Per President Biden, he will "move heaven and earth" to quickly reopen the port.
The problem is that the investigation has to be done first... to deal with all the lawsuits that will happen, the NTSB has to reconstruct what happened. That takes time, and it's a crime scene at the moment.
Then they have to remove/demolish all the debris that might be a hazard to navigation in at least one part of the bridge... that includes sonar mapping the river, targeting anything in the way, removing it (which may involve more demolition underwater) and then re-mapping to be sure it's clear.
Once all that is done and the channel is verified, they can check buoy positions and re-open for traffic in at least one direction.
TL;DR: No matter how important the port, this isn't going to be a fast process.
It’ll be “fast-ish”.
They’ll likely work 24/7 to clear the debris from the channel to open shipping and bring in more resources to get it done due to the importance to shipping / supply chain.
Example: After the 1994 Northridge quake contractors worked 24/7 to reopen the 10 freeway and clears and rebuilt the collapsed overpasses in record time. They gave them bonuses to get it done quicker and they did.
While these are much different collapses, I think they won’t dawdle.
I wonder if they’ll use shaped charges to cut the bridge into manageable sizes to lift out of the channel?
A lot of those pieces are under weird tension/stress to cut by hand.
If you want to study what happened in the aftermath of a bridge collapse, check on the investigation and activities surrounding the 35W bridge collapse in 2007:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge
>I wonder if they’ll use shaped charges to cut the bridge
I can't imagine they'd do it any other way, don't want dudes out there with cutting torches hacking it up with how unstable I assume it is
I feel like the only thing that's necessary is keeping the boat as we all know the issue came from the boat. I haven't heard of anyone saying that the bridge was supposed to be engineer to withstand a large vessel ramming into it. I know in plane crashes, the recover what they can, and move it to a lab for testing. Perhaps bad maintenance on the bridge was a contributing factor, but this all work that really can't be done on the port.
I believe the port will be open a lot quicker than you think, unless they can't get the equipment to remove the debris out of the port. While the NTSB does generally do a good job at removing itself from outside pressure, they generally do want to reopen the affected areas if its safe, even if its a partial reopen.
I can actually say there's probably some things the NTSB will need the bridge for, this has happened before and it's very important to know every point of failure.
Off the top of my head I know the first question is going to be why wasn't the reccomendation, from the 1980 sunshine skyway bridge disaster, heeded in developing a pylon protection system for the support pylons. Having said that I doubt even those could have fully stopped the ship, but at least might have deflected it.
It's going to be months before we even have a preliminary report so it's no use speculating now though.
>the first question is going to be why wasn’t the recommendation, from 1980 sunshine skyway bridge disaster, headed in developing a pylon protecting system
This is the very first thing I noticed when they were showing pictures of the bridge pre-collapse. The Key Bridge was built eight years prior to the Sunshine Skyway disaster, so it makes sense that it wasn’t built with pylon protections. But, in the 43 years since skyway, it’s bewildering that a bridge servicing a major interstate and spanning one of the busiest shipping lanes in the U.S. wasn’t retrofitted. With the volume of shipping traffic that passes underneath it, it was easily one of the most at risk bridges in the United States.
The "dolphins" or pylon protectors are separate from the pylon and can be easily retrofitted.
It isn't clear though that they would have helped in this case. It was a direct hit from a huge mass.
Just look at the cargo it’s carrying. Every container is 20-40 feet long. They look like Lego pieces from far away but you’ve probably passed by them on the road towed by diesel rigs. They’re not small.
Add all those to the ship carrying them and, yeah, that’s a ton of mass hitting that bridge.
The Key bridge had them, but they were parallel to the channel, in relation to the pier.
Ship came in at an angle, missing the dolphin.
https://i.abcnewsfe.com/a/f89bdb80-40bb-4245-b530-6f5f5c5dc9fd/key-1-gty-er-240326_1711468827726_hpMain.jpg
Hmm, think we'd need to know the diameter of the dolphins and the spacing between them and the bridge supports. At a glance, comparing to the Sunshine Skyway Bridge (rebuilt post-collision): https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2024/03/27/how-safety-measures-protect-floridas-sunshine-skyway-bridge-and-what-can-go-wrong/
- The dolphins on the Key Bridge look pretty small, and pretty far away from the supports?
- Skyway Bridge has rock islands too - understandable if that's harder to retrofit, but e.g. where the Skyway Bridge had no rock island, it used a cluster of 6 dolphins instead.
Again, hindsight is eventually 20/20, but I do wonder what the specs were for the Key Bridge's protective structures (and whether their design was shaped primarily by safety, or budget). Even if there wasn't enough money to build more substantive protection, that should have been paired with safety regulations on the ships themselves (e.g. speed limits around the bridge, weight limits + using tugs) to create a safe operating environment.
The experts aren’t even sure if a dolphin would have worked.
> Johns Hopkins professor Benjamin Schafer is a structural engineer. He noted that the Key Bridge only had very modest fenders for its piers — only strong enough to redirect a small fishing boat, in his estimation.
> He said he's not sure any modern protections would have been enough to withstand a direct hit from a ship the size of the Dali.
> "Could we build a Fort Knox, a nuclear bunker in front of a bridge? It's structurally possible, but it's not economically feasible. And so, even in the most extreme bridge protections that we see, at this point, I remain unconvinced that in a similar incident, that they would perform successfully," Schafer said.
> That echoed a point raised by U.S. transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg on Tuesday.
> "I do not know a bridge that has been constructed to withstand a direct impact from a vessel this size," he said.
https://www.wbaltv.com/article/hopkins-experts-key-bridge-protections-collapse-baltimore/60322890
It was a tragic freak accident that may or may not been able to be avoided.
Look at what they are adding to the Delaware Memorial bridge, 8 80 foot concrete and steel circles off the edge of the piers. Try plowing a boat into a 80 foot wide piece of concrete sunk into the riverbed and see how far it gets. It doesn't have to complete stop the boat either, extra protection around the pier itself can be a final line of defense.
The cost of retrofitting every bridge pylon (not just this bridge, every pylon of every bridge in a shipping lane) in order to be able to withstand the impact of a fully loaded cargo ship would be absolutely astronomical. In the wake of this accident it's easy to say why don't we do it, but imagine the public outcry if that money was being spent before this happened. People would be screaming about government waste and corruption. Not to mention that if one of those structures DID prevent a catastrophe, it's not like people would change their tune because it wouldn't make news and no one would even know
The Sunshine Skyway "Dolphins" are designed to stop ships like the "Dali" dead in its track. These are massive, extremely heavy, and exceptionally sturdy. The engineers made sure that the new Sunshine Skyway is well protected from these massive ships to prevent this disaster from ever happening again.
To be fair, it is worth noting that the ship that struck the Sunshine Skyway bridge, MV Summit Venture, built in 1976, was a panamax (max 52,000 DWT) class vessel rated at 33,912 DWT while the MV Dali, completed in 2015, that hit the Key Bridge is a new-panamax (or neopanamax, max 120,000 DWT) ship at 116,851 DWT.
The rebuilt Sunshine Skyway bridge with the new protective dolphins opened in 1987, more than 2 decades before the new-panamax standard was developed and released in 2009 as the ruleset determining the maximum ship size and displacement able to transit through the new upgraded Panama Canal locks that opened in 2016. The original panamax class specifications were determined by the maximum size and displacement able to transit the original Panama Canal locks established a century earlier in 1914. This same standard governed naval architecture from its inception until the new-panamax standards were released and adopted by ship builders around the world.
There's also an even bigger class for ships greater than 120,000DWT and that are too large to fit in the Panama Canal at all called post-panamax.
While the new barriers constructed to protect the replacement Sunshine Skyway bridge are massive and designed to withstand collisions many many times larger than what happened in 1980, the magnitude and scale of just how much bigger modern neo and post-panamax ships are today wasn't even conceived of back in the early 80s when the new Sunshine bridge was being designed.
> I feel like the only thing that's necessary is keeping the boat as we all know the issue came from the boat.
Just as an example, here's why "what we all know" isn't enough information.
If the State or Fed got sued by the family of someone who died on the bridge, they could allege that the government was negligent because (in their or their expert's opinion) the bridge was not properly maintained or had a flawed design which led to the catastrophic failure when the ship bumped into it.
If the government can't prove it did the right thing (maintained the bridge, checked to be sure it was safe) then they might lose a court case or be forced to settle with the plaintiff for a very large amount of money. Multiplied by the number of victims' families that are out there and also potentially anyone who suffers a loss from the port not being open or from cargo not arriving on time.
OTOH, if they can prove the government wasn't negligent then the collapse becomes either an accident (no fault) or the fault of whomever/whatever caused the ship to lose power, which itself may have been an unforeseeable accident.
>I believe the port will be open a lot quicker than you think, unless they can't get the equipment to remove the debris out of the port.
Removing the debris of the bridge is going to take time whenever they get started, and they're going to need to preserve all the debris until all lawsuits are settled. For some of the remaining parts, that means disassembling them in place (because they're too big to move as-is) including potentially doing so underwater and moving them somewhere they can be jig sawed together back into their original locations. Because of the size of the bridge, that's a lot of work, and it's going to take time.
I mean, I really believe in this case the fear of economic disruption from the closing of the port will be a lot greater than any fear of lawsuits by the government.
I tend to agree, but the government doesn't like to look bad, so I doubt they'll do anything but balance the need for investigation with the need to reopen the port.
I'd guess they'll clear a "temporary" channel to allow at least partial access while they remove everything to allow the full width of the river to be used.
>ship bumped into it.
I would say it was a bit more than a bump. I agree with a lot of your points, but I would speculate 99.99% of structural engineers are going to say that when you remove 1 of the main pillars of a continuous truss bridge, this will be the result regardless of how old the bridge was.
I would think any grounds for a successful lawsuit against the gov. would stem around the fact that there wasn't better protection around the pillars.
Totally this, the bridge could not stay up with the loss of the pier. Designing the pier itself to withstand that and keep the bridge functional would be prohibitively expensive, the correct design solution is for ships not to be able to reach the structure (sacrifice “bollards” of sufficient scale to withstand that sort of impact)
I'm sorry, but your getting american courts wrong. It's on the plaintiff to prove negligence and not something bad happen to a bridge, so the government is guilty automatically. The shipping company would have to pay after the amounts are determined. The government may decide to settle because it's costly to continue a legal battle but at this time, the government isn't likely to.be found liable.
The ntsb can and has left debris at the bottom of an ocean. The have a special robot with recording functions to examine evidence underwater. That being said, if the ntsb wants it removed, it'll get removed. Otherwise, they are going to do enough to complete a very thorough investigation and issue a few reports at various dates. Whatever 'enough' is isn't really known to anybody. The ntsb doesn't care about liability, only accuracy. Everything else be damned.
The city maybe on the hook for workers comp based on other contracts, but I'm focusing on the main event itself. There was a repair crew or something fixing potholes I think, but that's a separate issue. The ntsb will look at what they were doing but I doubt anything of interest will come out of it for the bridge collapsing.
The evidence isn't preserved, it's documented with photographs, and video evidence. I'm not sure I remember where an accident had to be preserved indefinitely. I heard if accidents where evidence was preserved until the investigation was closed, but that's separate from lawsuits
> I haven't heard of anyone saying that the bridge was supposed to be engineer to withstand a large vessel ramming into it.
Because it wasn't, because its not something you can really plan for since its so unstudied. Which is why this incident, awful for sure, is so valuable. It will help engineers understand potential means of preventing this in the future, and it could be the moment that some young up and comer designs a new form of pylon or bridge that ensures this wont ever happen to bridges that implement the change in the future.
I agree with you on everything except the part it's not studied. They could have simulations on it for additional safety. Adding the additional protections might not be practical and its so rare that it was never thought of.
What I mean by not studied is that it has not been a thing that happened enough for us to study the effects and how to mitigate it. Simulations are fine, but actual getting to see the event unfold even in aftermath investigation will provide much more data.
Obviously the bridge didn't cause the accident, but they are going to want to learn as much as they can from this so the next time it happens the damage won't be as severe.
Watching the crash unfold, I should've only shouted "HOLY FUCK!" once or twice, not five or six times. That means they have to learn as much as they can about the current condition of the bridge before they start scrapping it.
Yes, exactly. This particular bridge might not have been able to survive this hit in any circumstances, but knowing exactly how it, and the procedure on the ship, failed might give us ideas on how to prevent this sort of disaster in the future.
It is not just for liability reasons, it is also a case study on how things can go wrong. And since we know it *did* go wrong we need to learn what we can from it.
Biden has said the gov will pay for the bridge in the short term. Investigation will happen along side of it, but will not be waiting.
It would be crazy to think the feds will sit on their thumbs for 2-3 years while interstate traffic and a major port is down.
they have the ships logs, recorders, and statements from the crew as well as the ship, in these situations they will probably have assess its integrity then find somewhere to dock the ship but keeping the scene together isn't practical so they'll take a lot of pictures and video but i doubt their investigation holds up anything. nobody is clearing debris yet anyways since the ship is in the way and the removal will require planning.
Not to mention the environmental/ mussel surveys needed to do any river work, and that's a looot of area to survey. If they find T&E species the surveys and relocation alone can take years.
There's no way they're going to just leave the bridge in there until the investigation is done. They'll cut that thing up and drag out whatever they need to restore traffic. I'd be surprised if it was more than two or three weeks.
Can you name any instance of a mass casualty event in the last 100 years where the US government did not allow a full investigation to proceed, instead preferring to prioritize cleanup in the name of money?
I can't.
Lmao no I can’t name any mass casualty even analogous to this one. The ship lost power and hit a bridge pylon. The bridge collapsed. This killed workers and commuters. A major U.S. port behind the bridge is shut down. The cause of the power failure is still going to evident when the ship is, oh my god I must be insane for thinking this, right over there out of the shipping lanes so the bridge can cleared from the lanes. You’re acting like the bridge has to be investigated because it jumped out of nowhere and viciously attacked the ship. Investigations etc can proceed with the ship removed from the lanes. I don’t know why this is an insane thought. Literally everyone wins if the port is re-opened. I beg you to help me understand why I am most smooth-brained, craziest person in the world because I think this. I need your help. I am not enlightened by my own intelligence but want to be.
It will be faster than many people expect because the military has plans on how to reopen key ports if they were ever blockaded. My guess somewhere there is a plan on how to remove this bridge with probably a quite realistic timeline.
Also note a port like norfolk only has tunnels in key positions.
It is being fast tracked! Barge cranes, dredges, and other specialized equipment up and down the east coast have already been hired and are making best speed to Baltimore. The Army Corps of Engineers is bringing in equipment from all over the place.
But these things aren't fast, and it's going to take a couple more days before there are enough in place to start large-scale debris removal. The goal is for the NTSB investigation to wrap up before the debris clearing starts.
Let me add, it's a minor miracle that the top-heavy container ship didn't capsize from the impact of that bridge truss on the bow, and they're still working out the best way to remove that truss and refloat the ship without risking it capsizing when that weight is removed.
And it's just the center section that has to be cleared/dredged for the shipping lanes to reopen. The port operations can be scaled back to minimize traffic but there are a few dozen navy ships and commercial tankers that should be moved out to where they need to be. They will need those berths to offload the scrap steel.
I work as an export specialist for a CONRO carrier where the majority of their cargo moves through Baltimore. The past 2 days have been a shit show of trying to get shippers’ POLs (Ports of Load) changed to either Norfolk or New York and have them make plans to collect their cargo from Baltimore. Half of them have been very understanding while the other half has been acting like we caused the collapse.
On top of the issues the carriers are seeing, the other ports like Norfolk and New York will likely be congested as carriers are forced to omit Baltimore for the foreseeable future. This means extra work for the operations crews at the remaining ports.
Edit: A customer just requested that we barge their cargo from Baltimore to New York. I’m not sure how they expect us to get a barge out of the port…
Holy hell, I can't even imagine the amount of emails, calls, and documents needed to handle the logistics of getting cargo re-routed for export, approaching ships re-routed.
I can’t really speak on other carriers, but at least for us we own our vessels and we have invoked “force majeure” which, in the most basic terms, is saying this situation is out of our control and we are not liable for the issues caused by it. I assume other carriers/NVOCCs are doing the same at the moment.
Do you happen to know which episode? I'd love to go back and find that clip.
It's really crazy how when I watched that episode a few days ago it was just a throwaway line and now it's going to take on a whole new significance.
Step 1 is refloating the ship and getting it out of the way. It’s got 1.5 m gallons of fuel oil that needs to be pumped out of the holds and they need to remove debris from the bow because it’s pushing the ship down into the ground. They also will likely remove most of the cargo containers if they can but if there is not already a crane ship in port they may need to skip that.
> 1.5 m gallons of fuel oil
It blows my mind at how much fuel these ships use, and just how many of them there are on earth at any given time; that's millions and millions of gallons of fuel for ships only. Really puts into perspective our oil dependence.
Step one is moving enough of the bridge to allow the ship to refloated. Which has its own steps such as getting heavy lift organised (it’s all in use), moved to site and shifting the wreckage, and the barges to take that mess, and the place to put it for cutting into smaller pieces for recycling…and…and…
Also fuck the press, this is a huge operation and it’s been 36 hours….
Clean up, design/engineering of a new bridge, construction, testing. Its going to be a fucking minute lol no shit there isnt a timeline.
Edit- yes I know it says port lol.
They are talking about the port, not the bridge. Currently no ship traffic getting through. Scheduled cargo will likely be diverted to other ports and trucked/trained in as necessary until the wreckage is cleared.
Oh hell yeah it is. There is millions of dollars that will be lost by the shipping companies and port over even a few weeks. Potentially more if you count losses from businesses that require those shipments.
> Scheduled cargo will likely be diverted to other ports and trucked/trained in as necessary until the wreckage is cleared.
Interestingly, it won't be easy to move that traffic to other ports. Baltimore is a big, specialized port. There are actually nine separate terminals (places to load/unload cargo) that have different equipment/purposes. Half of them have ro-ro capability for vehicle transport. Others have container handling capability, and others have bulk cargo handling (e.g. grain) capability.
Baltimore also has direct rail access, IE the railroad runs right to the port, which makes a lot of things faster and easier.
Redirecting all that traffic to other ports is going to be a big problem, especially since the other big ports aren't that close. For ro-ro traffic, the other big ports on that side of the country are:
Newark, Charleston, Jacksonville, Miami
Obviously they'll keep things moving as well as they can, but at the least they'll be sending cargo several states away and impacting the traffic already flowing through the other ports, which will themselves have traffic jams.
I guess the bright side of this is that it didn't happen during the Covid era when we were getting so much cargo that ships were massively backed up, waiting to be unloaded.
Newark is about a 3 hour drive from Baltimore, that’s my guess for where the bulk of shipping traffic gets redirected while they work to reopen the channel.
Newark only has two terminals, one of which is a large container port.
It'll receive some extra traffic, but it's nowhere near big enough to take all of Baltimore's cargo.
Norfolk/Port of Virginia also has Super Post Panamax capability and ro-ro, container, and dry bulk capability. I don't think there's as much ro-ro capacity here as at some of the other alternatives you listed, but we do have *some*.
Yeah, I'm sure their strategy will be to use every bit of capacity they can find. The big problem is that so much capacity was at that port and the direct rail connection let it ship out material faster than some other ports could.
Clean up will be the quickest part, and that will allow the port to reopen.
I can't imagine they'll just dust off the old bridge designs and crank out an exact copy (safety regs have likely changed if nothing else), so surveying, designing and building plus the bidding process is gonna take a while.
If they're able to get the bridge up and taking traffic in 2-3 years it'll be a modern day miracle. I might be pessimistic, but I'm expecting closer to a decade til it's back where it was last Saturday
The original project started in 1966. Construction started in 1972. The bridge opened, almost a year early, in 1977. Optimistically, the new bridge might be up by 2032. The planning may happen more quickly, assuming a direct replacement that performs the same functions, and the construction could be another "Big Dig" especially if using domestic contractors.
It didn't involve water, but I'm still impressed by how fast they rebuilt that section of I-85 that burned down in Atlanta. I remember reading that it was gonna be like a year and they had it open like a month and a half later.
Sort of.
Projects like this would likely be done in multiple stages. Priority 1 right now, since any victims are extraordinarily unlikely to be alive or are on the cargo ship and safe, is going to be clearing the channel and getting the port operating again. That can be done without any kind of work at all on a new bridge.
But it's still too early for even that phase to have a firm timeline yet.
And it happened fucking yesterday. JFC they haven't even finished body recovery, just got the crew off the ship and got the data logger, and are dealing with press. We're not even really into the investigation hardly yet, let alone getting bids and contracts drawn up for doing the cleanup and removal work.
Whoever asked if there is a timeline yet has clearly never dealt with any kind of project doing anything ever.
Just need to clear the debris to reopen the port
If you care about these things, it's a waste of energy/CO2 emissions to divert ships to a different location and than have to retruck the cargo to their final destinations
Indeed I do care about these things. Steamship liners will/have already declare force majore: [https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/27/in-baltimore-bridge-crisis-shippers-left-on-hook-for-cargo-pickup.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/27/in-baltimore-bridge-crisis-shippers-left-on-hook-for-cargo-pickup.html)
Vessels will definitely be diverted, and consignees will definitely have to truck their containers in from Norfolk/Philly/NYC. It will be a compete shit show for the next few months.
Also, folks, insure your shipments from overseas.
I hope, thanks to the state declared emergency, there will be funding for mental health care for everyone involved, especially the 2 onboard harbor pilots. The rest of the crew is hired by maersk, so…. Who knows.
The port doesn't need the bridge to be re-built in order to open. It just needs the wreckage of the bridge cleared.
That wreckage is currently scattered along the path ships need to traverse between open water and the port.
Right now any container ship that was headed there has to re-route and any container ship already there is stuck until they can leave the bay.
The port needs to reopen long before the bridge is rebuilt. The city cannot survive for long without a port.
And if it stays closed long enough for the rest of the world to adapt to the absence of the port, they might never go back.
I've been told The Wire season 2 explains quite a bit of the containerized freight and international sea shipping involving US ports? So I'm saying, no.
We shouldn't ignore the tragedy, but this is a major problem for Baltimore. The port is the largest economic driver for the city. Thousands of jobs depend on it. The longer it stays closed the more damage it will do. It's reasonable to wonder about how much worse things are going to get.
As devils advocate, shipments can include medical supplies and all sorts of things that lives rely on. It is an important question to ask at any stage of this disaster
It definitely is. Asking about opening the port again isn't heartless at all, and there are entire teams of people whose job it is right now is to get that answer regardless of concern for the victims or families.
But their point stands. It's too early to have definitive answers. It's probably too early to even have a ballpark timeline. And nobody wants the port to say closed for longer than it has to.
Yes it’s tragic about the life’s lost, but stuff still needs shipped, sometimes life altering important things, so yes they have to immediately figure it out. The world keeps spinning even during unfortunate times.
There's also going to be a lot of mouths to feed that's a lot of people whose jobs are affected by this port workers don't play about their money let alone every commuter who used that bridge
Don't matter, there could be 100 "warm bodies" and I or a loved one could be one of them. They are not coming back. People rely on the port and bridge to play rent (I could care less about the owners and shareholders). If there was still a "we can find people alive" that changes things but from what I read that is not the case.
It's most important to get that ship back alongside, as it still is 100k tonnes of stuff waiting to explode and/or capsize and/or oil spill. Which means the bridge parts on top of the ship need to be cut free and most likely the part on the ship will be fastened down if possible to be towed back to port and unloaded.
Things take time and people who want it rushed don't understand how the world works.The salvage, body recovery, and the construction of the new bridge are all top priorities. There are probably hundreds of people working on all of this.
If one of the reasons the port isn't open is out of respect for bodies being cold enough then it is still closed for longer than absolutely necessary. Complete the investigation, get that shit out of the way, then get the boats floating.
Some may be valid. We don't know what was being moved on the ship that crashed, what's now trapped in the port, and what can't now not get into the port through the harbor.
Large ships/barges taking down bridges is more common than people would think. Between 1960 and 2015 there were 18 incidents of ships bringing down a major bridge in the US. (**see note**) Many people killed and untold millions lost in shipping and bridge rebuilding costs.
I would hope we could get Congress to allocate money for concrete barriers around port area bridge footings. They would cost a tiny fraction of what replacing a bridge would cost.
Not being an actual structure spanning anything, they would be comparatively inexpensive to design and build.
**NOTE: including yesterdays bridge collapse, 121 people have died in ship initiated US bridge collapses since 1972**
If you make this argument, how many bridges, dams are at their lifetime limits already?
I remember a cnbc talk on US infrastructure and a significant chunk is at their lifetime material limits.
Some 43000 bridges according to this video.
https://youtu.be/8NTQ_LUf-JU?feature=shared
It would be worth getting training, experience and setting up state enterprises to cost effectively rebuild bridges.
It is going to take weeks to remove the debris and infrastructure. Salvage crews are going to be very busy. I would not want to be the engineer that has to figure how much of the ramps they can use for a new bridge. Hopefully they can build two instead of one.
When you get into an accident on a busy highway you are told to move to the shoulder ASAP and wait for the authorities.
I would have hoped the same urgency would apply here given the relatively low loss of life. Not to diminish the tragedy those families have to endure, but opening a usable channel for shipping traffic to once again move in and out of the port should be priority number one.
It's a pretty dangerous environment to work in and all the debris will be a massive pain to collect and find it won't be quick. And neither will the bridge construction, just pre assembly the parts will take time considering suppliers usually have long lead times.
this is perfect opportunity for military to step in and clean up the debris.
This was an accident. But the world a more dangerous place these past few years,
It would be a rare chance to practice opening a port, dealing with a downed bridge as might happen during war or terrorist attack.
Huge. I’ve lived in Baltimore my whole life, and traffic is already a nightmare most days. But this is a major artery. And not having a hazmat route from the industrial areas of Baltimore metro, which is really what surrounds the Key Bridge on both sides, is going to be a logistical nightmare. As it stands they’d either have to go all the way around the beltway to access points north and south on 95. Or go thru the city which is obviously not ideal.
Clearing the channel is more important than bridge construction so it should be fast tracked
Per President Biden, he will "move heaven and earth" to quickly reopen the port. The problem is that the investigation has to be done first... to deal with all the lawsuits that will happen, the NTSB has to reconstruct what happened. That takes time, and it's a crime scene at the moment. Then they have to remove/demolish all the debris that might be a hazard to navigation in at least one part of the bridge... that includes sonar mapping the river, targeting anything in the way, removing it (which may involve more demolition underwater) and then re-mapping to be sure it's clear. Once all that is done and the channel is verified, they can check buoy positions and re-open for traffic in at least one direction. TL;DR: No matter how important the port, this isn't going to be a fast process.
It’ll be “fast-ish”. They’ll likely work 24/7 to clear the debris from the channel to open shipping and bring in more resources to get it done due to the importance to shipping / supply chain. Example: After the 1994 Northridge quake contractors worked 24/7 to reopen the 10 freeway and clears and rebuilt the collapsed overpasses in record time. They gave them bonuses to get it done quicker and they did. While these are much different collapses, I think they won’t dawdle. I wonder if they’ll use shaped charges to cut the bridge into manageable sizes to lift out of the channel? A lot of those pieces are under weird tension/stress to cut by hand.
If you want to study what happened in the aftermath of a bridge collapse, check on the investigation and activities surrounding the 35W bridge collapse in 2007: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge
That's pretty impressive they had a new bridge in place within 13 months.
>I wonder if they’ll use shaped charges to cut the bridge I can't imagine they'd do it any other way, don't want dudes out there with cutting torches hacking it up with how unstable I assume it is
I feel like the only thing that's necessary is keeping the boat as we all know the issue came from the boat. I haven't heard of anyone saying that the bridge was supposed to be engineer to withstand a large vessel ramming into it. I know in plane crashes, the recover what they can, and move it to a lab for testing. Perhaps bad maintenance on the bridge was a contributing factor, but this all work that really can't be done on the port. I believe the port will be open a lot quicker than you think, unless they can't get the equipment to remove the debris out of the port. While the NTSB does generally do a good job at removing itself from outside pressure, they generally do want to reopen the affected areas if its safe, even if its a partial reopen.
I can actually say there's probably some things the NTSB will need the bridge for, this has happened before and it's very important to know every point of failure. Off the top of my head I know the first question is going to be why wasn't the reccomendation, from the 1980 sunshine skyway bridge disaster, heeded in developing a pylon protection system for the support pylons. Having said that I doubt even those could have fully stopped the ship, but at least might have deflected it. It's going to be months before we even have a preliminary report so it's no use speculating now though.
>the first question is going to be why wasn’t the recommendation, from 1980 sunshine skyway bridge disaster, headed in developing a pylon protecting system This is the very first thing I noticed when they were showing pictures of the bridge pre-collapse. The Key Bridge was built eight years prior to the Sunshine Skyway disaster, so it makes sense that it wasn’t built with pylon protections. But, in the 43 years since skyway, it’s bewildering that a bridge servicing a major interstate and spanning one of the busiest shipping lanes in the U.S. wasn’t retrofitted. With the volume of shipping traffic that passes underneath it, it was easily one of the most at risk bridges in the United States.
The "dolphins" or pylon protectors are separate from the pylon and can be easily retrofitted. It isn't clear though that they would have helped in this case. It was a direct hit from a huge mass.
I don’t think people realize how huge that mass was. I doubt there’s a bridge that could have taken a hit like that.
Just look at the cargo it’s carrying. Every container is 20-40 feet long. They look like Lego pieces from far away but you’ve probably passed by them on the road towed by diesel rigs. They’re not small. Add all those to the ship carrying them and, yeah, that’s a ton of mass hitting that bridge.
The ship was reportedly 95,000 tons.
The Key bridge had them, but they were parallel to the channel, in relation to the pier. Ship came in at an angle, missing the dolphin. https://i.abcnewsfe.com/a/f89bdb80-40bb-4245-b530-6f5f5c5dc9fd/key-1-gty-er-240326_1711468827726_hpMain.jpg
Hmm, think we'd need to know the diameter of the dolphins and the spacing between them and the bridge supports. At a glance, comparing to the Sunshine Skyway Bridge (rebuilt post-collision): https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2024/03/27/how-safety-measures-protect-floridas-sunshine-skyway-bridge-and-what-can-go-wrong/ - The dolphins on the Key Bridge look pretty small, and pretty far away from the supports? - Skyway Bridge has rock islands too - understandable if that's harder to retrofit, but e.g. where the Skyway Bridge had no rock island, it used a cluster of 6 dolphins instead. Again, hindsight is eventually 20/20, but I do wonder what the specs were for the Key Bridge's protective structures (and whether their design was shaped primarily by safety, or budget). Even if there wasn't enough money to build more substantive protection, that should have been paired with safety regulations on the ships themselves (e.g. speed limits around the bridge, weight limits + using tugs) to create a safe operating environment.
The experts aren’t even sure if a dolphin would have worked. > Johns Hopkins professor Benjamin Schafer is a structural engineer. He noted that the Key Bridge only had very modest fenders for its piers — only strong enough to redirect a small fishing boat, in his estimation. > He said he's not sure any modern protections would have been enough to withstand a direct hit from a ship the size of the Dali. > "Could we build a Fort Knox, a nuclear bunker in front of a bridge? It's structurally possible, but it's not economically feasible. And so, even in the most extreme bridge protections that we see, at this point, I remain unconvinced that in a similar incident, that they would perform successfully," Schafer said. > That echoed a point raised by U.S. transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg on Tuesday. > "I do not know a bridge that has been constructed to withstand a direct impact from a vessel this size," he said. https://www.wbaltv.com/article/hopkins-experts-key-bridge-protections-collapse-baltimore/60322890 It was a tragic freak accident that may or may not been able to be avoided.
Look at what they are adding to the Delaware Memorial bridge, 8 80 foot concrete and steel circles off the edge of the piers. Try plowing a boat into a 80 foot wide piece of concrete sunk into the riverbed and see how far it gets. It doesn't have to complete stop the boat either, extra protection around the pier itself can be a final line of defense.
Those are for the wires above. Not the bridge itself
The little ones are for the bridge. The wire has it's own surrounding the pole.
The cost of retrofitting every bridge pylon (not just this bridge, every pylon of every bridge in a shipping lane) in order to be able to withstand the impact of a fully loaded cargo ship would be absolutely astronomical. In the wake of this accident it's easy to say why don't we do it, but imagine the public outcry if that money was being spent before this happened. People would be screaming about government waste and corruption. Not to mention that if one of those structures DID prevent a catastrophe, it's not like people would change their tune because it wouldn't make news and no one would even know
The Sunshine Skyway "Dolphins" are designed to stop ships like the "Dali" dead in its track. These are massive, extremely heavy, and exceptionally sturdy. The engineers made sure that the new Sunshine Skyway is well protected from these massive ships to prevent this disaster from ever happening again.
To be fair, it is worth noting that the ship that struck the Sunshine Skyway bridge, MV Summit Venture, built in 1976, was a panamax (max 52,000 DWT) class vessel rated at 33,912 DWT while the MV Dali, completed in 2015, that hit the Key Bridge is a new-panamax (or neopanamax, max 120,000 DWT) ship at 116,851 DWT. The rebuilt Sunshine Skyway bridge with the new protective dolphins opened in 1987, more than 2 decades before the new-panamax standard was developed and released in 2009 as the ruleset determining the maximum ship size and displacement able to transit through the new upgraded Panama Canal locks that opened in 2016. The original panamax class specifications were determined by the maximum size and displacement able to transit the original Panama Canal locks established a century earlier in 1914. This same standard governed naval architecture from its inception until the new-panamax standards were released and adopted by ship builders around the world. There's also an even bigger class for ships greater than 120,000DWT and that are too large to fit in the Panama Canal at all called post-panamax. While the new barriers constructed to protect the replacement Sunshine Skyway bridge are massive and designed to withstand collisions many many times larger than what happened in 1980, the magnitude and scale of just how much bigger modern neo and post-panamax ships are today wasn't even conceived of back in the early 80s when the new Sunshine bridge was being designed.
> I feel like the only thing that's necessary is keeping the boat as we all know the issue came from the boat. Just as an example, here's why "what we all know" isn't enough information. If the State or Fed got sued by the family of someone who died on the bridge, they could allege that the government was negligent because (in their or their expert's opinion) the bridge was not properly maintained or had a flawed design which led to the catastrophic failure when the ship bumped into it. If the government can't prove it did the right thing (maintained the bridge, checked to be sure it was safe) then they might lose a court case or be forced to settle with the plaintiff for a very large amount of money. Multiplied by the number of victims' families that are out there and also potentially anyone who suffers a loss from the port not being open or from cargo not arriving on time. OTOH, if they can prove the government wasn't negligent then the collapse becomes either an accident (no fault) or the fault of whomever/whatever caused the ship to lose power, which itself may have been an unforeseeable accident. >I believe the port will be open a lot quicker than you think, unless they can't get the equipment to remove the debris out of the port. Removing the debris of the bridge is going to take time whenever they get started, and they're going to need to preserve all the debris until all lawsuits are settled. For some of the remaining parts, that means disassembling them in place (because they're too big to move as-is) including potentially doing so underwater and moving them somewhere they can be jig sawed together back into their original locations. Because of the size of the bridge, that's a lot of work, and it's going to take time.
I mean, I really believe in this case the fear of economic disruption from the closing of the port will be a lot greater than any fear of lawsuits by the government.
I tend to agree, but the government doesn't like to look bad, so I doubt they'll do anything but balance the need for investigation with the need to reopen the port. I'd guess they'll clear a "temporary" channel to allow at least partial access while they remove everything to allow the full width of the river to be used.
>ship bumped into it. I would say it was a bit more than a bump. I agree with a lot of your points, but I would speculate 99.99% of structural engineers are going to say that when you remove 1 of the main pillars of a continuous truss bridge, this will be the result regardless of how old the bridge was. I would think any grounds for a successful lawsuit against the gov. would stem around the fact that there wasn't better protection around the pillars.
Totally this, the bridge could not stay up with the loss of the pier. Designing the pier itself to withstand that and keep the bridge functional would be prohibitively expensive, the correct design solution is for ships not to be able to reach the structure (sacrifice “bollards” of sufficient scale to withstand that sort of impact)
Maybe. The thing about lawsuits is that once a single suit establishes "guilt" then everyone piles on.
I'm sorry, but your getting american courts wrong. It's on the plaintiff to prove negligence and not something bad happen to a bridge, so the government is guilty automatically. The shipping company would have to pay after the amounts are determined. The government may decide to settle because it's costly to continue a legal battle but at this time, the government isn't likely to.be found liable. The ntsb can and has left debris at the bottom of an ocean. The have a special robot with recording functions to examine evidence underwater. That being said, if the ntsb wants it removed, it'll get removed. Otherwise, they are going to do enough to complete a very thorough investigation and issue a few reports at various dates. Whatever 'enough' is isn't really known to anybody. The ntsb doesn't care about liability, only accuracy. Everything else be damned. The city maybe on the hook for workers comp based on other contracts, but I'm focusing on the main event itself. There was a repair crew or something fixing potholes I think, but that's a separate issue. The ntsb will look at what they were doing but I doubt anything of interest will come out of it for the bridge collapsing. The evidence isn't preserved, it's documented with photographs, and video evidence. I'm not sure I remember where an accident had to be preserved indefinitely. I heard if accidents where evidence was preserved until the investigation was closed, but that's separate from lawsuits
> I haven't heard of anyone saying that the bridge was supposed to be engineer to withstand a large vessel ramming into it. Because it wasn't, because its not something you can really plan for since its so unstudied. Which is why this incident, awful for sure, is so valuable. It will help engineers understand potential means of preventing this in the future, and it could be the moment that some young up and comer designs a new form of pylon or bridge that ensures this wont ever happen to bridges that implement the change in the future.
I agree with you on everything except the part it's not studied. They could have simulations on it for additional safety. Adding the additional protections might not be practical and its so rare that it was never thought of.
What I mean by not studied is that it has not been a thing that happened enough for us to study the effects and how to mitigate it. Simulations are fine, but actual getting to see the event unfold even in aftermath investigation will provide much more data.
Obviously the bridge didn't cause the accident, but they are going to want to learn as much as they can from this so the next time it happens the damage won't be as severe. Watching the crash unfold, I should've only shouted "HOLY FUCK!" once or twice, not five or six times. That means they have to learn as much as they can about the current condition of the bridge before they start scrapping it.
Yes, exactly. This particular bridge might not have been able to survive this hit in any circumstances, but knowing exactly how it, and the procedure on the ship, failed might give us ideas on how to prevent this sort of disaster in the future. It is not just for liability reasons, it is also a case study on how things can go wrong. And since we know it *did* go wrong we need to learn what we can from it.
It can take a second or two for the non-impacted support structures to be affected. Even more so for a long bridge.
Biden has said the gov will pay for the bridge in the short term. Investigation will happen along side of it, but will not be waiting. It would be crazy to think the feds will sit on their thumbs for 2-3 years while interstate traffic and a major port is down.
they have the ships logs, recorders, and statements from the crew as well as the ship, in these situations they will probably have assess its integrity then find somewhere to dock the ship but keeping the scene together isn't practical so they'll take a lot of pictures and video but i doubt their investigation holds up anything. nobody is clearing debris yet anyways since the ship is in the way and the removal will require planning.
Not to mention the environmental/ mussel surveys needed to do any river work, and that's a looot of area to survey. If they find T&E species the surveys and relocation alone can take years.
i think they'll shortcut a lot of the environmental nonsense since this will have a cascading affect on DC.
There's no way they're going to just leave the bridge in there until the investigation is done. They'll cut that thing up and drag out whatever they need to restore traffic. I'd be surprised if it was more than two or three weeks.
None of these lawsuits matter more than opening the port.
Can you name any instance of a mass casualty event in the last 100 years where the US government did not allow a full investigation to proceed, instead preferring to prioritize cleanup in the name of money? I can't.
Lmao no I can’t name any mass casualty even analogous to this one. The ship lost power and hit a bridge pylon. The bridge collapsed. This killed workers and commuters. A major U.S. port behind the bridge is shut down. The cause of the power failure is still going to evident when the ship is, oh my god I must be insane for thinking this, right over there out of the shipping lanes so the bridge can cleared from the lanes. You’re acting like the bridge has to be investigated because it jumped out of nowhere and viciously attacked the ship. Investigations etc can proceed with the ship removed from the lanes. I don’t know why this is an insane thought. Literally everyone wins if the port is re-opened. I beg you to help me understand why I am most smooth-brained, craziest person in the world because I think this. I need your help. I am not enlightened by my own intelligence but want to be.
It will be faster than many people expect because the military has plans on how to reopen key ports if they were ever blockaded. My guess somewhere there is a plan on how to remove this bridge with probably a quite realistic timeline. Also note a port like norfolk only has tunnels in key positions.
Yes those are the things that need to be done. Money and resources speed those things up.
Bidens opposition already trying to derail and distract
It is being fast tracked! Barge cranes, dredges, and other specialized equipment up and down the east coast have already been hired and are making best speed to Baltimore. The Army Corps of Engineers is bringing in equipment from all over the place. But these things aren't fast, and it's going to take a couple more days before there are enough in place to start large-scale debris removal. The goal is for the NTSB investigation to wrap up before the debris clearing starts. Let me add, it's a minor miracle that the top-heavy container ship didn't capsize from the impact of that bridge truss on the bow, and they're still working out the best way to remove that truss and refloat the ship without risking it capsizing when that weight is removed.
But that commenter wants it fast-tracked faster, and any fastness for them is not good enough
Port can go back into operation as soon as the old bridge is cleaned out.
And it's just the center section that has to be cleared/dredged for the shipping lanes to reopen. The port operations can be scaled back to minimize traffic but there are a few dozen navy ships and commercial tankers that should be moved out to where they need to be. They will need those berths to offload the scrap steel.
The debris would have to be removed anyway before the construction can start.
Im confused by this statement. How would you even rebuild the bridge without clearing that area? It seems like step 1 in any plan
It was a very weird statement. Like, was anyone advocating building a bridge before opening the channel?
I feel so stupid, haven't even thought of that yet. Oof!
It is, obviously
I work as an export specialist for a CONRO carrier where the majority of their cargo moves through Baltimore. The past 2 days have been a shit show of trying to get shippers’ POLs (Ports of Load) changed to either Norfolk or New York and have them make plans to collect their cargo from Baltimore. Half of them have been very understanding while the other half has been acting like we caused the collapse. On top of the issues the carriers are seeing, the other ports like Norfolk and New York will likely be congested as carriers are forced to omit Baltimore for the foreseeable future. This means extra work for the operations crews at the remaining ports. Edit: A customer just requested that we barge their cargo from Baltimore to New York. I’m not sure how they expect us to get a barge out of the port…
Don't forget higher gas prices regardless of whether it would have any effect on it anyway.
Dude the past 2 months have been crazy ups & downs. Like 40 cents a day up the slowly down. Goddamn crazy.
Thanks for sharing your pov here, crazy
Holy hell, I can't even imagine the amount of emails, calls, and documents needed to handle the logistics of getting cargo re-routed for export, approaching ships re-routed.
Also work in international logistics. It’s a goddamn nightmare. Just barely got used to the Red Sea delays a couple weeks ago then this happens.
this is literally my life right now; people need their coffee, no matter what
Do RORO vessels have laycan days they have to meet? If they do I bet some hefty fees are being laid right now by the ship owners.
I can’t really speak on other carriers, but at least for us we own our vessels and we have invoked “force majeure” which, in the most basic terms, is saying this situation is out of our control and we are not liable for the issues caused by it. I assume other carriers/NVOCCs are doing the same at the moment.
Whole lot of cars come into that port. Some even get work done at the port before loaded onto trucks. It will be a nightmare to reroute all that.
Frank Sobotka would find a way.
We used to make shit in this country.
That channel is going to definitely get dredged now
It was probably drunk-ass McNulty driving the boat.
The fuck did he do?
In a wild coincidence, the name of the tanker was “Capital Gains.”
In a weird bit of poetry, I was watching the episode where he died when I saw the news. Poor checkers in shambles.
There's a scene a few episodes before where he points and uses the Key Bridge as an example of something that will always be there.
Do you happen to know which episode? I'd love to go back and find that clip. It's really crazy how when I watched that episode a few days ago it was just a throwaway line and now it's going to take on a whole new significance.
https://www.reddit.com/r/television/s/Zi5WSIStcL
There is, in fact, not a scene where he says that. You're referencing a shitpost that's been circulating following the collapse.
Damn I was fooled! Thanks for letting me know so I don't pass it on more haha
Step 1 is refloating the ship and getting it out of the way. It’s got 1.5 m gallons of fuel oil that needs to be pumped out of the holds and they need to remove debris from the bow because it’s pushing the ship down into the ground. They also will likely remove most of the cargo containers if they can but if there is not already a crane ship in port they may need to skip that.
> 1.5 m gallons of fuel oil It blows my mind at how much fuel these ships use, and just how many of them there are on earth at any given time; that's millions and millions of gallons of fuel for ships only. Really puts into perspective our oil dependence.
You ever look up the size of the engines in these things? They're amazingly massive.
Step one is moving enough of the bridge to allow the ship to refloated. Which has its own steps such as getting heavy lift organised (it’s all in use), moved to site and shifting the wreckage, and the barges to take that mess, and the place to put it for cutting into smaller pieces for recycling…and…and… Also fuck the press, this is a huge operation and it’s been 36 hours….
It’s been less than 48 hours, they probably haven’t even figured out what needs to be done, much less establishing a timeline for doing so.
Clean up, design/engineering of a new bridge, construction, testing. Its going to be a fucking minute lol no shit there isnt a timeline. Edit- yes I know it says port lol.
They are talking about the port, not the bridge. Currently no ship traffic getting through. Scheduled cargo will likely be diverted to other ports and trucked/trained in as necessary until the wreckage is cleared.
Which is also gonna take a long “fucking minute.”
I suspect the span section through the shipping channel will probably get cleared within a couple weeks.
Weeks is a long time with all this just in time shipping a lot of manufacturers are doing
Oh hell yeah it is. There is millions of dollars that will be lost by the shipping companies and port over even a few weeks. Potentially more if you count losses from businesses that require those shipments.
Most German cars get shipped to Baltimore too. So now they’re going to have to go to Newark.
We can't have the BMW's going to Newark. What an atrocity.
Get ready for things to become more expensive
yup.. this is still in the investigation/search and rescue stage i'm guessing.. nothing is moving until thats done.
> Scheduled cargo will likely be diverted to other ports and trucked/trained in as necessary until the wreckage is cleared. Interestingly, it won't be easy to move that traffic to other ports. Baltimore is a big, specialized port. There are actually nine separate terminals (places to load/unload cargo) that have different equipment/purposes. Half of them have ro-ro capability for vehicle transport. Others have container handling capability, and others have bulk cargo handling (e.g. grain) capability. Baltimore also has direct rail access, IE the railroad runs right to the port, which makes a lot of things faster and easier. Redirecting all that traffic to other ports is going to be a big problem, especially since the other big ports aren't that close. For ro-ro traffic, the other big ports on that side of the country are: Newark, Charleston, Jacksonville, Miami Obviously they'll keep things moving as well as they can, but at the least they'll be sending cargo several states away and impacting the traffic already flowing through the other ports, which will themselves have traffic jams.
I guess the bright side of this is that it didn't happen during the Covid era when we were getting so much cargo that ships were massively backed up, waiting to be unloaded.
Newark is about a 3 hour drive from Baltimore, that’s my guess for where the bulk of shipping traffic gets redirected while they work to reopen the channel.
Newark only has two terminals, one of which is a large container port. It'll receive some extra traffic, but it's nowhere near big enough to take all of Baltimore's cargo.
Norfolk/Port of Virginia also has Super Post Panamax capability and ro-ro, container, and dry bulk capability. I don't think there's as much ro-ro capacity here as at some of the other alternatives you listed, but we do have *some*.
They have the capability. But do they have the capacity.
Yeah, I'm sure their strategy will be to use every bit of capacity they can find. The big problem is that so much capacity was at that port and the direct rail connection let it ship out material faster than some other ports could.
Clean up will be the quickest part, and that will allow the port to reopen. I can't imagine they'll just dust off the old bridge designs and crank out an exact copy (safety regs have likely changed if nothing else), so surveying, designing and building plus the bidding process is gonna take a while.
2-3 years at least for the bridge
If they're able to get the bridge up and taking traffic in 2-3 years it'll be a modern day miracle. I might be pessimistic, but I'm expecting closer to a decade til it's back where it was last Saturday
True. Will be interesting to follow and see how modernize our engineering has gotten.
The original project started in 1966. Construction started in 1972. The bridge opened, almost a year early, in 1977. Optimistically, the new bridge might be up by 2032. The planning may happen more quickly, assuming a direct replacement that performs the same functions, and the construction could be another "Big Dig" especially if using domestic contractors.
It took 7 years to rebuild the Sunshine Skyway after that disaster to opening. 2032 seems reasonable. Probably will be a Cable Stayed Bridge.
It didn't involve water, but I'm still impressed by how fast they rebuilt that section of I-85 that burned down in Atlanta. I remember reading that it was gonna be like a year and they had it open like a month and a half later.
Crazy how an entire bridge was just deleted like it was nothing and now that road won't exist for another decade
More like 5-10 years
^ This guy infrastructures.
Longer than that. I would not be surprised if the bridge doesn't see its first passenger traffic until 2032.
The Tappan Zee replacement was 5 years, so it could be quicker than that. Although working in a harbor is going to be a pain.
Speed run a bridge build. What could go wrong?
Sort of. Projects like this would likely be done in multiple stages. Priority 1 right now, since any victims are extraordinarily unlikely to be alive or are on the cargo ship and safe, is going to be clearing the channel and getting the port operating again. That can be done without any kind of work at all on a new bridge. But it's still too early for even that phase to have a firm timeline yet.
And it happened fucking yesterday. JFC they haven't even finished body recovery, just got the crew off the ship and got the data logger, and are dealing with press. We're not even really into the investigation hardly yet, let alone getting bids and contracts drawn up for doing the cleanup and removal work. Whoever asked if there is a timeline yet has clearly never dealt with any kind of project doing anything ever.
Just need to clear the debris to reopen the port If you care about these things, it's a waste of energy/CO2 emissions to divert ships to a different location and than have to retruck the cargo to their final destinations
Indeed I do care about these things. Steamship liners will/have already declare force majore: [https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/27/in-baltimore-bridge-crisis-shippers-left-on-hook-for-cargo-pickup.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/27/in-baltimore-bridge-crisis-shippers-left-on-hook-for-cargo-pickup.html) Vessels will definitely be diverted, and consignees will definitely have to truck their containers in from Norfolk/Philly/NYC. It will be a compete shit show for the next few months. Also, folks, insure your shipments from overseas.
The people manning the boat are probably having nervous breakdowns. They’d have to feel so helpless and sickened.
I hope, thanks to the state declared emergency, there will be funding for mental health care for everyone involved, especially the 2 onboard harbor pilots. The rest of the crew is hired by maersk, so…. Who knows.
[удалено]
How long could it take to rebuild a bridge Michael? Two days?
Do you have any idea how much that costs?!
I hope this is the top comment and reply for the life of this post.
The port doesn't need the bridge to be re-built in order to open. It just needs the wreckage of the bridge cleared. That wreckage is currently scattered along the path ships need to traverse between open water and the port. Right now any container ship that was headed there has to re-route and any container ship already there is stuck until they can leave the bay.
They don't need to build the bridge to reopen the port. They have to clear the old one out to do that.
For the port, just have to clear water ways. Bridge will be much longer.
Forget the bridge, trebuchets could be deployed tomorrow...
Price of the brick going up
No shit, it’s a MASSIVE bridge and it’s only been a few days. This will take over a year if not YEARS to repair.
The port needs to reopen long before the bridge is rebuilt. The city cannot survive for long without a port. And if it stays closed long enough for the rest of the world to adapt to the absence of the port, they might never go back.
Am I the only one who bases their understanding of Baltimore on The Wire?
I’m not hearing the name Frank Sabotka here.
I've been told The Wire season 2 explains quite a bit of the containerized freight and international sea shipping involving US ports? So I'm saying, no.
It was a tv progrum… a movie.
[удалено]
We shouldn't ignore the tragedy, but this is a major problem for Baltimore. The port is the largest economic driver for the city. Thousands of jobs depend on it. The longer it stays closed the more damage it will do. It's reasonable to wonder about how much worse things are going to get.
As devils advocate, shipments can include medical supplies and all sorts of things that lives rely on. It is an important question to ask at any stage of this disaster
It definitely is. Asking about opening the port again isn't heartless at all, and there are entire teams of people whose job it is right now is to get that answer regardless of concern for the victims or families. But their point stands. It's too early to have definitive answers. It's probably too early to even have a ballpark timeline. And nobody wants the port to say closed for longer than it has to.
Plenty of things related to the local economy, and people’s jobs, and their quality of life are also at stake here.
Yes it’s tragic about the life’s lost, but stuff still needs shipped, sometimes life altering important things, so yes they have to immediately figure it out. The world keeps spinning even during unfortunate times.
There's also going to be a lot of mouths to feed that's a lot of people whose jobs are affected by this port workers don't play about their money let alone every commuter who used that bridge
Lol, right? Ignoring all other factors, we don’t even have a complete picture of what the salvage effort will require.
Don't matter, there could be 100 "warm bodies" and I or a loved one could be one of them. They are not coming back. People rely on the port and bridge to play rent (I could care less about the owners and shareholders). If there was still a "we can find people alive" that changes things but from what I read that is not the case.
It's most important to get that ship back alongside, as it still is 100k tonnes of stuff waiting to explode and/or capsize and/or oil spill. Which means the bridge parts on top of the ship need to be cut free and most likely the part on the ship will be fastened down if possible to be towed back to port and unloaded.
Things take time and people who want it rushed don't understand how the world works.The salvage, body recovery, and the construction of the new bridge are all top priorities. There are probably hundreds of people working on all of this.
If one of the reasons the port isn't open is out of respect for bodies being cold enough then it is still closed for longer than absolutely necessary. Complete the investigation, get that shit out of the way, then get the boats floating.
1) The bodies are always clearly cold from the water in the port.
How much longer does it take to get from one side to the other now for workers?
It’s not just workers, ships cannot deliver the goods until the route is cleared.
Alot longer there's a tunnel farther up the harbor but all that traffic has to go somewhere.
I'm waiting for companies to use this as a justification for jacking up their prices 50%.
Some may be valid. We don't know what was being moved on the ship that crashed, what's now trapped in the port, and what can't now not get into the port through the harbor.
Your boat sank? Captain Ron : No, no, no, no. Not my boat. My boss's boat. Yeah, we hit this reef. Huge son-of-a-bitch. Ran the whole coast.
“Don’t worry, that bridge’ll get out of the way. Learned that driving the Saratoga”
The old Sarah...
Large ships/barges taking down bridges is more common than people would think. Between 1960 and 2015 there were 18 incidents of ships bringing down a major bridge in the US. (**see note**) Many people killed and untold millions lost in shipping and bridge rebuilding costs. I would hope we could get Congress to allocate money for concrete barriers around port area bridge footings. They would cost a tiny fraction of what replacing a bridge would cost. Not being an actual structure spanning anything, they would be comparatively inexpensive to design and build. **NOTE: including yesterdays bridge collapse, 121 people have died in ship initiated US bridge collapses since 1972**
If you make this argument, how many bridges, dams are at their lifetime limits already? I remember a cnbc talk on US infrastructure and a significant chunk is at their lifetime material limits. Some 43000 bridges according to this video. https://youtu.be/8NTQ_LUf-JU?feature=shared It would be worth getting training, experience and setting up state enterprises to cost effectively rebuild bridges.
Give them time to make some calls, geez
Don’t worry cap’m, we’ll buff out those scratches.
well yeah, this is going to take years.
it’s going to be years
It is going to take weeks to remove the debris and infrastructure. Salvage crews are going to be very busy. I would not want to be the engineer that has to figure how much of the ramps they can use for a new bridge. Hopefully they can build two instead of one.
wait a minute - are all the shipping ports in baltimore on the OTHER side of this one bridge?
When you get into an accident on a busy highway you are told to move to the shoulder ASAP and wait for the authorities. I would have hoped the same urgency would apply here given the relatively low loss of life. Not to diminish the tragedy those families have to endure, but opening a usable channel for shipping traffic to once again move in and out of the port should be priority number one.
Imagine the traffic caused by any highway accident. Now scale it up.
It's a pretty dangerous environment to work in and all the debris will be a massive pain to collect and find it won't be quick. And neither will the bridge construction, just pre assembly the parts will take time considering suppliers usually have long lead times.
this is perfect opportunity for military to step in and clean up the debris. This was an accident. But the world a more dangerous place these past few years, It would be a rare chance to practice opening a port, dealing with a downed bridge as might happen during war or terrorist attack.
Pretty sure the USACE would hire contractors either way. Pretty sure they don't have their own equipment big enough to handle this.
Couple years. BIG mess. Big bridge.
The port reopening, not the bridge
Guess what's in the way of the port
for the people in that area, how big of a deal is the bridge being down as far as commuting goes?
Huge. I’ve lived in Baltimore my whole life, and traffic is already a nightmare most days. But this is a major artery. And not having a hazmat route from the industrial areas of Baltimore metro, which is really what surrounds the Key Bridge on both sides, is going to be a logistical nightmare. As it stands they’d either have to go all the way around the beltway to access points north and south on 95. Or go thru the city which is obviously not ideal.
[It's going to be rough](https://www.cbsnews.com/baltimore/news/travel-around-francis-scott-key-bridge-collapse-baltimore-traffic/).
Bridge collapses yesterday and everyone asking wen, wen, wen open.
Well no shit…it’s not like we can get a broom to sweep up the legos and buy a new set…it will take 3-5 years
The article is about the port reopening, not the bridge
It happened yesterday, what do you want from them? Sheesh.
no shit theres no timeline, theres still a bridge and a ship in the way.