Baltimore Bridge Impact

[deicer]

Is it just me, or does the video appear to show the ship accelerate and turn into the pier?

 

[deicer]

Here is a clearer video from the same perspective.  Further to above, it is interesting that most news outlets have removed the extended clip and only show the moment of impact.

 

[deicer]

 

[PaulD]

According to news services, the ship put out a mayday call prior to impact . It gave a bit of time for authorities to try to close the bridge to traffic. KTLA and AP news.

[deicer]

Thanks for the update!

 

[conehead]

Apparently they lost the propulsion system, causing the loss of control. I'm no naval expert, but couldn't they just drop anchor at that point?

[Malcolm]

1 hour ago, conehead said:

Apparently they lost the propulsion system, causing the loss of control. I'm no naval expert, but couldn't they just drop anchor at that point?

A loss of propulsion would have had an effect on the rudder's ability to steer effectively, Lipian told BI. "If the rudder went out, now the ship's going to be at the mercy of the wind and the currents," he said.

The size of the vessel, even if it was moving slowly, would have created enormous kinetic energy, he said. 95,000 tons

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"There's no brakes on a ship," Lipian added. "You either have to reverse your engines or let it coast, and there's not enough time to drop any anchors."

 

something that large (heavy) takes a lot of stopping.  If power loss was indeed severe I guess power to drop the anchors could (maybe) be also lost.  Maybe our ancient mariner (Kip) will comment. 

[conehead]

Surely there must be a manual deployment method of the anchor! Like an alternate landing gear extension in an aircraft, no power required. Kip?  (and don't call me surely! )

[Seeker]

1 hour ago, conehead said:

Surely there must be a manual deployment method of the anchor! Like an alternate landing gear extension in an aircraft, no power required. Kip?  (and don't call me surely! )

I'm certainly no expert on this but my recollection is that when the anchor is dropped that you need 4 to 5 times the lateral distance to depth.  Not only this but the anchor is not dropped while the ship is moving as you overrun it which causes all sorts of problems.  Basically you need to know which way the current is flowing, position the ship so that it's facing up current, stop it and release the anchor.  You can't just throw it out at any time - this would be the equivalent of a car getting in trouble and just grabbing and setting the emer brake and saying "Well, it will come to a stop eventually".

 

[W5]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68670567

Lost power, a mayday call and the crash that brought down a Baltimore bridge

By the time the crew of the Dali, a massive 948ft (289m) container ship realised what was happening, it was already far too late.

The vessel - at the very start of a 27-day journey from the port of Baltimore to Sri Lanka - completely lost power after leaving the port and was hurtling at speed towards the city's iconic Francis Scott Key Bridge.

It was the middle of the night and the crew onboard were pitched into further darkness when the ship's lights suddenly went out.

The vessel was dead: there were no electronics and - crucially - no engine power. They were adrift but powerless to stop what was happening.

 

Multiple alarms rang out as the crew ran unsuccessful tests in a desperate attempt to fix the issue and regain power.

The local pilot onboard the vessel frantically gave orders, telling the crew to steer the rudder hard to port and drop anchor to keep it from drifting starboard.

While an emergency generator is believed to have kicked in, the ship never regained the use of its engines.

The pilots were left with no choice. Shortly before 01:40 AM local time (0540 GMT), they issued a mayday call warning authorities that a collision was imminent.

"There's a ship approaching that has lost their steering," an official with the Maryland Transportation Authority can be heard saying in radio traffic recorded not long after. "Until you've got that under control, we've got to stop all traffic."

Maryland Governor Wes Moore later hailed the crew as "heroes" and said that their quick response "saved lives" because authorities were able to stop the flow of vehicle traffic onto the bridge in the two minutes between the call and the collision.

It did not, however, stop what happened when the Dali slammed into a concrete column on the 1.5-mile (2.4km) bridge, which quickly collapsed, piece by piece, into the dark, cold waters of the state's Patapsco River.

At least six people - all believed to be members of a road crew working on the bridge - remain missing. They are the subject of a massive search and rescue effort in the area which has been complicated by cold and cloudy weather.

Local media has reported that the missing workers are citizens of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. The BBC has not independently confirmed this and has contacted consular authorities for comment. All 22 crew on the ship were Indian - the country is a major player in the global seafaring industry.

 

The dramatic destruction of the bridge - which opened 47 years ago - left many in the city, including Governor Moore, shaken.

"This is a place that is a normal commute route for 30,000 Marylanders every single day. To hear the words 'the Key Bridge has collapsed' is shocking. It's heartbreaking," Mr Moore said at a news conference on Tuesday.

"For over 47 years, it is all that we've known."

What exactly led to the loss of power on board the Dali remains unclear.

 

Jennifer Homendy, the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board said that investigators would now seek to examine data from a voyage data recorder.

"It's a critical piece of our investigation," she said, adding that for now, the probe remains "about people".

"It's about families and addressing the needs of those that were impacted."

As the sun rose over Baltimore on Tuesday warning, residents of the diverse and strongly working-class areas near the bridge expressed shock at the scene they had woken up to.

"I felt it…the whole house shook," John Flansburg, who lives near the water told the BBC. "Today's not going to be a good day. A lot of tragedy."

 

Another area resident, Darlene Irwin, said that she first knew there was a problem when she heard a "rumbling sound".

Hours later, the scale of the destruction became apparent when she looked out her window at the Patapsco River. The massive cargo ship, carrying at least 3,000 containers, was wedged between the debris of the collapsed bridge.

By then, the entire area had become the scene of a massive search and rescue effort, with police boats criss-crossing the river and police and Coast Guard helicopters flying overhead.

At a local school, two US military UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters were parked in a sports field, their camouflage-clad pilots and crew milling next to the aircraft.

 

"To see it now in the daylight," Ms Irwin said, "It is just tragic."

While officials have repeatedly stressed that their focus remains on the search for the missing, experts have warned that the incident could also have a significant impact on the port of Baltimore, one of the busiest on the US east coast.

Maryland Senator Ben Cardin told reporters that the re-opening of the waterway would be "critical" for the US economy.

The port is a key regional hub for goods ranging from steel and aluminum to agricultural equipment, and is used by car-makers including General Motors and Honda. Data from the Maryland Port Administration shows the port handled at least 750,000 vehicles last year.

"This will disrupt vessel schedules and strain handling capacities at other ports such as Philadelphia and Norfolk," said Mirko Woitzik, global director of intelligence for Everstream Analytics, which provides supply-chain services.

 

"[This could] lead to spillover congestion and delays that could last month."

Speaking at the White House on Tuesday, US President Joe Biden - who said he'd commuted over the bridge "many, many times" between his home state of Delaware and Washington - vowed to "move heaven and earth" to re-open the bridge.

"We're going to spend all the federal resources they need as we respond to this emergency," he said. "And we're going to rebuild that port together."

Mr Biden added that 15,000 US jobs "depend on that port."

 

Officials have so far declined to comment on any potential timeline for that to happen.

Authorities say that, for now, they are fully focused on the search and rescue operation.

Mr Moore, for his part, said only that the recovery process "will not be short". Baltimore, he acknowledged, was facing a "long road" after the collapse.

This is not the first time the Dali has been involved in an incident.

According to Vessel Finder, a tracking website, the ship was involved in another collision in the Belgian port of Antwerp in 2016. There were no injuries or significant damage reported at the time.

 

As night fell on Tuesday, the ship and its load of 3,000 containers remained on the Patapsco River, its nose stuck between the mangled debris of the bridge it brought down in seconds.

[Airband]

Speculation aplenty, and will add some more with this video and accompanying comment on it:

 

'When a ship leaves port there is a requirement to start stand-by generators for the duration of the voyage out.

But sometimes there are other issues, a switch board failure, or auto-control issue and you can lose the lot.

Everything goes off-line and the main engines shut down automatically because they have no feed pumps for fuel, lube oil and air.

The emergency generator will usually start - a small diesel housed on the upper deck, usually behind the bridge. It gives enough power for the nav gear and some ventilation and enough power to enable the engineers to get the rest of the gear back online. 

That is probably driving the lights we see come back on but not as many as before. The engineers then go round the engine room and control room and manually switch all the gear back on. That can take some time.

But because of the emergency the engineers in this case would have to make a decision to start the main engines immediately to go emergency full astern possibly without supporting pumps and almost certainly of some engine damage. 

Black smoke is always a sign of incomplete combustion. the massive pumps that supply air to the engine room would be off-line and so the engines would be gasping for air. The fuel would burn but without enough air hence the black smoke. 

In full-astern mode the rudder would be useless. 

I really hope the anchor team got off the foredeck before the bridge came down on top of them.'

[Malcolm]

15 hours ago, Airband said:

Speculation aplenty, and will add some more with this video and accompanying comment on it:

 

'When a ship leaves port there is a requirement to start stand-by generators for the duration of the voyage out.

But sometimes there are other issues, a switch board failure, or auto-control issue and you can lose the lot.

Everything goes off-line and the main engines shut down automatically because they have no feed pumps for fuel, lube oil and air.

The emergency generator will usually start - a small diesel housed on the upper deck, usually behind the bridge. It gives enough power for the nav gear and some ventilation and enough power to enable the engineers to get the rest of the gear back online. 

That is probably driving the lights we see come back on but not as many as before. The engineers then go round the engine room and control room and manually switch all the gear back on. That can take some time.

But because of the emergency the engineers in this case would have to make a decision to start the main engines immediately to go emergency full astern possibly without supporting pumps and almost certainly of some engine damage. 

Black smoke is always a sign of incomplete combustion. the massive pumps that supply air to the engine room would be off-line and so the engines would be gasping for air. The fuel would burn but without enough air hence the black smoke. 

In full-astern mode the rudder would be useless. 

I really hope the anchor team got off the foredeck before the bridge came down on top of them.'

Baltimore bridge latest: Investigators retrieve container ship's data recorder - BBC News

01:58 - Source: CNN

CNN — 

A massive cargo ship plowed into Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge early Tuesday, causing the 1.6-mile structure to crumble like a pile of toothpicks – plunging cars and people into the frigid water below. Six people are presumed dead, a Coast Guard official said at a news conference Tuesday evening.

Here’s what we know about the catastrophe:

Why did the bridge collapse?

Shortly before 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, a Singaporean-flagged container vessel called DALI struck one of the 47-year-old bridge’s pillars, officials said.

 

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The local pilot of the ship did “everything that he could have done” to slow the ship and keep it from drifting toward the bridge, Clay Diamond, executive director and general counsel of the American Pilots Association, told CNN.

 

RELATED ARTICLEShip’s crew warned of power issues before it collided with a Baltimore bridge, governor says; 6 remain missing

“Just minutes before the bridge, there was a total blackout on the ship, meaning that the ship lost engine power and electrical power, it was a complete blackout,” Diamond said.

The pilot then did “everything that he could have done” to both slow the ship down and keep it from drifting to the right, toward the bridge, he added.

The pilot quickly gave a string of orders, calling for a hard rudder to port –- as far left as possible -– and for an anchor to be dropped.

[Malcolm]

The ship, which hit the bridge just before 1:30 a.m., was the DALI, a Singaporean-flagged container vessel, Coast Guard spokesperson Kimberly Reaves said. It’s about 984-feet long and 157-feet wide, Synergy Group spokesman Pat Adamson told CNN. It was leaving Baltimore when it crashed, according to the company website.

Previously, the US Coast Guard reported it was a 948-foot container ship.

The ship dropped its anchors as part of an emergency procedure before hitting the bridge, the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore told CNN. The vessel is currently holding its position at the site of the collision and is in a stable condition and all 22 of the ship’s crew members are safe and accounted for, the agency added.