Video of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore, Maryland (CW: Likely deaths involved)

Prior to the ship hitting the support column, you can see it lose power, then regain power, then thick smoke starts billowing out the top, then it loses power again, and regains power again seconds before contact.

Could the bridge have been engineered to be strong enough to survive an impact by a >100k ton ship? Maybe, but it seems like better backup and emergency systems on these huge ships might be a more practical idea. Obviously we are still very light on information.

I think they usually build artificial islands around bridge columns so ships will run aground before hitting the column itself.
- They do if they're required by law to, otherwise way waste the money on things like preventative safety measures.
- the dont have to tho .. its a free country !
- Yeah, they're called dolphins They can be seen in the video near power pylons. However none were deemed necessary to protect the bridge itself apparently.
There should be tugs that could at least push it off of a direct collision course
- Mr. Musk please invent an AI powered tug to guide these ships that will also say the N word
- Unless you invent a self driving tug, that's not really feasible
The bridge could've had some dolphins

jesus

also this bridge is a massively important part of keeping the entire east coast functioning. the tragedy of the people who were on it is obviously more important, but this is a massive disaster, like holy shit. the number of people this bridge is important to?

Reminds me of how
talks about the social value of bridges in bullshit jobs
Redundancy and overflow management is communism
It’s a major artery for Baltimore traffic. It’s going to massively fuck traffic patterns for the city for the foreseeable future. I’m very thankful that this happened at 1:30, because of that hit during morning rush hour, so many more people would’ve lost their lives.
- It’s going to massively fuck traffic patterns for the city for the foreseeable future.
  5-10 years if they can even bother to try and rebuild it, or permanently if they cancel the project half way through which is entirely possible if they decide it's already killed the businesses and life of the city in a few years.
America bombs Russia and Palestine I could care less, its karma.
- Ah yes, a night-shift construction worker in Baltimore trying to feed and house themself and their family deserves to pay for America's foreign policy.
- I wish I could believe in karma, because America deserves far, far, FAR more than this.
- Frank Sobotka didn't die so you could spit on his grave like this.
- So youre a catholic then

There is no bridge in the world that would withstand a direct hit to a support by a container ship.

i did some napkin math and found it to be ~426 billion Newtons of force hitting that bridge, the equivalent to 850,000 miatas hitting the bridge at 60mph. a 100,000 Ton ship moving roughly at 8 knots with a very sudden stop. A crazy amount of force to be applied to a structure that is primarily intended on supporting a road from totally different forces
Most bridges have these however https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin_(structure)
I have a high school understanding of bridge mechanics but how did a hit on one side make the whole thing fall? Can bridges be given supports to be secure if one section is damaged ?
By high school understanding, we had to build bridges out of sugar cubes or popsicle sticks that could support a heavy load.
- whole bridge didn't fall. It hit a central support column that holds up both sides & a good chunk of it collapsed. The bridge is over a mile long so the videos make it seem like the entire bridge fell but that is only a section of it.
- The bridge requires an even amount of weight to be on each pylon. If one pylon goes down all the weight shifts to the other and the whole thing goes down.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_truss_bridge

I wonder if the chuds will blame TikTok and trans people for this, and not like, the state of their Empire

the Baltimore Sun is linking the incident with local trans YouTuber ContraPoints
- I'm no fan of adventurism or accelerationism, but glad to see Contra is finally actually doing something.
- damn she hates nonbinary people enough to do terrorism?
Local trans people are just too damn cute and I can't keep myself from staring.
Well I saw a blue check on Twitter say the shipping company does DEI and that anti-whiteness is to blame for the incident
There's a bunch of people screaming about DEI in the twitter thread lol. That, ukrainians, China and Joe Biden false flag. Also some libs going "WHY DIDN'T THE ENGINEERS MAKE THE BRIDGE UNCOLLAPSABLE WHEN HIT BY A SHIP" to mock people suggesting that maybe they should've constructed dolphins or something like that.
- I refuse to see anything on twitter anymore, especially since nitter was killed
  liberal politics is deeply unserious, all these chuds and libs screaming about nonsense when it's clear it was because a massive ship hit a bridge.

8 years ago, the bridge was called "structurally deficient", although I don't know if anything changed since then.

It was called one of Amerika's scariest bridges for truckers 3 years ago. People have called it "high and tight".

20 workers were actively doing bridge repair as it was knocked down
- Good to know. Really sad for those workers. I hope they're OK.

Real annoying how the only posts with any information beyond this are coming from the most MAGA chud accounts imaginable. Serves me right for using Elon's hellsite.

Companies will crash a boat into a bridge before giving organized labor an inch, huh?
What about my sex arses? I can't have them stuck on a container ship for a second time!
- destroyed flat arses

it was hit by a

'Mass casualty incident' as US bridge hit by ship collapses into river
A bridge in the US city of Baltimore has entirely collapsed into the Patapsco River after being hit by a container ship
Up to 20 people and several vehicles have fallen into the river, says Baltimore City Fire Department who are currently at the scene
The fire department says a large vessel hit a column of the Francis Scott Key Bridge at around 01:30 ET (05:30 GMT)
Videos on social media appear to show the bridge entirely descending into the water
A number of casualties have been reported and there is now a large multi-agency rescue and recovery operation under way

This ship rammed the bridge pillar:

300 metres long, fully loaded so around 115.000 tons

Write national anthem for country
Country names bridge after me
Bridge collapses
I'm a metaphor or something

Calling it now, the rescue operation will be a shitshow and cops will get in the way

My hot take is this shouldn’t be possible to occur as an accident during normal operations. Either the bridge is dilapidated or poorly designed, or ships that large should not be allowed under it.

Shit like this will occur with increasing frequency in America, and it will be normalized as an unavoidable, just like mass shootings.

No bridge is going to be designed to take a direct hit from a container ship. This is a multi level failure of the ship and the tugs.
- I would think that bridges should have redundancy such that taking out a single support doesn’t cause total failure. Idk I’m not an entomologist
- Most bridges have safety precautions to avoid a head on collision however.
- Maybe America shouldnt be so reliant on its waterways to transport treats?
The bridge was opened in 1977. I believe loaded cargo ships have gotten much more massive since then. Does that mean the bridge could withstand getting hit by a standard 70s cargo ship? I don’t know. That doesn’t invalidate the point that a cargo ship that size should be crossing it - but these massive container ships are what drive global capitalism. No surprise that they would disregard safety for profit here.

Mr President, a third
has hit the towers

God it's so embarrassing how many online libs are suddenly bridge engineers now and trying to explain away this disaster. Like their only explanation for this is that sometimes massive ships will just hit and collapse bridges and that fine.

Like no reflection on why a 50 year old bridge didn't have any modern protective measures, why massive Panamax ships are apparently seconds away from catastrophic impact every time it passes this thing, how they even let a ship on the verge of a double power failure into the harbor in the first place.

how they even let a ship on the verge of a double power failure into the harbor in the first place.
Is there new news I haven't seen on the root cause of the power failure? cause it likely wasn't obvious. Plus the ship regained power pretty quickly, just not soon enough to stop. I won't be at all surprised if some signs were ignored but I don't think "they've got mechanical issues, bar them from the harbor" would be normal procedure regardless right?
But I agree, it's wild how many people are going "freak accident nothing to see here, nothing we could have done" when there are no protective barriers around the main piers, and this is like a known problem for decades that could easily have been solved, and should have been, for a bridge near a busy port
- there is no alternative
  there is no alternative
  there is no alternative

Reported on the top of Reddit as an “incident” that closed the bridge.

They can’t turn off the propaganda switch. It’s stuck in the on position.

Vaxxed?

The bridge took 25 vaccines

am i wrong to think this is going to become a major point down the road? from what I hear, it's a lot of Midwest US that's getting impacted due to the effect this will have on shipping, which feels like one of those things that becomes a catalyst for some greater economic/political tension down the road

not to talk over the loss of life or anything here, it's a tragedy in of itself

I know nothing about driving(?) boats, let alone a massive shipping container, but how the fuck does this happen. Captain have a few drinks or what?

It's not uncommon for these huge ships to temporarily lose power when going slowly like this, either from age, poor maintenance, or engines that just don't like being at low RPM for that long
The problem is, a few seconds of power loss at the wrong time gets you this
- Oh great, everything working as intended then
- That’s crazy. I’m surprised this doesn’t happen more often then.
- I'm sorry you mean to tell me a few seconds of power losses is all it takes? I'd get like 10 or 15 minutes or whatever adrift but a few seconds is all that stands between clearing the bridge and just fucking taking it out?
For what it's worth, this ship would have been controlled by a pilot from the port itself - when big ships enter ports a professional harbor pilot gets ferried out to them and does all the driving as they're familiar with the port.
- That is such a nepotism rich job. I've first hand seen the big adult failsons that barely supervise the bridge pilot their own vessels in while collecting tens of thousands of dollars. For the military at least it's just a little noticed financial grift.
Dali 'lost propulsion' before hitting bridge
An unclassified memo from the government agency CISA - the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency - has confirmed that the Singapore-flagged vessel Dali "lost propulsion" and collided with "a supporting tower of the bridge".
It looks like the rudder got stuck and they were unable to move it.
Container ships are massive. I don't know about the culture aboard Singaporean ships, but there's a bunch that have people overworked and understimulated which leads to them getting drunk and falling asleep on deck. "Drunk russian sailors crash into bridge" used to be a meme for a reason. On top of that ships are heavy as fuck and they're going in water so they'll just drift. Add in weird currents, having to dodge other ships, maybe a bowthruster that's fucked beyond usage and a couple other minor issues and you've got a recipe for an issue.
It's rare for these issues to culminate into problems in a port though, because the ship has to be sailed by a local navigator - a pilot who knows the waters (and someone we can trust not be too fucked up).

Jesus Christ that looks awful

another w for buttigeige

I feel sick looking at that.

I saw a post about this less than an hour after it happened.

Infrastructure decay in the US has been something to be concerned about for awhile, but when I first saw it my first reaction was from a new kind of horror that will only get worse:

My first thought was that it was AI. The post I saw was written in a way that felt like AI bros excited about their new toy, what it could do, trying to bring the horrors it creates to relevancy by creating a fake news story.

And after all that, it actually is a real tragedy where real people died.

This plus drama about contrapoints and philosophy tube have filled my Twitter feed with the seemingly ever increasing presence of chuds, who seem to be of a new breed lately on social media, much more aggressive towards all leftists on there then I remember.

Anyway, it's hell world

Sorry but what would lead you to believe this Is AI?
- The context of social media feeds, this has been more of a problem on Instagram, there's a 50/50 an image that initially looks interesting is AI or real but on a page that thinks any buildings made before the 20th century were built by aliens.
  That and catastrophic engineering failures are commonly rendered enough that a leap to AI seems reasonable. And the poster basically accompanied the video with saying "poggers"
What's up with philosophy tube?
- https://hexbear.net/post/2146783

If it were me I would simply not build a bridge that has no safety precautions against getting rammed by container ships, but I am built different.

I dunno if there's anyrhinf you can do to protect a bridge from that
- Putting some dolphins in place might be a start
- I think modern bridges have artificial islands below the water that larger ships will run into, although I don't think those would have done anything against a loaded 300 meter ship like that.

Port of Baltimore being sorta closed down seems like a bit of an issue for the treat machine no? Anyone have any idea what the knock on effects of this might look like?

its not the biggest port so its capacity can probably be absorbed. Seems like vehicle deliveries are the biggest single item everyone's talking about, so maybe expect some disruption there, and the higher rates/slower deliveries of some other cargo might trickle down into consumer prices a little