A portion of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore has collapsed after a large boat collided with it early on Tuesday morning, sending multiple vehicles into the water.
At about 1.30am, a vessel crashed into the bridge, catching fire before sinking and causing multiple vehicles to fall into the water below, according to a video posted on X.
“All lanes closed both directions for incident on I-695 Key Bridge. Traffic is being detoured,” the Maryland Transportation Authority posted on X.
Matthew West, a petty officer first class for the coastguard in Baltimore, told the New York Times that the coastguard received a report of an impact at 1.27am ET. West said the Dali, a 948ft (29 metres) Singapore-flagged cargo ship, had hit the bridge, which is part of Interstate 695.
All lanes closed both directions for incident on I-695 Key Bridge
All lanes no longer in existence on I-695 Key Bridge.
They’re still in existence, just a little wetter than usual.
That’s not very typical, I’d like to make that point.
Well how is it untypical?
What about the environmental impact?
For the uninitiated:
It didn’t just collapse ‘after’ being hit. It was destroyed by the collision.
Well yeah, I don’t see how it’s wrong to say it collapsed after being hit by a cargo ship.
I have to agree, if the headline says, “Man dies after drinking Drano,” nobody is under the impression it was a coincidence.
Well that looks expensive
The scale doesn’t even come across in the video.
That bit you see collapse is half a mile long.
half a mile long
I think you mistyped this. It was a mile and a half long.
The bridge is just gone now, one tap and the whole thing fell like dominos!
It would say most construction projects rely on a boat not ramming into it
Boat hills can’t melt steel beams
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_Skyway_Bridge
The southbound span (opened in 1971) of the original bridge was destroyed on the morning of May 9, 1980, when the 606 ft (185 m) freighter MV Summit Venture collided with a support column during a sudden squall, causing the catastrophic failure of over 1,200 ft (370 m) of the span.
Governor Bob Graham’s idea to build a “signature” cable-stayed bridge with a span that would be 50% wider than that of the old Skyway Bridge won out over other proposals. In addition to a wider shipping lane, the channel would be marked by a 1⁄4 mi (400 m)-long series of large concrete barriers, and the support piers would be protected by massive concrete “dolphins”.
Florida apparently isn’t relying on that anymore.
Those constructions rely on all parts being where they are, otherwise the whole thing collapses. You’d need a different kind of bridge for the single stretches to be independent.
It’s bad enough that the transportation infrastructure is falling apart across the country due to poor maintenance. But when the bridge was built in the 1970s, I don’t think container ships that big even existed. It’s the same problem with old roads and modern cars or old airports and modern jets.
I hope that whatever replaces the Key Bridge is designed to fail in segments and take a good beating before it does.
That would be extremely expensive. I think that money would be better spent toward getting ships to not hit the bridge at all.
Just to illustrate the point, this is no “tap”. A cargo ship like that hitting something is about the same momentum as 14 loaded Boeing 787s hitting something at 800 km/h, simultaneously.
283 million pound “tap”
holy shit. I’ve been getting alerts about it, but that video is so much worse than I imagined.
That doesn’t look like a little repair, which is what I had assumed. That looks like the ship’s insurer is buying Baltimore a new bridge.
googles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Scott_Key_Bridge_(Baltimore)
The main span of 1,200 feet (366 m) was the third longest span of any continuous truss in the world. It
Smooth.
The bridge, at an estimated cost of $110 million
Construction of the Outer Harbor Bridge began in 1972, several years behind schedule and $33 million overbudget.
So $143 million in 1972 dollars…
https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/
$1.06 billion in 2024 dollars.
I am guessing these liability limits are for the cargo, not any damage caused by the ship. If shippers had to ensure everything they shipped for “storms and pirates” in the 1800’s, then they probably wouldn’t be able to do business. So there is a limit to what shippers would owe their clients if a ship got captured or wrecked. Those clients would need their own insurance if they wanted to be made whole in the event of a catastrophe.
What happens next is likely to be the result if the investigation. If this was a freak mechanical failure, and the boat’s maintenance was otherwise up to date, then maybe the State won’t be able to go after the boat’s owners. But if there’s any inkling that there was negligence in the maintenance of the boat, or in the piloting of it, the the State is going to go after the company for all it can. Depending on what they find, there might even be criminal charges.
I am guessing these liability limits are for the cargo, not any damage caused by the ship
The article about the treaty is explicitly talking about damage to things ships hit:
Under the 1976 Convention, the limit of liability for claims covered is raised considerably, in some cases up to 250-300 per cent. Limits are specified for two types of claims - claims for loss of life or personal injury, and property claims (such as damage to other ships, property or harbour works).
Ok, I stand corrected then. They’re gonna have to sell a lot of crab cakes to fix that bridge…
the liability of the owner or owners of any ship or vessel … shall in no case exceed the amount or value of the interest of such owner or owners respectively, in such ship or vessel, and her freight then pending".
I think that’s probably way more than $39 million.
The Ever Given that got stuck in the Suez Canal was worth about $125 million carrying about $600 million in cargo. It had a capacity of 20,000 TEU (twenty foot equivalent units).
This MV Dali has a capacity of about 10,000 TEU and was carrying 4700 containers. I think no matter how you slice it, the value of the ship and its cargo would be in the hundreds of millions.
Feds are going to pay for it
US uses law even more favorable to the shipowner.
Color me surprised.
I appreciate the research and sources you’ve listed here. Its quite interesting from an impact perspective.
Ahhh yes corporate arbitration lawyers. They shall be among the first to be flayed in the uprising.
There was a live-stream where you can scrub to the minute where the bridge is gone (1:28:43 by the time-stamp inside of the video, not the YT timestamp). The Ship apparently lost all the lights 2-3 times shortly before impact. Maybe it was a problem with that. We also noticed a lot of hacking activities in the last weeks. Maybe it was that.
Better to wait for more details to come out than to speculate wildly.
Yeah, not everything bad that happens is intentional despite how much some people want that to be the case.
Idk I’m going with space lasers and you can’t convince me otherwise.
FBI confirms not an act of terrorism rn
A guy at work showed me the footage on his phone. Whatever shit news site he was pulling from had the headline, “DEI focus by The transportation department under Pete buttigiege results in bridge collapse”.
They didn’t even wait half a day to start lying.
Sigh.
Here’s a quick take on the cause of the crash:
. Ship power cut off and the pilot panicked and threw engines into reverse (as seen by engine exhaust) . ‘Prop walk’ turned the ship starboard into the bridge supportIt doesn’t look like it was lined up right to begin with.
It was. Just a weird angle on the camera.
Wow, that was a wild shot of the collapse.
will this close down one of the biggest ports on the East Coast?
As soon as the investigation is finished, they’ll get on removing the debris. That area has no shortage of transportation engineering companies. I’m sure people from the governor’s and mayor’s respective offices are already reaching out to line up inspections and eventual bids. Once the investigation is over, their top goal will be getting the port opened up.
They aren’t going to wait for an investigation.
Yes, and they won’t for the moment.
Yeah DOT confirmed the port of Baltimore is closed to sea traffic, local truck traffic from port is still active so the closure won’t be felt immediately. But it will be significant the longer it’s closed. 9th largest port in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Baltimore
Currently, the port has major ro-ro (roll-on roll-off) facilities and bulk facilities, especially steel handling. The port handles around 700,000 vehicles annually. Most Mercedes-Benz cars that are imported into the U.S were handled here as well in 2004.
The Port handles one-fourth of the country’s coal exports.
Yeah they won’t get by, in bound traffic will reroute to Norfolk, Philadelphia and NY until a plan is in place. I would guess they have the channel open in 2 weeks or less.
A portion? That looks like the entire thing dropped.
Everything in camera collapsed, but the whole thing was 1.6 miles.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Scott_Key_Bridge_(Baltimore)
Ah I see!
Why is he listed as “amateur poet” if his work was so famous that we named a bridge after him 130 years posthumously.
Francis Scott Key famously wrote the lyrics for the Star Spangled Banner. But professionally, he was a lawyer. :)
That was pretty much the whole thing, looking at a Google Earth image of the thing:
That sounds like a traffic armageddon around Baltimore for the next few years…
Not just Baltimore. This is also a major cargo port. That harbor will be blocked for a long time. Get ready for supply chain disruptions and more rising prices.
The AP article says the exact opposite, that it is in fact not a major cargo port.
Port of Baltimore is top ten in the US for international trade. It falls to top 20 when domestic shipping is included, but it’s absolutely a major port.
Vehicles from Europe coming via ROROs come to Baltimore primarily. This will impact them as diverting to Jacksonville or Savannah is going through take a lot of landside logistics to figure out.
I doubt the harbor will be blocked that long, maybe a week or so at most.
Good luck finding the necessary crane capacity. There are a handful of seriously big cranes in the 7000 tons plus range, but they are Dutch or Japanese, primarily. Wherever they are, they are probably busy and will take ages to get there. While the weight/mass of the bridge is not available online, it surely exceeds the weight limits of cranes currently in existence by far, so the bridge segments need to be cut up prior to removal.
Even if the US spends insane amounts of money, this issue will take quite some time to resolve.
The Left Coast Lifter is in NY and can be on site in about 24-30 hours depending on currents going up Delaware Bay. It can make picks up to approx 1,600 tons, it would laugh at what the Key bridge weighs.
At a 1,600 tons limit, one would have to cut the debris into a lot of small pieces. There is no info on the net on how much mass the Key bridge had, but assuming the build and the size, half a million tons is probably not to far off.
You’re not lifting it out of the way, you’re gonna pull it out of the way with a tugboat.
It still is thousands of tons of steel, which will not be pulled that easily. And it is steel that does not swim, but drag along the muddy ground.
You cut it into pieces, add some buoyancy things. Naval operations can be impressive. Hell the Navy probably already has stuff to do this exact thing in case of war and a bridge out of Port gets destroyed. You don’t want your Navy blocked in. You also don’t need to move it far to get shipping back.
The “cut into pieces” will be interesting. There are a shitload of large pieces, and everything is under tension. The links between the pieces are rather large, and a good amount of them are under water. That’s going to be serious work.
some buoyancy things
I get the distinct impression that you have zero engineering knowledge or experience.
Feels like an army corps of engineer training exercise, especially after Biden committed to help rebuild. Be really interesting engineering coming out of both the cleanup, rebuild, and post accident analysis.
That’s a crime scene and a death scene. It’s not going to go quickly. The good news is that it’s a critical roadway and waterway intersection so the feds and state government have motivation to make haste.
The accident didn’t happen in the middle of the navigable channel, so you can maintain the pier and ship while clearing the main span.
As for being a death scene, you likely aren’t going to be able to access the site with divers as it is too dangerous.
Except there is no mystery as to the deaths part. Investigations take a lot of time when there are a lot of questions. The only question here is “why did the boat plow straight into the bridge?”. There’s very little question how/why the bridge collapsed(it got hit directly by a massive cargo ship). No one’s going to question the physics of it. The only question will be “was it captain error or ship error so we know who to fine”. Recovering the ship will be part of answering that and the rest will be communication and maintenance logs.
There’s very little question how/why the bridge collapsed(it got hit directly by a massive cargo ship).
I recently – in the context of IS being in the somewhat bizzare situation of having to argue with the Russian government that they did in fact commit their terrorist act in Moscow – linked to an old The Onion satirical video. It dated to a bit after 9/11 and had the Al Qaeda representative being interviewed – irate at the 9/11 Truther also on the show, who was claiming that the World Trade Center was downed with thermite bombs – using almost the same phrase:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_OIXfkXEj0
“We flew an enormous airplane into a building, okay? I think it is obvious what caused the building to crumble.”
I think we all know someone who was forced to buy TP on ebay in the early pandemic.
This could send us right back there. Doesn’t much matter why stuff can’t move from A to B, prices will increase and people will take the opportunity to profiteer.
I think we all know someone who was forced to buy TP on ebay in the early pandemic.
No. I don’t know anyone, aside from Internet memes.
You can clear the debris in a week or two. It will take multiple years to build a new bridge.
I had to find a map, yeah, this is going to be a major cluster fuck in the morning. It’s possible to route around it, but the next crossing is aways away:
Hazmats are prohibited in both tunnels. About the only option for those is to go all the way around 695, adding the better part of 50 miles.
I wonder how quickly one can get a RORO ferry up and running? That bridge isn’t gonna be rebuilt any time soon.
No joke, and I bet it was heavily used too… Better jump on those infrastructure dollars!
Even the largest ferry can’t come close to matching the capacity of a 4 lane highway bridge.
Wow really? I totally can’t believe that /s
No doubt. I don’t mean to suggest that it’d eliminate issues.
Just looking at that map makes me crack up as someone from Ireland. Baltimore is a small town here on the south coast of Cork. Dundalk is up in Northern Ireland. Pasadena is a place in California.
I just think it’s funny when America has random place names taken from elsewhere.
If you want a laugh, check out cities in Texas. We have a Moscow, Paris, etc.
As does Maine. I’ve never looked it up, but I think Maine might be the state with the most places named after another place.
It also has a place called Ireland.
Just as long as you stay away from Vidor , you’ll be fine. According to the stories they used to have a billboard that said, “Don’t let the sun set on your black ass.”
I’m not black though, so I think I’ll be fine regardless. But thanks for your concern.
And there’s a Brooklyn Park in Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon, and South Australia.
California is down in St. Mary’s County
Interestingly, there’s a St. Mary’s church there.
And Florida is cold and snowy
Thank your ancestors for that. Couldn’t think up any new names on their way over so they resused a bunch.
Specifically this guy right here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Calvert%2C_2nd_Baron_Baltimore
Thank your ancestors for that.
Well, his ancestors’ cousins, at any rate.
Wait until you find out about Springfield…
You do realize how little that narrows things down.
We have a London in Canada.
Cultural appropriation is US culture. The UK and Ireland were just some of the earliest donor countries.
Seven people likely dead so far. What a horrible, terrifying way to go.
Nah, I’d say that it’s probably fast and even if you’re alive and conscious after you hit the water, you’re gonna drown pretty quickly. Probably one of the better ways to go.
Dying generally isn’t all that pleasant.
Drowning has to be towards the bottom of my list of ways to die
I used to think drowning was the worst until I heard two accounts of people who drowned and were resuscitated. They said it was terribly peaceful. I’m good with it now.
I think you got bad information.
Not trying to defend him, but there are accounts of people who nearly/drowned in freezing water say they had feelings of warmth and euphoria. It’s likely due to shock setting in long before the drowning panic.
I’ve heard this before but it doesn’t make much sense to me.
Dying of a stroke in your sleep sounds peaceful.
Being unable to leave your submerged car because your back is broken, watching freezing water coming in, taking that last breath. Sounds fucking terrifying honestly.
It’s worse than that. People don’t understand what drowning is like at all, it is a terribly unpeaceful way to go. We all tend to think that you run out of air and then suddenly go unconscious but prior to that:
Water will enter your lungs which, fun fact, really don’t like that and so it is apparently extremely painful. It also triggers an involuntary reaction. You are now conscious on adrenaline, with very painful water in your lungs, and have lost all control of your body. Your body will attempt to flail wildly out of control while you suffer until you lose consciousness from lack of air. All of this happens quickly but probably not as quickly as you want it to given the circumstances.
Uh, source? It’s a slow and scary death.
Just anecdotal. I think it was enough to not fear it so much. The recollection is that the bad part is you are fighting to stay alive but when you give in and swallow all of the you get a state of euphoria… so I figure if you’ve got no choice just suck the water in and die happy.
Die happy. Yeah right.
I sincerely doubt that your lungs filling with water would be “euphoric” considering any water in your lungs feels like burning. Even if the last seconds felt nice, you’re discounting the terrifying minute or two of suffocation and panic.
That’s like saying getting stabbed in the chest isn’t a bad way to die because the pain sends you into shock and you pass out before dying
Whatever you tell yourself to help cope with your own anxiety about drowning I guess… I nearly drowned and I can tell you it was not euphoric breathing in water.
This wasn’t just drowning, though. This was drowning after likely sustaining significant impact injuries after hitting the water from many dozens of feet in a vehicle that basically belly-flopped, which is the worst way to impact the water. It’s like hitting concrete from that distance. And then panicking because you’re strapped inside your sinking vehicle.
This was anything but the peaceful drowning scenario you’re referencing that some people have.
Did you hear this in the prestige? Cause it was revealed he was lying
Nope.
Drowning after falling from a great height.
Yeah I would expect vehicle occupants to have serious injuries after a fall like that. Water can be plenty “hard” enough to break your back if you hit it with something flat like a car
I technically drowned when I was 12 and being an idiot ‘riding’ waterfalls. I got sucked into a big crack in a rock and when my friends finally got me out I was clinically dead, and all of my fingernails were ripped in half from trying to claw my way out. All I can remember is abject fear, and then the burning as my lungs gave up.
I would rather die by almost any other means.
Didn’t die but passed out and had water in my lungs, didn’t do same as you but went in the rapids in a river swimming during the summer as a kid, large amount of rain and a tree fell. Got sucked up under it and was trapped between the branches and the river gravel. Burning lungs and my face feeling like it was being drug across a cheese grater is the only thing I remember. Horrifying way to go.
How long were you dead for? How did they make you alive again?
My friends and I all took water rescue courses in cub scouts so they knew how to do mouth to mouth and clear water from lungs. One friend ran for help and the rest pulled me out and two did the mouth to mouth.
The EMTs who ahowed up after I was pulled out said they figured I was ‘gone’ for a minute or so. I don’t really remember the exact details but it was something about the color of my skin that could tell them how long I was without oxygen.
Scary stuff - thanks for sharing the details, and glad you guys had the training!
Navy eod told me drowning feels like your lungs are on fire.
Had a green beret buddy tell me the same thing. He had to go through a pretty intense water survival training, and part of it was “drown-proofing”. Said it was the worst part of his training.
Grandma told me once your lungs fill with water it’s pretty chill. She almost drowned twice.
Reminds me of that story Michael Caine tells in The Prestige.
" Remember that sailor I told you about who got tangled up in the sails and drowned?"
“Yeah, he said it was like going home.”
"I lied… He said it was agony.
This was not a good way to go.
Agreed… They had a bad day.
I’ve heard it was construction workers filling pot holes.
The bridge at crest is around 185 ft off the water, and footage shows the collapse took about 6 seconds where the cars were.
Imagine doing a mind numbing job in the dead of night and then all of a sudden the floor starts dipping below you. The street lights go out a second or two later, and not long after you’re falling for close to 2 seconds. Then either crashing hard into the concrete below you that just parted the water, having a flood of water hit you shortly after. or just jetting directly into freezing cold water.
How the fuck did this happen?
You’re making your regular commute, a bit annoyed with the sudden traffic backup, and then you’re suddenly falling with no warning, then struggling to not drown in your car.
It’s insane how everything can go from normal to terrifying. I hope those who lived through this have help coping, and am sorry for the victims and their families. It’s so tragic.
At least it happened in the very early AM hours when traffic was low and there were no visibility problems, unlike the Sunshine Skyway Bridge.
The fact that it was early morning probably saved hundreds of lives, from what I’m reading
As an Engineer I am looking forward to seeing how this plays out on future construction as well as retrofitting of existing bridges. Not only that, but also Emergency alert systems on cargo ships and maybe a more redundant power set up? But RIP to all those who lost their lives. Tragic.
Man I wouldn’t want to be this boat’s insurance.
This has been a plainly difficult production.
