Francis Scott Key Bridge Collapse - Baltimore, MD

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/baltim ... index.html

Authorities scrambled to clear Key Bridge in the seconds before impact, according to audio


Radio traffic in the moments before a cargo ship collided with the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore captures how authorities stopped traffic and worked to clear the bridge before the impact.

Officials warned of the ship approaching the bridge, according to a Broadcastify recording of the transmissions.

“I need one of you guys on the south side, one of you guys on the north side, hold all traffic on the Key Bridge. There’s a ship approaching that just lost their steering (unintelligible) under control, we’ve got to stop all traffic,” the person said.

In the audio, units reported that the bridge had collapsed about 90 seconds later. CNN has confirmed that the bridge collapsed at 1:27 a.m.

The video is wild. Kudos to the emergency personnel that were able to prevent public traffic from being on the bridge at the time of collapse.

Sounds like construction workers were on the bridge still and likely dead. The bridge is just gone, the ship hit a pier and it collapsed along with the decking and trusses. Terrible...

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

[tweet]https://x.com/kijanaYaa/status/1772586978141192308?s=20[/tweet]
Pretty obvious the ship was in distress. As the tweet notes, you can see it lose power twice, and they called the authorities.

Maybe they could have done so earlier and gotten a tug, no idea.

For those of you that don't want to spend 15 minutes trying to decipher where the camera is and want to look into it... from what I can tell the camera is located almost due south of the bridge a couple miles away and the ship was heading east/southeast turning southeast/south when it lost power.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Sorry, quick correction.

Ship was actually on course, the camera angle made it look like it was turning, but it wasn't.

For a sync of the marine traffic view and live view, here's a video.

https://youtu.be/N39w6aQFKSQ?si=ViSD4_bObJ8lcDFZ

[Arthur Dent]

Have you been able to figure out exactly how it hit the bridge? Videos make it look like it is missing the pier but then like catches an edge and rotates into it or something? And then the boat structure or stacked containers crash directly into the concrete columns midway up?

[IMADreamer]

You know all those movies were the bridge is collapsing and the car still have time to drive off it and ramp off the end to safety? This video certainly calls BS on that. I can't believe how fast that thing came down.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

tl;dr: No.

I haven't read much about it but I'll share my opinion because I've thought about it a lot. Take all this all with a grain of salt, I'm not a mariner.

First, I thought that video I posted with the marine traffic (charts, ais, gps, etc) nearly synced up with the camera from the bay was pretty helpful. The marine traffic is obviously pretty choppy and isn't going to have nearly as real time information as a live camera feed does. And, it shows it going right into the pier. That's obviously not what happened. Though the speed and showing the course it took, even if it's not exact at least shows that it was more/less ideally located up to the point it lost power.

Here's what I know happened:

1:24:32: The ship was on course, lost power and likely control of the rudder, and started to drift right/starboard with a yaw to the right/starboard.

1:25:33: They get power back.

After that, I'm not sure but this is my guess:

1:25:45: Smoke is billowing and the prop is turning
1:25:45 - 1:26:??(30ish): They backed up to the left causing the yaw to get worse as the back swings to the left and the bow to the right. (The edge you speak of, I believe)
1:26:30ish: (Video cuts so not sure the exact time of the 2nd power outage). They lose power again in this precarious position and the yaw/rotation continues to get worse.

Smoke is still coming out of the stacks, but it doesn't look like they're producing thrust.

1:27:00ish: Port anchor dropped, stopping the yawing from getting worse as it stops the rotation of the bow.
1:27:10ish: They regain power and put it in reverse. With the anchor down, and possibly bow thrusters trying to push the bow to the left, the ship doesn't yaw to the right like before but instead continues more/less on course and momentum/current continues to carry the ship forward even as they struggle to stop it.
1:28:45: Impact with pier.

That's a busy 4 minutes and 15 seconds.

There's my guess. I would not bet 1 penny on it, but it does make sense at least in my mind.

Looked up what time the mayday call was and found this.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68670567

Though I have no confidence in what I'm saying, I have no confidence in this account either.

The vessel was dead: there were no electronics and - crucially - no engine power. They were adrift but powerless to stop what was happening.

Multiple alarms rang out as the crew ran unsuccessful tests in a desperate attempt to fix the issue and regain power.

A local pilot onboard the vessel frantically gave orders, telling the crew to steer the rudder hard to port and drop anchor to keep it from drifting starboard.

While an emergency generator is believed to have kicked in, the ship never regained the use of its engines.

The pilots were left with no choice. Shortly before 01:30 (05:30 GMT), they issued a mayday call warning authorities that a collision was imminent.

In particular, if you drop the anchor and steer to port/left and are still going forward, the rear of the vessel is going to swing to the right/starboard. But, I think, as counterintuitive as it is, once you drop the anchor you'd have to steer to the starboard/right to get the rear to swing to the left and trust that the bow won't swing to the right. Hell, maybe that's what did happen and is the 'edge'. But it doesn't explain why the rotation didn't continue...

Dunno, I'm spent trying to figure it out. Too much unknown.

[AdmiralKird]

There are other bays in the states where it is customary to have tugs escort larger vessels past large bridges, even in standard shipping lanes. This will probably be made mandatory from here on out.

[heyzeus]

All I know is the litigation from this is gonna last a decade or more.

[Jocephus]

i blame Ziggy Sobotka

[Arthur Dent]

I watched the next What's Going on with Shipping video where they talked about this some more, and they said that for a giant ship like that dropping anchor at the speed they were going probably wouldn't do much, though I wonder whether it might still spin the ship? But if they just dropped port anchor, I would think that any resulting swing would be to the same side.

Whatever they did, seems like the recovery efforts managed to make the problem worse. The power fails, and they start drifting off course towards the pier. As soon as they get power back, they immediately start turning directly into it. I think I saw another angle before that made me think the hard turn was just before impact making me think it was swinging because they ran aground, but this video makes it clear that the turn is associated with the recovery efforts. Sounds like they tried to reverse thrust, and that seems to have also caused the turn. I wonder if that was a huge mistake. They were way too close to stop in time. The only chance was to try and turn left, and whatever they did resulted in the opposite. I also wonder if, in fact, doing nothing would have allowed them to just barely miss.

Edit:

In particular, if you drop the anchor and steer to port/left and are still going forward, the rear of the vessel is going to swing to the right/starboard. But, I think, as counterintuitive as it is, once you drop the anchor you'd have to steer to the starboard/right to get the rear to swing to the left and trust that the bow won't swing to the right. Hell, maybe that's what did happen and is the 'edge'. But it doesn't explain why the rotation didn't continue...

Do you know if anchors are at the front or the back of these ships? If in front, I could see the back spinning out to the right, but I never see anything in the videos showing it rotating left, and the contact is at the bow, not the back end spinning into it.

Edit 2: Looking some more, they are still on course during the initial power failure. They only start heading towards the pier once they get the power back on. Not sure if there is a control problem after restart or if they can't steer while applying reverse thrust or what, but it sure seems, in retrospect, like they would have been better not adjusting course.