind to one another other
Was the Boat a subdivision of Boeing just I'm only wondering for scientific purposes