Mayor says rescue efforts are under way after vessel crashed into Francis Scott Key Bridge, sending vehicles into water

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.

  • sylver_dragon@lemmy.worldEnglish
    14410·
    9 months ago

    The investigation report is going to be interesting. While bridges can only take so much punishment, they are usually designed to survive some collisions with their pylons. I wonder what the state of the bridge was, prior to the collapse. If it’s anything like the rest of the infrastructure in the US, it was probably not good. Though, this may also be a case that the designers in the 70’s planned for a collision with a cargo vessel of the times, which were tiny bath tub boats compared to the super container ships we have now. The Dali was built in 2015 she is a 300m ship capable of carrying 116851 tons. That’s a lot of mass for the pylon and it’s barriers to stop.

    • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1363·
      9 months ago

      I’m pretty sure no bridge is designed to survive a collision with a large cargo ship, even a brand new one. It would balloon the cost so much nobody would be willing to pay it.

      • You999
        641·
        9 months ago

        New bridges are built with protections such as pylons to prevent ships from even getting close to bumping into the bridge after the sunshine skyway bridge collapse of 1980.

        • Socsa
          13·
          9 months ago

          In this case I’m not sure it would have mattered. This wasn’t a bump or a glancing blow. There’s not much which will deflect or absorb that much energy head on.

      • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
        242·
        9 months ago

        I suspect there’ll be a lot of places taking a good long look at their current chunks of concrete they put around bridge supports and wondering how they’d stand up to the monstrous ships that are now the norm.

        This kind of incident may not happen often but it does happen.

    • PrincessLeiasCat
      13·
      9 months ago

      https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/bridge/inspection/

      I think you can look up certain characteristics such as this here, I’ve done it before and exported data into Excel when I was looking into something else. If this isn’t the specific site I apologize, I’m on mobile, but it is publicly available.

      Edit: these links may be better:

      https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/bridge/nbi/element.cfm

      https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/national-bridge-inventory-system-nbi

      https://infobridge.fhwa.dot.gov/Data

      https://geodata.bts.gov/datasets/5e58970e89934e818f38772859addf43_0/explore

    • Telodzrum@lemmy.world
      1054·
      9 months ago

      This is the absolute dumbest shit I’ve seen in a while. And it’s said so confidently, kind of amazing.

        • Telodzrum@lemmy.world
          1220·
          9 months ago

          This structure was hit head on by a laden container ship. Container ships weigh between 50,000 and 200,000 tons depending on size and cargo. There is not a structure capable of being created by man which could sustain that amount of force, head on, and retain its structural integrity.

          Buncha armchair idiots think they know more about bridge construction than civil engineers. Gods, this place is just more and more like Reddit by the minute.

          • drphungky@lemmy.worldEnglish
            101·
            9 months ago

            Kinda crazy how those same construction and civil engineers are going to be investigating if the normal means of protection for this very foreseeable event was done correctly, because we design things to avoid these head on collisions:

            https://wjla.com/features/i-team/questions-investigators-will-be-asking-about-francis-scott-key-bridge-collapse-baltimore-container-ship-collision-port-engineering-economy-shipping-hub

            Also, not for nothing but even if they find out the dolphins in place were sufficient based on prior standards…this event will likely update the standards, same as the sun bridge in the 80s. Regulations and best practices are written in blood.

            • AlexWIWA@lemmy.mlEnglish
              4·
              9 months ago

              People always forget that deflection exists. I don’t know why that guy is hung up on stopping the ship instead of just nudging it forcefully. If we can figure out a way to deflect explosions and sabot rounds, we can deflect a ship.

              • drphungky@lemmy.worldEnglish
                3·
                9 months ago

                Yeah also just the basic concept of sacrificial parts and things designed to wear. The derailleur hanger on your bike, crumple zones in cars, plastic gears in your KitchenAid mixer - lots of engineering practices are designed around shunting failure to a particular piece or in a particular way, to avoid otherwise catastrophic or very expensive damage.

            • Telodzrum@lemmy.world
              15·
              9 months ago

              Oh my god! No way! They’re going to investigate and learn from a rare event! That’s shocking!

              We study things all the time. Your extrapolation that an investigation means something was preventable is evidence that your higher brain function has been damaged.

              • drphungky@lemmy.worldEnglish
                3·
                9 months ago

                You: "There is not a structure capable of being created by man which could sustain that amount of force, head on, and retain its structural integrity.

                Actual engineers in the linked article: literally describe how to build secondary structures to deal with giant ships and prevent head on collisions on bridges.

              • drphungky@lemmy.worldEnglish
                1·
                9 months ago

                I know you stopped responding but I’m piling on because I’m apparently in an impish mood:

                Sherif El-Tawil, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at University of Michigan with expertise in bridges, said if the Key Bridge had been built after those updated standards from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials were put in place, the span could still be standing.

                “I believe it would have survived,” El-Tawil said.

                From: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/03/26/how-key-bridge-collapsed-baltimore/

          • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
            6·
            9 months ago

            It takes a pretty special kind of small mindedness to think that this accident will be uninteresting to engineers because container ships are simply too heavy to consider building against.

          • SorryQuick@lemmy.ca
            3·
            9 months ago

            The amount of force needed to deflect a large object is much smaller than to stop it. In fact, if done over a large enough distance, a tiny amount of force is sufficient.

            Need an example? Imagine your big brother is skating down a slope. Could you block him, head on? Probably not. But what if your sister, who was skating next to him, were to slightly steer him out of the way so that he doesn’t hit you?

            As an alternative, you can also slow him down over a long distance, requiring the same(?) force but applied in a smaller amount, longer.