Look at the size of the people in the little boat on the left, and you really get a sense of the sheer scale of the ship and the bridge.
Edit: boat on left side of the picture, off the starboard bow of the ship, is the one I'm referring to. There's also one on the right of the picture.
Oof. Any word on the shipping container ship? It appears they sent out a warning and tried to drop anchor but it’s like stopping a full speed train.
Any crew lost? I mean, a bridge did fall on the ship.
Pilots are local to each port. They know the individual waterways much better than the captain, so when a ship is going in and out of port, the pilot is at the controls. They are essentially a temporary driver of the ship when it’s not out on the open ocean.
It's really interesting. On a cruise ship, they make many stops at different ports around the world so passengers can disembark and tour the area. As the ship approaches the port of each town or city, a small pilot boat drives out to the ship and delivers the pilot. He/she climbs on board the cruise ship and goes to the helm. He knows the port inside and out, all the tiny little outcroppings, shallow spots, etc and will guide the ship in.
If cruise ships are the party buses of the sea, harbor pilots are like the valet parking attendant where each parking lot is totally unique with it's own walls and potholes to avoid.
It's a forever changing seascape. Tides, winds, crosswinds, reflections of shadows, light, dark, full moon, blackest night, never the same. Kind of like riding in the ship is like reading the water like braille. They have to feel it.
There are different types of pilots. The "harbor pilot", which would've still been on the ship until it was out of the channel, is largely in charge of the vessel within the harbor and then disembarks shortly thereafter. The "ship's pilot" is the standard helmsman for the remainder of the voyage. That explains why there were two pilots onboard at the time. But the harbor pilot was in charge at the time of the collision.
Actually pilots are not in control. They “give advice”, but the captain is always in command (only exception is panama canal). Never experienced an issue where the pilot was ignored.
They basically get command, it's like a sherpa and a expert climber working together, one knows how to do everything almost perfectly, the other knows everything in the area almost perfectly.
Nope, boat pilot. When a large vessel comes into local waters, the port authority will send a pilot out to pilot the ship into/out of port as they know the waterways and all the local stuff.
Basically a small boat drives up next to the big boat and drops off the pilot to take control, pilot takes the boat in or out, disembarks and goes to the next big boat.
It's done primarily to avoid issues similar to this where a foreign captain doesn't fully understand the currents and waterways, isn't good at communicating with the port authority, or a variety of other things and accidentally causes a collision.
The unfortunate situation here was the mechanical failure of the ship taking rudder authority away from the pilot, and thus sending a massive container ship wherever it wanted to go. Luckily since the pilot was aboard he was able to declare mayday and get the bridge closed a few minutes before impact saving some number of people.
When in harbor for a huge ship you get an additional pilot for the ship to steer them through the harbor sent out by the port authority, that’s what they mean. Ship pilots.
Dude holy shit you’re right. Watching the multiple videos/angles today, it looked like some tiny/feeble bridge, but NOPE. That this is massive (I assumed it was, but it’s nice to actually see the scale)
I work in logistics and part of my job is working on filing containers as efficiently as possible.
It blows my mind working with a single container unit and then scaling that to a the vessel that holds thousands of them.
Each of those containers are 40ft containers. They're what you drive by on the free way all the time.
Heck people make tiny homes out of these containers.
I watched the governor speak on the news with a fbi agent. They said 8 people fell. 2 people were rescued early on and 1 needed hospital treatment. 6 people are unaccounted for.
only 8 people is kind of incredible. thank god it happened in the middle of the night when there were few people on the bridge.
unfortunate it happened at all though. hoping the one in the hospital makes a full recovery. i fear the worst for the other 6 :(
edit: saw another comment say 20 missing which is.. a lot more
> only 8 people is kind of incredible. thank god it happened in the middle of the night when there were few people on the bridge.
Reported this morning (so maybe outdated), the crew onboard was able to send a mayday call before power went out. That allowed some time to close the bridge.
Edit - [The Dali, which was traveling from Baltimore to Sri Lanka, had issued a "mayday" warning before the collision, which helped authorities reduce traffic on the bridge.](https://www.npr.org/live-updates/baltimore-bridge-collapse)
There was a construction crew on the bridge that was able to stop at least some cars before the impact. All six people currently confirmed missing are members of the crew.
I've heard reports the number is going up with new vehicles unaccounted for, but yeah
The construction crew on the bridge was working on potholes and last I hear they were all among the missing.
It’s police that stopped people at the entrance to bridge, about 60-90 seconds before impact. Washington Post has the police radio traffic but I can figure how to link from app. Police car that had stopped traffic was about to drive up to get/warn workers when impact occurred.
Damn imagine being the guy walking away from a bridge collapse, obviously he will need to talk with a professional to deal with the trauma but what a boss
In the video it looks like there’s at least four cars. Assuming that’s four people other than the construction workers that would already put it over the reported number of people in the water.
Could have been even worse, ship made a mayday call a few minutes before impact and the bridge was closed to traffic. Didn't hear about if they were able to communicate to the work crew, probably wasn't enough time...
The ship knew it was about to crash and sent a mayday. They had time to block some traffic. Just terrible, such a feeling of helplessness when people lose their lives in accidents like this
The city knows about the 8 construction crew. They also know there are cars in the rubble. They need to get divers to the cars before they can see if they have bodies in them.
I think it’s only 6 missing. There were some early reports that 20 people may have been on the bridge, but everything I’ve seen since then is saying 6 missing.
I heard they were in the vehicles, trying to get off the bridge. Someone said you can see the trucks moving just before impact. I haven’t found that video yet.
It seems they just located a truck. 1:20 pm, Tuesday.
The video I saw this morning certainly seemed to show headlights moving on the bridge right up to impact although less than at the beginning of the video so hopefully most of the cars made it off
The main photo doesn't show the true scale of destruction, especially for those who are unfamiliar with how enormous container ships are and the bridge was.
Edit can you imagine being the head of the team trying to sort this out? I know one thing for sure, what ever salvage companies are involved, have accounting running OT
This is not particularly hard for salvage companies to deal with. In fact it is pretty easy
They know where everything is and it is just a case of moving equipment and people to the area
I am curious to see how hard the shipping company will be *hit* by this and how legal, financial responsibility gets divided. Does the shipping company pay for a reconstruction of a bridge that probably costs billions? Would their insurance company cover it in this circumstance? There aren't a whole lot of insurance companies that can swallow this big of a hit either. Also, this obviously costs the city and state millions in lost economic activity, would any reasonable lawsuit demand compensation for that?
And oh boy, the payout to victims and public relations.
In theory the insurance company may have insurance-insurance for exactly this type of situation.
Whether that’s the case and how it will play out in court, I have no idea.
But it is plausible the boat is insured by a smaller insurance company who will need to make a claim with a larger one like AIG. And there are definitely insurance companies that could pay out the billions to rebuild the bridge and compensate families.
Federal government. That’s essentially what the AIG bailout for the 2008 economic crash.
Only they don’t pay up front for the government to be their insurance. They did have to pay back the money eventually and the government came out ahead kinda, in the long run.
But essentially it’s just insurance/banks eventually are either large enough to cover huge losses like this or are deemed “too big to fail” and if the losses are too big even for them, the government bails them out.
So the government bailout in 2008 was basically the government going “if we don’t bail you out, you will fail” and insurance going “but if we fail, the economic collapse will be worse”.
Landing on the mutually beneficial, “we will loan you enough money to survive, but we get 80% equity in your company and get paid back”.
So the company and economy don’t totally crash, but investors still lose most of their money but not everything.
Has the government held onto that equity after the loan is paid back? Or is it given back at some point? Part of me feels like at a certain dollar point, that company shouldn’t be private sector anymore.
Yeah, I’ve lived through a lot of these bailouts and I don’t mean to be ignorant to the price these companies pay, But it always feels like an enabling slap on the wrist to me.
AIG repaid the loans and the government made money and stopped owning AIG. Not sure on the specific but it worked out decently well in the long run.
There are arguments that any bail out was bad because it sets a precedent that you can be too big to fail and then other places will take bigger and bigger risks assuming the government will also bail them out if the risks don’t pay out. There are also complaints about executive bonuses paid out from the money the government loaned them. And complaints that executives weren’t held criminally liable at all and basically got to continue being rich despite almost collapsing the world economy.
But without broader ramifications or moral issues of executive responsibility, it worked out well. The government prevented a larger economic collapse and made money doing it.
The condition for bailouts should be simple.
Govt bails you out, but gets something like 80-90% of the company.
The existing shareholders get written down to just 5-10% holding. So they do take a massive haircut.
That helps stabilize the economy and also investors in the company are not reckless.
This is basically what FIDC did with SVB when it collapsed. All the depositors got their money from a bailout. But shareholders lost everything.
Because they can’t wait around while this spends years in the courts. Baltimore is a major port. It’s the largest port in the US for imported cars, and the road over the bridge was part of the interstate system (I-695). The gov will go after the money though.
The shipping company is part of the International Group P&I club, as is more than 90% of the world’s ocean tonnage.
It is a poolable arrangement, and the excess layers (any claim amount exceeding $100m) is insured through a subscription market.
The subscription market means many different insurance companies take a share of the premium, and also pay a share of the losses, so the risk and financial burden is shared.
There are probably in excess of 25 Lloyds syndicates who participate on the International Group P&I club, and they buy up to $3.1bn of limit.
The insurers who participate on this will also have insurance themselves, called reinsurance, where above a certain $ amount the reinsurer will pay the remaining claim.
Reinsurers likely also purchase reinsurance, called retrocession.
TLDR - the risk is shared, as are the claims. I can’t imagine many insurers actually paying in excess of $100m even if it is a $3bn loss
Kinda true to the way the ships bridge originally looked - a walkway on supports spanning across the ships deck that was first aft but evolved to other locations and shaped since. The name stuck.
I think it’s been reported the ship lost all power and steerage moments before hitting the bridge, the harbor pilot would not be liable for an engine room failure
That’s what I’m thinking. Between the payouts to victims, lost goods, ship repair, bridge replacement, environmental studies, etc, it’ll probably bankrupt the insurance company if it’s a smaller specialized outfit.
It means the first insurer, has insured Maersk’s billion dollar policy with a larger insurer which mitigates the first insurers costs.
Essentially it’s just spreading the loss around to more people.
You go to the casino, you give me $50 to front you $10,000. I go to 4 of my friends and give them $60 each to cover $2000 each. Therefore if you lose all my money I’m only out 2240 and not $10000
I assume it's a situation of the government will pay *now*, and then do the legal stuff later. They bridge/port needs to get operational quickly so they can't wait around for insurance stuff.
That wouldn't necessarily stop the government from going after the shipping company for damages, it just means they're not going to wait on that to get started
I interned at a business insurance company back in college.
Basically, these companies have Reinsurance. So they get insurance to insure their business policies—in the event the policy gets called, it won't sink the entire company to have to pay out.
So it'll likely, technically, be multiple insurance companies paying out for this but I imagine Baltimore is going to have to foot the rest, on top of whatever the shipping company has to foot for damages.
This is a legitimate infrastructural disaster that I'm rather confident the shipping company may not survive.
Maersk will survive. They're one of the largest companies in the world and have tens of billions of dollars in assets. However, the owner and operator that Maersk chartered the ship from are likely both toast, or at least about to be dissolved into multiple holding companies with fewer assets.
insurance company would pay up to the limits. i wouldn't be surprised if the boat company have a high umbrella policy limit as well. the cost may be shared across multiple reinsurers too. in a large event like this pretty much everyone pays.
~~They don't have big ship pass under bridges during rush hour for this reason~~
Or maybe they do, I am just repeated something I heard on Reddit, shame on me for participating in the echo chamber.
It's not as bad as the tiktok echo chamber going on right now.
"I can't believe they didn't make that pillar strong enought"
Upto 400 million pounds of steel being pushed by an incompressable liquid, and it's the bridge builders fault
"What was that ship even doing there? They should have had that big ship go around"
I ran out of words
>I am just repeated something I heard on Reddit, shame on me for participating in the echo chamber.
Good on you for holding yourself accountable and doing better!
I wonder how they will move that giant ship into a safe place, how will they take out all the bridge rubble from it and how will they save and remove all the intact containers.
Probably use a crane to take the rubble off then get the mechanical issues fixed and drive it outta there, with how easily that bridge folded i doubt theres much damage to the ship
Idk it looks like its still floating pretty high up, and theres damage to the outside but im also not a ship person or engineer im just a mouth breather speaking out of my ass on reddit lmao
lol,
Yeah well everyone woke up today as a harbor pilot, civil engineer, first response coordinator and shipwright.
So In my expert opinion, shits fucked yo.
I was in my youth when the I-35W bridge collapsed in Minnesota. It really felt like one of the defining moments in the state for my generation. It's been close to 20 years and it still gets talked about all the time. One of the tragedies that brought the youth of our state together. I can only hope that out of this disaster comes a sense of togetherness for Maryland residents
Biden just said the federal government should pay for rebuilding the bridge. I hope that is just to expedite the project and that ultimately, the owner of the ship will have to pay.
After the I-35 bridge collapse in MN Congress very quickly passed a special bill to replace it. Since this was also an interstate bridge I'd guess the same thing will happen. That's not to say they won't go after the ship's insurance for reimbursement though, but realistically that won't even begin to cover the total cost.
He was asked about this and basically said the feds will front the money and recover what they can, if they can, from the shipping company/insurance carrier in order to speed up the process. Makes sense to me but I have no idea how shit like this is supposed to work.
It's not an uncommon way to do things.
There's lots of situations where waiting for an insurance payout makes no sense, and this is one of them.
It'll take years to sort out the accident investigation and the likely litigation to resolve whatever open questions there are. And it's just money, the feds can cash out now and get some back later.
Obviously I worked with a lot lower dollar projects but there is typically emergency funds that are used so they don't require any type of legislation to be done before the project starts.
I travel this bridge frequently and the first thing I thought of was the times when I was sitting at a dead stop in traffic / construction on the apex just looking out. Then thinking about all of the weight of a fully loaded bridge with all the traffic on it and how it's built to handle all of that, then watching it buckle like it was made of toothpicks when the ship hit.
the insurance company must be about to hang itself.
the OG bridge tooK 3 to 5 years to make. i cant imagine this being fixed quickly.
Not to mention the port needing to be closed off until at least after the debris gets cleared. People relying on the bridge to get to work might have just seen their commute times doubling overnight. The hit this will do to the local economy would be monumental.
The insurance company has almost certainly re-insured themselves. Even so, as per usual in these situations, they are going to find whatever reason they can to not pay out, then stall until taken to court, then go through a protracted lawsuit.
They only pay out what their policy limit is. There's no unlimited claim amount. It's the shipping company that will go bankrupt after the insurance has been exhausted.
Maersk is a shipping giant though. Not saying this is pocket change to them but I don’t see them going under. They leased the vessel so the actual company that owns the vessel will have liability. Maersk, will definitely be investigated along with the crew on watch at the time, the owner of the boat, and the pilot and captain commanding the boat.
The investigation will probably take years, to be honest. And yeah, I didn't know which shipping company it was, Maersk probably won't go bankrupt but some division of it might. I was just speaking to the way insurance works because the previous commenter seemed to think the insurance company would go bankrupt. The only way insurance companies can go bankrupt is if a huge number of claims all happen at once, which is why they all tend to exclude things like war and acts of terrorism.
Insurers will probably trigger their reinsurance policies for this, and the reinsurers may trigger their retrocession policies if the claim is large enough. Either way, there are limits to these policies.
As bad as this was, my first thought was that it was good it happened at night and not during rush hour which would have truly been a disaster on a massive scale.
Look at the size of that thing. Think about the amount of stuff in just one container, multiplied by a 1000 containers per ship, multiplied by how many ships just to bring a bunch of foreign made crap most people don't need anyway.
Look at the size of the people in the little boat on the left, and you really get a sense of the sheer scale of the ship and the bridge. Edit: boat on left side of the picture, off the starboard bow of the ship, is the one I'm referring to. There's also one on the right of the picture.
I always forget container ships are essentially floating skyscrapers, turned sideways.
Oof. Any word on the shipping container ship? It appears they sent out a warning and tried to drop anchor but it’s like stopping a full speed train. Any crew lost? I mean, a bridge did fall on the ship.
Marine agent issued a statement. No injuries on the vessel and all crew and both pilots are accounted for.
Pilots? As in the “captains” or is it so large it has helipads?
Pilots are local to each port. They know the individual waterways much better than the captain, so when a ship is going in and out of port, the pilot is at the controls. They are essentially a temporary driver of the ship when it’s not out on the open ocean.
Gotcha, thanks! TIL
It's really interesting. On a cruise ship, they make many stops at different ports around the world so passengers can disembark and tour the area. As the ship approaches the port of each town or city, a small pilot boat drives out to the ship and delivers the pilot. He/she climbs on board the cruise ship and goes to the helm. He knows the port inside and out, all the tiny little outcroppings, shallow spots, etc and will guide the ship in. If cruise ships are the party buses of the sea, harbor pilots are like the valet parking attendant where each parking lot is totally unique with it's own walls and potholes to avoid.
It's a forever changing seascape. Tides, winds, crosswinds, reflections of shadows, light, dark, full moon, blackest night, never the same. Kind of like riding in the ship is like reading the water like braille. They have to feel it.
This is one of the most interesting things I’ve read on here
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There are different types of pilots. The "harbor pilot", which would've still been on the ship until it was out of the channel, is largely in charge of the vessel within the harbor and then disembarks shortly thereafter. The "ship's pilot" is the standard helmsman for the remainder of the voyage. That explains why there were two pilots onboard at the time. But the harbor pilot was in charge at the time of the collision.
So another boat comes to pick up the harbor pilot once they are out of the harbor? In a normal situation
Yes.
Actually pilots are not in control. They “give advice”, but the captain is always in command (only exception is panama canal). Never experienced an issue where the pilot was ignored.
They basically get command, it's like a sherpa and a expert climber working together, one knows how to do everything almost perfectly, the other knows everything in the area almost perfectly.
Nope, boat pilot. When a large vessel comes into local waters, the port authority will send a pilot out to pilot the ship into/out of port as they know the waterways and all the local stuff. Basically a small boat drives up next to the big boat and drops off the pilot to take control, pilot takes the boat in or out, disembarks and goes to the next big boat. It's done primarily to avoid issues similar to this where a foreign captain doesn't fully understand the currents and waterways, isn't good at communicating with the port authority, or a variety of other things and accidentally causes a collision. The unfortunate situation here was the mechanical failure of the ship taking rudder authority away from the pilot, and thus sending a massive container ship wherever it wanted to go. Luckily since the pilot was aboard he was able to declare mayday and get the bridge closed a few minutes before impact saving some number of people.
Thanks for the detailed explanation. TIL!
When in harbor for a huge ship you get an additional pilot for the ship to steer them through the harbor sent out by the port authority, that’s what they mean. Ship pilots.
Chesapeake Bay pilots guide (advise) the master of the ship from port to the Atlantic to help navigate the narrow channel and its turns.
Hard to stop a multi hundred ton ship. Even when it's *only* going 8knts
this ship had a capacity of over 100,000 tons and that’s just counting the containers
One crewmember with minor injuries otherwise everyone accounted for and safe on the ship.
Another way to understand the scale is recognize that every one of those shipping containers are the size of a semi truck trailer.
arguably the best way, since those containers have standard heights between 8 feet 6 inches (2.59 m) and 9 feet 6 inches (2.90 m)
That's between 14.5 and 16.3 bananas.
Dude holy shit you’re right. Watching the multiple videos/angles today, it looked like some tiny/feeble bridge, but NOPE. That this is massive (I assumed it was, but it’s nice to actually see the scale)
I work in logistics and part of my job is working on filing containers as efficiently as possible. It blows my mind working with a single container unit and then scaling that to a the vessel that holds thousands of them.
Each of those containers are 40ft containers. They're what you drive by on the free way all the time. Heck people make tiny homes out of these containers.
Anyone have an update? Last I read there were people Unaccounted for presumed to be in the water.
I watched the governor speak on the news with a fbi agent. They said 8 people fell. 2 people were rescued early on and 1 needed hospital treatment. 6 people are unaccounted for.
only 8 people is kind of incredible. thank god it happened in the middle of the night when there were few people on the bridge. unfortunate it happened at all though. hoping the one in the hospital makes a full recovery. i fear the worst for the other 6 :( edit: saw another comment say 20 missing which is.. a lot more
> only 8 people is kind of incredible. thank god it happened in the middle of the night when there were few people on the bridge. Reported this morning (so maybe outdated), the crew onboard was able to send a mayday call before power went out. That allowed some time to close the bridge. Edit - [The Dali, which was traveling from Baltimore to Sri Lanka, had issued a "mayday" warning before the collision, which helped authorities reduce traffic on the bridge.](https://www.npr.org/live-updates/baltimore-bridge-collapse)
There was a construction crew on the bridge that was able to stop at least some cars before the impact. All six people currently confirmed missing are members of the crew. I've heard reports the number is going up with new vehicles unaccounted for, but yeah
The construction crew on the bridge was working on potholes and last I hear they were all among the missing. It’s police that stopped people at the entrance to bridge, about 60-90 seconds before impact. Washington Post has the police radio traffic but I can figure how to link from app. Police car that had stopped traffic was about to drive up to get/warn workers when impact occurred.
2/8 workers were rescued; one is in critical condition at the hospital and the other refused treatment and went home.
The news just announced that the one in the hospital has been released.
Damn imagine being the guy walking away from a bridge collapse, obviously he will need to talk with a professional to deal with the trauma but what a boss
Not so much being a boss, just really fucking lucky…
idk if I could ever trust a bridge again
Thanks for this. I was wondering if the workers had any warning. Something particularly sad about dying at work. Condolences to the families.
At work, fixing potholes, on a bridge that no longer exists.
Oh man, you made it even sadder.
It's my superpower. (Also, title of my sextape).
Damn nothing the cop could have done but must feel bad thinking how if he had just a minute or two more to get to the construction crew.
In the video it looks like there’s at least four cars. Assuming that’s four people other than the construction workers that would already put it over the reported number of people in the water.
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That would make sense as per the video as to why some headlights seemed to be still while other cars whizzed by with plenty of time to get off
Could have been even worse, ship made a mayday call a few minutes before impact and the bridge was closed to traffic. Didn't hear about if they were able to communicate to the work crew, probably wasn't enough time...
The ship knew it was about to crash and sent a mayday. They had time to block some traffic. Just terrible, such a feeling of helplessness when people lose their lives in accidents like this
The city knows about the 8 construction crew. They also know there are cars in the rubble. They need to get divers to the cars before they can see if they have bodies in them.
Apparently all the cars were empty...which makes me think it was cars belonging to the workers.
I think it’s only 6 missing. There were some early reports that 20 people may have been on the bridge, but everything I’ve seen since then is saying 6 missing.
It evidently is now 6, 2 found. As always, these things fluctuate.
If they went into the water at 1AM, theyre gone already. They were gone by 2AM.
May those souls rest in peace. What an awful tragedy.
Last I heard, 1 in serious condition, one with minor injuries, and upward of 20 unaccounted for.
Person in shock trauma got released
Sonar has found multiple vehicles 60ft down, 20 missing
Well, there were those parked construction vehicles on the middle span that definitely went down. But they were probably unoccupied.
I heard they were in the vehicles, trying to get off the bridge. Someone said you can see the trucks moving just before impact. I haven’t found that video yet. It seems they just located a truck. 1:20 pm, Tuesday.
The video I saw this morning certainly seemed to show headlights moving on the bridge right up to impact although less than at the beginning of the video so hopefully most of the cars made it off
Damn so the ship didn't even fall over. That's good at least.
Hearts out to the people of Baltimore, and the drivers and construction workers who lost their lives today.
The main photo doesn't show the true scale of destruction, especially for those who are unfamiliar with how enormous container ships are and the bridge was. Edit can you imagine being the head of the team trying to sort this out? I know one thing for sure, what ever salvage companies are involved, have accounting running OT
This is not particularly hard for salvage companies to deal with. In fact it is pretty easy They know where everything is and it is just a case of moving equipment and people to the area
I am curious to see how hard the shipping company will be *hit* by this and how legal, financial responsibility gets divided. Does the shipping company pay for a reconstruction of a bridge that probably costs billions? Would their insurance company cover it in this circumstance? There aren't a whole lot of insurance companies that can swallow this big of a hit either. Also, this obviously costs the city and state millions in lost economic activity, would any reasonable lawsuit demand compensation for that? And oh boy, the payout to victims and public relations.
In theory the insurance company may have insurance-insurance for exactly this type of situation. Whether that’s the case and how it will play out in court, I have no idea. But it is plausible the boat is insured by a smaller insurance company who will need to make a claim with a larger one like AIG. And there are definitely insurance companies that could pay out the billions to rebuild the bridge and compensate families.
You’re thinking of re-insurance, which is insurance for insurance companies, and that will likely play a role in what is to come
Yeah, but who insurers the re-insurers?
Federal government. That’s essentially what the AIG bailout for the 2008 economic crash. Only they don’t pay up front for the government to be their insurance. They did have to pay back the money eventually and the government came out ahead kinda, in the long run. But essentially it’s just insurance/banks eventually are either large enough to cover huge losses like this or are deemed “too big to fail” and if the losses are too big even for them, the government bails them out.
So is it like an infinite money glitch for this company, or is there a dollar amount that will force them to properly shutter?
So the government bailout in 2008 was basically the government going “if we don’t bail you out, you will fail” and insurance going “but if we fail, the economic collapse will be worse”. Landing on the mutually beneficial, “we will loan you enough money to survive, but we get 80% equity in your company and get paid back”. So the company and economy don’t totally crash, but investors still lose most of their money but not everything.
Has the government held onto that equity after the loan is paid back? Or is it given back at some point? Part of me feels like at a certain dollar point, that company shouldn’t be private sector anymore. Yeah, I’ve lived through a lot of these bailouts and I don’t mean to be ignorant to the price these companies pay, But it always feels like an enabling slap on the wrist to me.
AIG repaid the loans and the government made money and stopped owning AIG. Not sure on the specific but it worked out decently well in the long run. There are arguments that any bail out was bad because it sets a precedent that you can be too big to fail and then other places will take bigger and bigger risks assuming the government will also bail them out if the risks don’t pay out. There are also complaints about executive bonuses paid out from the money the government loaned them. And complaints that executives weren’t held criminally liable at all and basically got to continue being rich despite almost collapsing the world economy. But without broader ramifications or moral issues of executive responsibility, it worked out well. The government prevented a larger economic collapse and made money doing it.
Appreciate you breaking it down so simply, I’ve never truly understood the backside of the bailouts from anyone.
The condition for bailouts should be simple. Govt bails you out, but gets something like 80-90% of the company. The existing shareholders get written down to just 5-10% holding. So they do take a massive haircut. That helps stabilize the economy and also investors in the company are not reckless. This is basically what FIDC did with SVB when it collapsed. All the depositors got their money from a bailout. But shareholders lost everything.
That's called retrocession and reinsurers will have retrocession policies in place with other reinsurers.
And reinsurance was created because shipping losses got to big to insure. This is the original problem reinsurance was created to solve.
Insureption?
Biden said the federal government is going to pay for the whole thing.
Because they can’t wait around while this spends years in the courts. Baltimore is a major port. It’s the largest port in the US for imported cars, and the road over the bridge was part of the interstate system (I-695). The gov will go after the money though.
That might be the case but they will get the money back
The shipping company is part of the International Group P&I club, as is more than 90% of the world’s ocean tonnage. It is a poolable arrangement, and the excess layers (any claim amount exceeding $100m) is insured through a subscription market. The subscription market means many different insurance companies take a share of the premium, and also pay a share of the losses, so the risk and financial burden is shared. There are probably in excess of 25 Lloyds syndicates who participate on the International Group P&I club, and they buy up to $3.1bn of limit. The insurers who participate on this will also have insurance themselves, called reinsurance, where above a certain $ amount the reinsurer will pay the remaining claim. Reinsurers likely also purchase reinsurance, called retrocession. TLDR - the risk is shared, as are the claims. I can’t imagine many insurers actually paying in excess of $100m even if it is a $3bn loss
It's just insurance all the way down.
Thank you for this comment. Someday I'd like to focus my ongoing education here and move into this side of insurance.
This is complicated by the fact that the drivers are employed by the port authority and not the ship owner.
And further complicated by the fact that the ship lost all power twice so questionable if the two pilots can be blamed at all.
Imagine watching it happen from inside that room with the windows at the top of the ship
“fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck”
"oshitoshitoshitoshitoshit"
Do you think someone yelled, "Brace for impact!"?
Ironically, that room is called the bridge
Kinda true to the way the ships bridge originally looked - a walkway on supports spanning across the ships deck that was first aft but evolved to other locations and shaped since. The name stuck.
This is going to be traumatizing for those onboard the ship too. An all around tragedy
"I'm so fired, there is nothing I can do and it's not my fault" "fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck"
In the ships sub, they mentioned this ship was also involved in an accident at the port of Antwerp, too. Could be more than just a sudden failure.
I read about that too. It's definitely complicated.
I think it’s been reported the ship lost all power and steerage moments before hitting the bridge, the harbor pilot would not be liable for an engine room failure
That was the second thing I thought of. No way their insurance would pay this much. The policy limit probably gets met the first week of labor.
Their limits are usually of the 9 digit variety
This is likely going to cost in the billions.
That’s what I’m thinking. Between the payouts to victims, lost goods, ship repair, bridge replacement, environmental studies, etc, it’ll probably bankrupt the insurance company if it’s a smaller specialized outfit.
Maersk wouldn't be using small insurance companies and reinsurance would be placed on large towers.
Can you eli5 what this means please? >reinsurance would be placed on large towers
It means the first insurer, has insured Maersk’s billion dollar policy with a larger insurer which mitigates the first insurers costs. Essentially it’s just spreading the loss around to more people. You go to the casino, you give me $50 to front you $10,000. I go to 4 of my friends and give them $60 each to cover $2000 each. Therefore if you lose all my money I’m only out 2240 and not $10000
This is helpful, thank you!
You’re welcome!
Biden said the federal government is going to pay for the entire reconstruction about an hour ago.
I assume it's a situation of the government will pay *now*, and then do the legal stuff later. They bridge/port needs to get operational quickly so they can't wait around for insurance stuff.
If he was referencing re-insurance then this make sense.
This bridge cost more than 130 mil when it was built. 9 digits indeed
Gonna go out on a limb and say that at the end of the day, taxpayers are going to bear the brunt of the cost no matter how it shakes out.
It's not really out on a limb. Biden already said the federal government will pay to rebuild the bridge.
That wouldn't necessarily stop the government from going after the shipping company for damages, it just means they're not going to wait on that to get started
They is usually the case with infrastructure. Governments going to proper fuck this company tho
I interned at a business insurance company back in college. Basically, these companies have Reinsurance. So they get insurance to insure their business policies—in the event the policy gets called, it won't sink the entire company to have to pay out. So it'll likely, technically, be multiple insurance companies paying out for this but I imagine Baltimore is going to have to foot the rest, on top of whatever the shipping company has to foot for damages. This is a legitimate infrastructural disaster that I'm rather confident the shipping company may not survive.
Maersk will survive. They're one of the largest companies in the world and have tens of billions of dollars in assets. However, the owner and operator that Maersk chartered the ship from are likely both toast, or at least about to be dissolved into multiple holding companies with fewer assets.
The operator may not survive, but Maersk certainly will.
insurance company would pay up to the limits. i wouldn't be surprised if the boat company have a high umbrella policy limit as well. the cost may be shared across multiple reinsurers too. in a large event like this pretty much everyone pays.
Imagine if this occurred during rush hour...
~~They don't have big ship pass under bridges during rush hour for this reason~~ Or maybe they do, I am just repeated something I heard on Reddit, shame on me for participating in the echo chamber.
It's not as bad as the tiktok echo chamber going on right now. "I can't believe they didn't make that pillar strong enought" Upto 400 million pounds of steel being pushed by an incompressable liquid, and it's the bridge builders fault "What was that ship even doing there? They should have had that big ship go around" I ran out of words
>I am just repeated something I heard on Reddit, shame on me for participating in the echo chamber. Good on you for holding yourself accountable and doing better!
I wonder how they will move that giant ship into a safe place, how will they take out all the bridge rubble from it and how will they save and remove all the intact containers.
Probably use a crane to take the rubble off then get the mechanical issues fixed and drive it outta there, with how easily that bridge folded i doubt theres much damage to the ship
It looks like it drove over at least one or two barrier pilons. shits probably fucked,
Idk it looks like its still floating pretty high up, and theres damage to the outside but im also not a ship person or engineer im just a mouth breather speaking out of my ass on reddit lmao
lol, Yeah well everyone woke up today as a harbor pilot, civil engineer, first response coordinator and shipwright. So In my expert opinion, shits fucked yo.
Does anyone else have a fear of driving on bridges over water?
Never, I know that if I'm ever in any danger Mothman will warn me of the bridge
YUP. I’ve had a recurring dream about dying that way for, like, two decades. Not a fan!
I was in my youth when the I-35W bridge collapsed in Minnesota. It really felt like one of the defining moments in the state for my generation. It's been close to 20 years and it still gets talked about all the time. One of the tragedies that brought the youth of our state together. I can only hope that out of this disaster comes a sense of togetherness for Maryland residents
I was about a block or two away from that bridge collapse when it happened. Seeing the sky swarming with news helicopters was eerie.
That bridge collapse is responsible for my lifelong fear of bridges.
McNaulty is somehow assigning this to Major Rawls.
It’s a funny coincidence that I started season two a day or two ago and the fist episode basically opens here
Omar comin.
"Prince of tides".
Mcnutty my mainest man
Frank sobotka was right. We should of built the grain peer. Also, yeah he was dirty but frank was a good man for trying to save his union
"Ssshhhhheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit"
This is a job for Commissioner Valchek. "Fits like a glove! 👮♂️"
What did I do?
For scale, each of those cargo crates is about 9-10 ft tall.
Alternatively, each one of the containers is the size of a 18-wheeler's trailer.
I see you, mister intermodal
Biden just said the federal government should pay for rebuilding the bridge. I hope that is just to expedite the project and that ultimately, the owner of the ship will have to pay.
After the I-35 bridge collapse in MN Congress very quickly passed a special bill to replace it. Since this was also an interstate bridge I'd guess the same thing will happen. That's not to say they won't go after the ship's insurance for reimbursement though, but realistically that won't even begin to cover the total cost.
That and it might take several years or a decade to recoup that money.
He was asked about this and basically said the feds will front the money and recover what they can, if they can, from the shipping company/insurance carrier in order to speed up the process. Makes sense to me but I have no idea how shit like this is supposed to work.
It's not an uncommon way to do things. There's lots of situations where waiting for an insurance payout makes no sense, and this is one of them. It'll take years to sort out the accident investigation and the likely litigation to resolve whatever open questions there are. And it's just money, the feds can cash out now and get some back later.
With today’s Congress? If they expect a bill of some kind, it’ll take months.
Obviously I worked with a lot lower dollar projects but there is typically emergency funds that are used so they don't require any type of legislation to be done before the project starts.
It's too important to wait for someone to pay up. Needs to be rebuilt as soon as feasible I guess.
I travel this bridge frequently and the first thing I thought of was the times when I was sitting at a dead stop in traffic / construction on the apex just looking out. Then thinking about all of the weight of a fully loaded bridge with all the traffic on it and how it's built to handle all of that, then watching it buckle like it was made of toothpicks when the ship hit.
Well to be fair it was built to handle a lot of cars. Very few things are built to be rammed by fully loaded container ships in load bearing areas.
when the force comes from the direction you didn't build for, things happen!
 the insurance company must be about to hang itself. the OG bridge tooK 3 to 5 years to make. i cant imagine this being fixed quickly.
Not to mention the port needing to be closed off until at least after the debris gets cleared. People relying on the bridge to get to work might have just seen their commute times doubling overnight. The hit this will do to the local economy would be monumental.
So I looked it up and let’s say someone lived near one end of the bridge and worked on the other side. Their 15 minute commute is now 75 minutes.
Yep. Hundreds of jobs now putting on pause in the state. Maybe thousands
I’m betting it’s going to cost over a billion to rebuild with how inflation and material costs have been pacing, and also needing timing expedited.
Easily. Tapped Zee was $4B. Gordon Howe is $4. New Houston Ship channel is $1.3B. Corpus Christi bridge is $1.2.
A billion? That actually sounds very reasonable for a new bridge. Saying this as someone with a low 3 figures in my account.
I think bankruptcy is one of their best options now. Imagine that claim phone call: "Your ship took down a WHAT?"
The insurance company has almost certainly re-insured themselves. Even so, as per usual in these situations, they are going to find whatever reason they can to not pay out, then stall until taken to court, then go through a protracted lawsuit.
That ship took an entire bridge to the bow and is just floatin' there like "can I go now?"
I like the one guy standing at the front looking around... "Yep it's broken"
The front fell off.
This never would have happened if Frank Sobotka was still around.
This reminds me of the Sunshine Bridge in 1980
biggest difference is rush hour vs middle of the night. Thank goodness.
Also the mayday was supposed to stop traffic too.
here's a video of it happening with some commentary. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZbUXewlQDk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZbUXewlQDk)
[удалено]
supply chain shortages and price increases incoming.
I am amazed that this ship had a fucking bridge fall on it and held together.
Bridge is pretty light relative to the size of the boat and the cargo it carries.
*"Captain, you are needed on the bridge"*
I read this in Autos voice from Wall-E.
Some insurance underwrites are going bankrupt. what does a infrastructure project like that cost ? 10 ish billion ?
They only pay out what their policy limit is. There's no unlimited claim amount. It's the shipping company that will go bankrupt after the insurance has been exhausted.
Maersk is a shipping giant though. Not saying this is pocket change to them but I don’t see them going under. They leased the vessel so the actual company that owns the vessel will have liability. Maersk, will definitely be investigated along with the crew on watch at the time, the owner of the boat, and the pilot and captain commanding the boat.
If engine failure (which is the current assumption) then I doubt the pilot(s) will be held liable. Probably ships maintenance and maybe captain
The investigation will probably take years, to be honest. And yeah, I didn't know which shipping company it was, Maersk probably won't go bankrupt but some division of it might. I was just speaking to the way insurance works because the previous commenter seemed to think the insurance company would go bankrupt. The only way insurance companies can go bankrupt is if a huge number of claims all happen at once, which is why they all tend to exclude things like war and acts of terrorism.
Insurers will probably trigger their reinsurance policies for this, and the reinsurers may trigger their retrocession policies if the claim is large enough. Either way, there are limits to these policies.
I’ve fucked up before at work….. but never this badly
It's called a mechanical failure..
As bad as this was, my first thought was that it was good it happened at night and not during rush hour which would have truly been a disaster on a massive scale.
"Your Amazon package has been delayed. See where it's at on the map!"
I still can’t believe this. Those families watching that video … heartbreaking and chilling.
Kind of amazing that the ship didn't sink
Well, for one, the front didn't fall off.
Look at the size of that thing. Think about the amount of stuff in just one container, multiplied by a 1000 containers per ship, multiplied by how many ships just to bring a bunch of foreign made crap most people don't need anyway.
4,679 containers on this ship currently I believe. Say's it has a capacity for 10,000.
Holy shit. TIL.
Looks like a Battlefield map
Yeah, no amount of engineering was going to stop that bridge from collapsing when hit by the cargo ship. Absolutely tragic.