Baltimore Bridge

[jeffspuds]

I vote for diddduummms to be head of all maritime seems to know his stuff

 

[Werewolf]

One thing I don't understand is, why didn't the tower holding the bridge have protection piers (or whatever they are called) around it like most other large bridges in shipping lanes have to protect against this kind of thing ?

100-200 thousand tons of ship.

You're going to need protection piers that are absolutely massive to have a hope of stopping it, and you're going to need them all around the supports, which means you've now cut down the usable channel for the ships very significantly.

You hit a certain size of ship/truck/train or whatever where any options for "stopping" it become infeasible, for reasons that go from "it won't stop it" to "it's going to cause bigger problems than it solves".
For example with road barriers, the ones that are best at stopping a 44 ton truck tend to be quite nasty for cars and lethal for bikes, and that's before any consideration of if it's practical to put them down everywhere, let alone the cost and other issues.

These events are so rare that you'd likely increase the number and accidents by putting in big enough protective pillars (as you'd be narrowing the space ships can take), and may not even be possible depending on the geology and flow of the river as if you put huge blocks in the water way you're potentially going to make the water move faster through it (which makes it much harder for ships to navigate as high flow and very confined channels don't go well with big boats), or flooding for miles upriver either immediately or on a regular basis.

 

[jeffspuds]

100-200 thousand tons of ship.

You're going to need protection piers that are absolutely massive to have a hope of stopping it, and you're going to need them all around the supports, which means you've now cut down the usable channel for the ships very significantly.

You hit a certain size of ship/truck/train or whatever where any options for "stopping" it become infeasible, for reasons that go from "it won't stop it" to "it's going to cause bigger problems than it solves".

These events are so rare that you'd likely increase the number and accidents by putting in big enough protective pillars (as you'd be narrowing the space ships can take), and may not even be possible depending on the geology and flow of the river as if you put huge blocks in the water way you're potentially going to make the water move faster through it (which makes it much harder for ships to navigate as high flow and very confined channels don't go well with big boats), or flooding for miles upriver either immediately or on a regular basis.

Absolutely no chance of stopping that have a look at how many containers and the ship's weight just to give it compulsion.

Shame it is but no chance of stopping it

 

[Trusty]

They are footing the bill to get it rebuilt faster, the shipping company insurance will still have to pay out but that takes ages and may be years of litigation.

You'd think a loan then in that case, rather than actually footing the bill.

 

[jeffspuds]

You'd think a loan then in that case, rather than actually footing the bill.

Federal bank or reserve or the same.

 

[EH75]

My main interest is in the ship's maintenance.

When the power went out, there were no external emergency lights to be seen. I'd have thought that if a ship suffered a total loss of power, that several battery systems would come online and light it up to prevent other vessels at sea crashing in to it, and if it suffered a breach, to light up the path to the lifeboats. Yet it just went totally dark, like a ghost ship. Going by the power repeatedly coming on and off in the short clip we've seen, it's possible that this ship was struggling for some time and that the ATS couldn't take it any more and packed up.

I'd also like to know how a ship of this size managed to get itself in to this situation in the first place. The amount of safety and alarm systems in place to prevent this exact type of scenario taking place would have had to be immense, unless it's a 40 year old 3rd world vessel running on 10p coins. That captain's deck will likely have lit up like a Christmas tree several times before getting to this point. And I don't mean in the last few minutes, I mean the last few days, if not weeks.

The investigation is certainly going to be interesting, I suspect we're going to see a company cutting corners, ignoring engineers, and forcing their staff to continue sailing despite the obvious warnings.

You are correct in that there should be lighting and various other systems on UPS (uninteruptsble power supply) batteries which should stay on, then an emergency generator should kick in to power various other systems after a set period of time. I can't remember the exact details off the top of my head but there's a lot of regulation about this sort of stuff and it all has to be tested regularly.

In terms of advance warning, not really. I was on a ship where we lost power and it came pretty much out of the blue. A gasket failed on a steam line that happened to be located in the same room as a lot of critical electrical components. Didn't know that was going to happen until all the smoke alarms in the space started to go off as the room filled with steam. That was a fun evening. Luckily we were in the open sea in good weather but if we had been in the same place as that container ship then something similar could've happened.

You'd be amazed how often thing go wrong on ship, just mostly it happens far from land and so there are no real consequences. Unfortunately when there are consequences, they tend to be big.

 

[dowie]

100-200 thousand tons of ship.

You're going to need protection piers that are absolutely massive to have a hope of stopping it, and you're going to need them all around the supports, which means you've now cut down the usable channel for the ships very significantly.

You hit a certain size of ship/truck/train or whatever where any options for "stopping" it become infeasible, for reasons that go from "it won't stop it" to "it's going to cause bigger problems than it solves".

You don't need to stop it you just need to deflect it, various bridges do actually have this sort of protection and in the case of the Baltimore bridge there appear to be some other poles in the water in front of the bridge that are protected, sadly the bridge itself isn't.

 

[plasmahal]

You are correct in that there should be lighting and various other systems on UPS (uninteruptsble power supply) batteries which should stay on, then an emergency generator should kick in to power various other systems after a set period of time. I can't remember the exact details off the top of my head but there's a lot of regulation about this sort of stuff and it all has to be tested regularly.

In terms of advance warning, not really. I was on a ship where we lost power and it came pretty much out of the blue. A gasket failed on a steam line that happened to be located in the same room as a lot of critical electrical components. Didn't know that was going to happen until all the smoke alarms in the space started to go off as the room filled with steam. That was a fun evening. Luckily we were in the open sea in good weather but if we had been in the same place as that container ship then something similar could've happened.

You'd be amazed how often thing go wrong on ship, just mostly it happens far from land and so there are no real consequences. Unfortunately when there are consequences, they tend to be big.

Speculation, what if it was fire related or some sort of explosion. Something that delay/prevent back up systems kicking in properly.

 

[EH75]

Speculation, what if it was fire related or some sort of explosion. Something that delay/prevent back up systems kicking in properly.

Could be. You get a fire in the wrong place then you could black out definitely. As you say though, its all speculation until they investigate. Only people that know what happened are those on board and even they might not be sure what caused it at this point.

 

[Chuk_Chuk]

You don't need to stop it you just need to deflect it, various bridges do actually have this sort of protection and in the case of the Baltimore bridge there appear to be some other poles in the water in front of the bridge that are protected, sadly the bridge itself isn't.

I think deflecting would be just as hard if not harder, since you don’t know the direction of travel.

 

[arknor]

Hopefully the Internet Historian will do a video on it , once enough time passes that its not considered disrespectful
The cruise ship one was good

 

[Hotwired]

Aight who's going to name a bridge that's been engineered to withstand a 200,000 ton cargo ship strike on a support.

 

[dowie]

I think deflecting would be just as hard if not harder, since you don’t know the direction of travel.

You don't need to know the direction of travel (though you'd have a reasonable idea from both directions) it's still easier (requires less force) than stopping it.

 

[Dis86]

I think deflecting would be just as hard if not harder, since you don’t know the direction of travel.

You have a pretty good idea on the direction of travel in rivers and estuaries...

 

[The Funktopus]

“Chief, what does this breaker d-“

 

[Dis86]

“Chief, what does this breaker d-“

Seen that before too!

 

[Barry Smalley]

Ships can blackout all the time. When that ship was on pilotage the electrical supply would have been coming from at least two auxiliary engines which would have powered its bow/stern thrusters which are used for manoeuvring as well as its general electrical supply.

If it then has a main switchboard failure, the emergency generator should start and supply power - this cannot supply power to heavy consumers such as bow thrusters but can run steering gear. I’ve not seen the videos but it sounds to me like it has had a main switchboard failure and the emergency set may not have started or by the time it has (they start in seconds), the ship my have already been badly off track due to current, tide, etc. The flickering lights would be an indication of loosing power and then regaining power from one switchboard to switchboard.

 

[Chuk_Chuk]

You don't need to know the direction of travel (though you'd have a reasonable idea from both directions) it's still easier (requires less force) than stopping it.

You need to know the direction of travel because with that you can calculate the angle of impact.

To deflect an object you must stop its velocity it one direction and then accelerate it in another direction.

A low angle of impact (probably less than 15 degrees basically glancing past the barrier) would indeed require far less energy than trying to stop it. However as the angle increases so does the energy requirement and at a certain angle the energy requirement to deflect the ship would exceed the energy just to stop it.

my comment about direction of travel was more so, that those waters are quite open and the exact approach angle of any ship can differ as there is no physical object/barrier that forces them to stay on a certain course.

 

[The Funktopus]

Seen that before too!

The classic trick is to wait for someone to try and sync a generator to the board, and just as they click connect in the IAS or close the breaker if doing it from the switchboard room, flick the light switch off. The initial look of horror, followed by fury when they realise what happened, is something truly to behold.

 

[adam cool dude]

They are footing the bill to get it rebuilt faster, the shipping company insurance will still have to pay out but that takes ages and may be years of litigation.

The private companies are going to be licking their lips to get this contract to rebuild the bridge. All the cows at once have come home to be milked.