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Baltimore's Key Bridge struck by cargo ship, collapses

wbaltv.com

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Re: Baltimore's Key Bridge struck by cargo ship, collapses

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clip here, beginning at 1m23s, shows a (sped-up) edit of the ship approaching the bridge, with lights going out, on, and out again immediately prior to impact: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=Cs6PrRiIHEw&t=1m23s >

Curious, is there a specific reason you put links between ?

In markdown (or at least some flavors) that is the typical way of making a hyperlink actually a link. It's equivalent to [link](link) in markdown.

Re: Baltimore's Key Bridge struck by cargo ship, collapses

#234

Oh, this makes me feel bad for Baltimore. Only bad news seem to come out of this town. Its reputation -- both domestically and internationally -- is mostly informed by The Wire, Freddie Gray/BLM, a dysfunctional city government, the 2019 ransomeware attack, the spoiled batch of J&J Covid vaccine... and now this. It's a real shame. It's a good place.

We’ve also got cherry blossoms, some good ramen and a few good breweries. Shocking lack of excellent Mexican food, however. And some world-class hospitals and universities. Don’t take TV shows so seriously.

Re: Baltimore's Key Bridge struck by cargo ship, collapses

#236
post #208
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bridges only last for roughly 50 years. Considering such collisions are rare enough to make the news as a memorable event you can workout for yourself that the odds are quite low over a bridges lifespan. They are designed to withstand smaller boat impacts because they occur relatively frequently, but cost vs benefit on rare events that are difficult to mitigate is quite different.

Interested in this claim, because it sounds about right, except that I can’t name a bridge constructed in the past 50 years. The bridges we can all name are pushing 100+ right?

[deleted]

Re: Baltimore's Key Bridge struck by cargo ship, collapses

#238
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's no surprise that the entire bridge collapses after a pylon collapses. What surprises me is that the pylon collapses. I'd expect those to be extremely solid, with tons of padding. But with ships getting bigger and bigger, I guess there's a limit to what you can account for.

Case of, they are built strong, but not that strong. A container ship has huge inertia, I don't think any bridge could be built to take a direct hit like that.

Container ships of yesteryear are also many times smaller than modern ships.

Re: Baltimore's Key Bridge struck by cargo ship, collapses

#239
post #204

[flagged]

The ship was under the control of two local harbour pilots at the time. The fault was likely to be mechanical | electrical, and the blame would lie with the owner and their maintainance programs.

I hope it's not something as simple as ran-out-of-fuel. The plumes of black smoke look similar to large engines 'restarting', with the last few drops of fuel.

I would expect (hope?) the harbor pilots would take note of the ships fuel level at the start of their operations and refuse to move the vessel till it's fixed.

Re: Baltimore's Key Bridge struck by cargo ship, collapses

#240
post #208
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bridges only last for roughly 50 years. Considering such collisions are rare enough to make the news as a memorable event you can workout for yourself that the odds are quite low over a bridges lifespan. They are designed to withstand smaller boat impacts because they occur relatively frequently, but cost vs benefit on rare events that are difficult to mitigate is quite different.

Interested in this claim, because it sounds about right, except that I can’t name a bridge constructed in the past 50 years. The bridges we can all name are pushing 100+ right?

The Francis Scott Key bridge - the subject of this story - was finished in 1977, and took about 5 years, so... much of it was constructed in the last 50 years. ???
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