The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is deploying more than 1,100 personnel to Baltimore, Md., following the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge into the Patapsco River early Tuesday morning, the service said in a statement.
The corps’ Baltimore District has activated its Emergency Operations Center, “clearing the way for more than 1,100 engineering, construction, contracting and operations specialists to provide support to local, state and federal agencies” in clearing the fallen bridge, the Army said in the release.
The Francis Scott Key Bridge, a major bridge in Baltimore, collapsed just seconds after being struck by the Dali, a cargo ship managed by Synergy Marine Group and owned by Grace Ocean Private Ltd, a Singaporean company.
Considering a large portion of my federal taxes (which I actually pay, loser that I am) goes to the military budget regardless of my opinion on the matter, it’s nice to see some small portion of that spent towards a peaceful and necessary task that benefits a great number of innocent people. It won’t benefit me personally, except in the most tangential way if some cross-country package happens to be driven over the replacement bridge. But that’s what government is for, and I don’t mind paying into that pool.
Yeah, the Army Corps of Engineers is pretty great.
In high school, I went to a few summer camps for engineering students, and the USACE always had people there for talks and stuff. They were just some of the most chill and smart people I’ve ever met.
While I’m not against the feds working on this, I would much rather see the company that owned the ship and/or its insurance companies foot the bill for the whole mess. “Personal Responsibility”, that was supposed to be a virtue of some sort I’ve heard. That and “anti-socialism”. Let’s see BigShip corporate types walk the walk here, preferably right off the plank.
The insurance suits are going to take years if not decades, but Baltimore needs a bridge built and port open as soon as possible.
Indeed, the damage done by trying to sort out who might pay is far greater than to get things up and running asap.
We have to do some work so we can put together a bill for them to foot.
Order of operations is important here.
Would you like your bridge built now, by a team that answers to the people who will be using it? Or eventually, begrudgingly, by someone hired to make the least expensive minimum compensation? Hired by the company that couldn’t even maintain their own shit properly?
The bridge can be rebuilt “whenever” as far as I’m concerned. That’s irrelevant. All that I’m saying here is that I want the private parties responsible to foot the bill ultimately. That doesn’t mean work can’t start tomorrow, or next week, or next year, whatever. I’m pretty tired of the BigCorp “socialism for me, not for thee” attitude and don’t want them to get away with it once again.
Then why did you make a remark about the feds working on it? It heavily suggests that you rather want the legal bits sorted out first. Which is going to be “fun”. E.g. there’s a difference between owner and operator.
Maritime law is interesting and often seems illogical. You’re assuming way too much if you think it’s a clear case that the “owners” are legally responsible.
As I said, maritime law is weird.