661–670 of 1001 posts
According to this Baltimore news report, after 9/11 state officials had looked at putting bumpers around the piers that could have protected the bridge from an impact like this, but it was too expensive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_-CpdVaHGg
Mkay then, gdpr is too much for some to accept I guess. Anybody got any mirror link?
There was a video the other week on Reddit where a cargo ship devastated a few loading cranes in a port in Turkey. Now this. How often do cargo ships run into infrastructure? Is this just a coincidence that it happened twice in a few weeks?
The same week for major disasters would be a coincidence but I'd guess minor stuff is happening constantly.
The main thing is that shipping companies have been taking advantage of the way maritime law limits their liability for their behavior by scrimping on maintenance as well as using ships essentially too large for the waterways they travel in.
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That ship had a 10,000 TEU capacity and was actually hauling a little under 5,000 TEUs. An empty container weighs a little over 5,000lbs, and a full one can be up to 67,000lbs. If you do the math, you find that it’s just an astronomical amount of momentum, and there’s no effective defense for a bridge that needs support in more than 30 or so feet of water.
Throwback to the scene in The Day After Tomorrow where the cargo ship comes to an almost instant halt after impacting a bus wreck under water. For some reason it managed to stand out as ridiculous even in that movie.
Every bridge with large cargo ship traffic beneath them should have channels designed to guide the commercial traffic, installed beneath them. Every city with bridges like these should, with state AND federal funding, should begin the process of constructing such "guidance channels" beneath these bridges IMMEDIATELY!!! It should be IMPOSSIBLE for Ships large enough to damage bridges to even be able to come into conta…
What you are proposing isn't feasible from an engineering perspective. This isn't like putting a guard rail up. To make damage from collisions "impossible" you'd have to build embankments up so high that the bridge would effectively be sitting on solid ground the entire way across and no ships could pass anywhere. Sure, there are ways to mitigate collisions and the new bridge they build will no doubt be more resilien…
Does anybody keep track how often these ships lose all power? Wasn't that long ago that another massive cargo ship lost power in the Suez, crashed and blocked that channel for a while. Somehow I'd expect that there would be backup systems keeping basic rudder control going even in a total power failure, but clearly that isn't the case.
>a Mass Casualty Incident has been Declared with over a Dozen Cars and many Individuals said to be in the Water. This is literally like out of a nightmare I sometimes have, falling off of a bridge in my car into the water...
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…
At least in the links with the video now you can see that the container ship directly hits one of the two main (and in the central area only) pillars completely collapsing it. No matter(1) the engineering there is no pretty much way to not lose the whole large middle area and left area leading to the destroyed pillar in that situation. Such a collapse crates so much force (tension vibrations etc.) so that the collaps…
Watching this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJNRRdha1Xk) shows that the ship was incredibly close to the bridge in the first place, even prior to the supposed failure. It's a bit bewildering to me, with my current knowledge, that this scenario wasn't envisioned prior.
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It wouldn't help with this accident, but you would think that the electronics would be on batteries. It wouldn't be too hard to have rack of batteries that would power the lights, instruments, radios, and sensors. Doesn't help if the propulsion or steering go out, but does make easier to know whats going on.
At least in small craft, bow thrusters are usually electric, with local batteries charged from the main engine room. I don't know what large craft are like, but it doesn't seem unreasonable that a bow thruster may remain operable even if the main engine fails. Clearly that's not required or they would've had it and used it, but it could be required if the regulations didn't suck. Furthermore, steering could absolutel…
Would you still believe this if it was demonstrated that the system lacking redundancy was - due to factors beyond the scope of this conversation - more safe by an order of magnitude than the steering system that includes redundancy but in a different medium?
Put differently: do you think the Space Shuttle should have had ejection seats? If yes, what about an Airbus A320 flying a normal commercial route?
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Was there a harbor pilot on board, or the normal ship pilot? Were there tug boats helping with the exit? I have often felt that the harbor protocols were overkill, but this is one of the times they could have helped.
All pilots are "harbor pilots". Crew members who control the ship outside of port are just called crew members (captain, first mate, 2nd Officer, that kind of thing), never pilot.