131–140 of 1001 posts
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No, you can click on "I'll do it later" to bypass it.
I think this is region dependent
What was the ship captain's plan here? Just ram through the bridge?
The pilot is a former captain with a lot of local experience.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritime_pilot
[Edit: The association of Maryland Pilots even has the bridge on their homepage https://www.mdpilots.com/]
Did the pilot screw up? Was the pilot ignore? Did the captain take over? Was there a technical fault that disabled steering?
There could be a lot of possible reasons for this incident.
Somehow I find it surprising how completely the bridge collapsed after the damage. I understand that a container ship collision is serious, but you could imagine a scenarios where the bridge slumps or buckles but doesn’t just disintegrate like that. It’s surprising that ships capable of doing this damage were probably regularly driving past it, and its safety as a thoroughfare depended entirely on those collisions no…
Most bridges nowadays (say last century) depend on a careful balance of forces that are transferred through a chain of members in tension and compression. When any piece in the chain of those forces breaks, the entire structure loses ability to transfer forces and breaks. This arrangement is what allows us to build these structures in the first place. There is careful calculations of forces and risks and allowance fo…
Somehow I find it surprising how completely the bridge collapsed after the damage. I understand that a container ship collision is serious, but you could imagine a scenarios where the bridge slumps or buckles but doesn’t just disintegrate like that. It’s surprising that ships capable of doing this damage were probably regularly driving past it, and its safety as a thoroughfare depended entirely on those collisions no…
Most bridges nowadays (say last century) depend on a careful balance of forces that are transferred through a chain of members in tension and compression. When any piece in the chain of those forces breaks, the entire structure loses ability to transfer forces and breaks. This arrangement is what allows us to build these structures in the first place. There is careful calculations of forces and risks and allowance fo…
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Parts of the Francis Scott Key Bridge not connected to the hit pylon went down too. The beam structure above the road that supports the whole thing collapsed and took down other spans.
And that structure probably existed because the bridge has fewer longer spans, probably since the seabed below the bridge is deeper (and needs to be deeper to support container ships passing below). The Öresundsbron (connecting Sweden and Denmark) features both short segments but also with an overhand section in the middle for larger ships to pass through. (1) The great belt bridge (inside Denmark) is slightly higher…
I was curious about Zealand's other connection, the Great Belt Fixed Link:
> The West Bridge has been struck by sea traffic twice. While the link was still under construction on 14 September 1993, the ferry M/F Romsø drifted off course in bad weather and hit the West Bridge. At 19:17 on 3 March 2005, the 3,500-ton freighter MV Karen Danielsen crashed into the West Bridge 800 metres from Funen. All traffic across the bridge was halted, effectively cutting Denmark in two. The bridge was re-opened shortly after midnight, after the freighter was pulled free and inspectors had found no structural damage to the bridge.
> The East Bridge has so far been in the clear, although on 16 May 2001, the bridge was closed for 10 minutes as the Cambodian 27,000-ton bulk carrier Bella was heading straight for one of the anchorage structures. The ship was deflected by a swift response from the navy.
In Danish [2], but it looks like there's someone always monitoring the sea traffic, and able to close the bridge at very short notice — I assume with the red flashing lights which are used to close motorways in emergencies.
> The eastern end through the Great Belt is international water, and therefore even the largest ships must be able to sail under the bridge. The 254 meter high pylons are therefore dimensioned so that they should be able to withstand the approach of tankers of 250,000 tonnes dead weight (DWT) at a speed of 10 knots. Artificial islands protect the anchor blocks as well as the three outermost piers on the Zealand side and the two outermost ones on the Sprogø side.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Belt_Bridge
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20090116051425/http://ing.dk/art...
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Most bridges nowadays (say last century) depend on a careful balance of forces that are transferred through a chain of members in tension and compression. When any piece in the chain of those forces breaks, the entire structure loses ability to transfer forces and breaks. This arrangement is what allows us to build these structures in the first place. There is careful calculations of forces and risks and allowance fo…
Thanks! So why are huge—ass container ships allowed to navigate underneath fragile public bridges with single points of failure? The not unlikely worst case is that the ship is out of control for some reason…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most bridges nowadays (say last century) depend on a careful balance of forces that are transferred through a chain of members in tension and compression. When any piece in the chain of those forces breaks, the entire structure loses ability to transfer forces and breaks. This arrangement is what allows us to build these structures in the first place. There is careful calculations of forces and risks and allowance fo…
Thanks! So why are huge—ass container ships allowed to navigate underneath fragile public bridges with single points of failure? The not unlikely worst case is that the ship is out of control for some reason…
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It makes me wonder what goes through someone's head when one sees a mass casualty event like this, and your first instinct is to rush to Wikipedia to change the article to past tense ('was' a bridge).
"I can't do much else, may as well keep folks up to date" I guess. If they're sitting on the shore with a fully stocked rescue boat delaying help to post their edits, aye I'd be peeved too. Otherwise, might as well keep info updated as it becomes known. One of the beauties of the internet is that there's enough people willing to do the work to keep the rest of the world up to date with real-time information. Chances…
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Already roughly 75 edits since the collapse.
What impressed me was that it looks like openstreetmap shows the bridge as down already. https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/39.2144/-76.5279