Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore Struck By Container Ship, Collapses
Key Bridge in Baltimore Collapsed. Via Twitter
Shocking footage out of Baltimore as the Francis Scott Key Bridge was struck by a container ship and collapsed.
Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed early Tuesday morning after a support column was struck by a container ship, sending at least seven cars into the Patapsco River, launching a search-and-rescue operation and prompting Gov. Wes Moore to declare a state of emergency.
In a Tuesday morning news conference, just a few hours after the incident, Baltimore Fire Department Chief James Wallace said authorities are “still very much in an active search and rescue posture,” noting they are searching for “upwards of seven individuals” and that sonar has detected the presence of vehicles in the water. There is no indication that the event was intentional, Wallace said.
“This is a tragedy that you could never imagine … It looked like something out of an action movie,” Mayor Brandon Scott said.
Video from the incident shows the container ship, billowing smoke, colliding with a support beam and quickly causing much of the bridge to collapse. Just before the collision, the ship’s lights appear to turn on and off multiple times.
The ship had been under the operation of a pilot, as is required by Maryland law.
All traffic has been rerouted from the 1.6-mile steel bridge that is part of Interstate 695.
“We know that we have a long road ahead, not just in search-and-rescue, but in the fallout from this,” Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr. said in the news conference.
Priscilla Thompson, who lives on the water in Dundalk facing the Key Bridge, was awoken in the middle of the night by the horrible sound of crashing steel.
“I really thought it was an earthquake or something because it shook this house so bad,” she said. “It shook it — it really rattled it — for four or five seconds.”
“And then, it got real quiet,” she said.
A solid quick breakdown of the apparent multiple power failures on the 'Dali' ahead of impact with the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, MD.
I'm looking to credit whoever created this. (Dm) pic.twitter.com/NV1zSQHYkU
— Moshe Schwartz (@YWNReporter) March 26, 2024
Eric Feigl-Ding found a video of somebody just driving across the bridge as part of their day-to-day (during the day, so not during this awful catastrophe) to give a little bit of context as to how big this catastrophe was:
He points out that this is the third longest span of any continuous truss in the world.
Holy cow. This is *AWFUL*.Report
“This is a tragedy that you could never imagine” No. It’s the gov’t’s job to imagine things like this. To have fire and rescue DRILL scenarios like this. You drill and prepare so you can improve the chance to save more lives and not stumble through half remembered procedures you never drill because no one ever thought it would happen. Then you go find out if it was intentional or not.Report
It’s probably worse than deliberate. It’s probably incompetence.Report
The ship lost power twice. In a bend in the river. Currents took over. Once it restarted the second time there was no way to stop it from hitting those pilings.
And contrary to what you and Damon want to think about local officials, they are not incompetent either. At least not in the first response agencies. That the mayor said out loud what a lot of lay people will no doubt think about this doesn’t prove or disprove his incompetence either.
How about we take a pause on ragging on hard working rescue personnel until we get the full story. Since, ya know, they are still looking for victims in the water an have been for about 8 hours straight so far.Report
These things just happen, I guess. Can’t be helped. Why are we still talking about this?Report
Yes Jay, these things do happen. Ships loose power in channels and thus loose steering. Sometimes they go aground. Sometimes they hit things. Its physics. I can guarantee the pilots and ships crew were working hard to prevent the ship from hitting the bridge. I also guarantee the rescuers are still working hard to find and recover everyone who went in the water.
The only real way to prevent this from happening would be to not have large containerships navigating up rivers to ports. we tried that during the pandemic and it didn’t work out well for things humans care about – like the livelihoods of other humans.Report
Maybe we could set up a commission to find a good name for a tiger team whose job it would be to pick people who should sit on a board that decides whether it would be cost effective to have inspections.Report
Considering that there are contractors missing in the river who were performing maintenance on the bridge at the time it was hit I’d say it was inspected regularly. The Coast Guard will investigate the ship, its crew and the pilots who were guiding it down the river. State and federal DoT will investigate the bridge because they have the authority to do so. If there was criminal negligence there will be prosecutions.
Doesn’t change the fact this was an extremely improbable event. And the cost to preventing such improbable events is large – so large as to cross a diminishing marginal returns threshold. Changes to ships and bridges will be made – just as they were after the 1980 Sunshine Skyway crash and collision in 1980.
Nice to know though that you are consistently unwilling to grant any leeway or consideration to any government professional at any level. I’m sure your part of Colorado is far better off for that attitude.Report
Allow me to state explicitly: I DO NOT BLAME THE BRIDGE FOR THIS. NOR ANYONE ON IT.
And by “bridge”, I mean “the thing spanning the water” and not “the people on the part of the boat that has a steering wheel”.
In case that gets wildly misinterpreted too.
Nice to know though that you are consistently unwilling to grant any leeway or consideration to any government professional at any level. I’m sure your part of Colorado is far better off for that attitude.
Hey. Maybe it was terrorism.
Wouldn’t *THAT* be a relief?Report
You mean “lose” here, not “loose”.Report
Wait a second… you pulled a *GREAT* trick here.
I just want to look at this.
And contrary to what you and Damon want to think about local officials, they are not incompetent either. At least not in the first response agencies.
…
How about we take a pause on ragging on hard working rescue personnel
See that? If I was complaining about “incompetence” with regards to the ship losing power and sailing directly into the bridge support resulting in the bridge collapsing, I was not attacking the competence of the rescue personnel.
Why in the heck would you think that complaining about incompetence with regards to the ship losing power and sailing directly into the bridge support resulting in the bridge collapsing count as me “ragging on hard working rescue personnel”?
The hard working rescue personnel weren’t even in the picture until the ship lost power and sailed directly into the bridge support resulting in the bridge collapsing.
How’s this? I will explicitly state that when I am talking about incompetence with regards to the ship losing power and sailing directly into the bridge support resulting in the bridge collapsing I am, IN NO WAY, making fun of firefighters, ambulance techs, or people who operate life-saving equipment in the harbor.
And I apologize for it being unclear that when I was talking about the ship losing power and sailing directly into the bridge support resulting in the bridge collapsing that those fine rescue personnel were not under the umbrella of my criticism.Report
“Why in the heck would you think that complaining about incompetence with regards to the ship losing power and sailing directly into the bridge support resulting in the bridge collapsing count as me “ragging on hard working rescue personnel”?”
It’s like the joke in “Big Bang Theory”:
Sheldon: Oh, well apparently, Leonard thinks he’s better than everyone in the whole world. Including those fighting for our freedom. Well, I don’t know about you, but I support our boys overseas.
Amy: And girls.
Sheldon: Hey, you already ruined Thor, give it a rest.Report
I accept your apology.
Because you followed Damon’s clear attack on the Mayor – a local official responsible for the effectiveness of rescue – with this:
With no overt change in subject a reasonable person would think you were amplifying his attack.Report
Ah, I see. Fair enough.
For what it’s worth, I do not think that the Mayor has anything beyond minor abilities to tweak the responses of our hard working rescue personnel that are working tirelessly to help after this unthinkable tragedy that resulted after the ship lost power and sailed directly into the bridge support resulting in the bridge collapsing.Report
695 is under state authority not local. Same with the waterways. If it turns out someone effed up it will be at the Maryland level, not the Baltimore City level.Report
The folks in charge of making sure that forms about whether ships have been properly maintained are filled out and signed correctly probably exist at even higher levels than that.
I mean, assuming that the shipping container ship in question was going to a different port than another, different, Maryland port.Report
They said on the news this morning that it is a Singapore flagged ship and was destined for Colombo, Sri Lanka. Someone can correct me if I am wrong but the incident occurred in the Patapsco river which I believe is under Maryland sovereignty. Regulation of international shipping is of course federal.Report
If we remembered The Wire better, we’d know this.Report
Phillip, I was responding to Mayor Brandon Scott’s quote where he said this scenario could never be imagined. Frankly, that’s crap. The Mayor may not believe this could be imagined, but emergency services SHOULD be imagining this. Tell me I’m wrong.Report
I have friends in fire service in both PG County and Baltimore County. They do drill this sort of thing. So does the USCG. But it takes minutes to get there, minutes people don’t have in a scenario like this.Report
Indeed. Especially in that cold water.Report
This could close the Port of Baltimore for months. The bridge is one of two ways to get through the Patapsco River bay, the other being the tunnel closer into town. Both are on interstates. Vehicles can go through the city or around the Beltway the long way.
The ports of Wilmington and Philadelphia are nearby but smaller (particularly Wilmington). Virginia has facilities at Norfolk and Portsmouth that are comparable to Baltimore in size, and New York isn’t far away.Report
I have read that one of the major impacts will be for trucks carrying hazmat cargoes. They’re not allowed in the tunnel and probably not allowed to go through the city.Report
I agree it could, though I’d like to think that the authorities will be hustling to, at bare minimum, cut up and remove the bridge debris from the channel to restore ship access in quick order.Report
How often do boats crash into bridges?Report
This wasn’t a boat, it was a ship, probably piloted by two locals (I think that’s the rule for container ships in the Chesapeake). This is comparable to a private plane disappearing off the radar versus a commercial pilot attempting suicide.Report
I’d be very interested in reporting on the bridge supports that the ship hit and the tolerances those were built to. Gotta assume that this very scenario was designed into the supports.Report
The bridge was built in the 70’s. I don’t think that we had shipping container ships anywhere near this size back then.Report
No, but there were bulk cargo carriers in excess of 90,000 tons capacity sailing by the early 1970s. Everyone knew bigger ships were coming.Report
There is no such thing as a “tolerance” for an uncontrolled 95K+ ton, 300m ship crashing into a structure at speed. Someone else can do the F=Ma math on that but it is immense.Report
The army of self-educated experts in epidemiology are, even now as we speak, doing their own research on bridge engineering and navigation and will announce their results on Facebook.Report
Yet another validation why I don’t have Facebook…Report
I’ve represented the body that regulates river and harbor pilots in New York and spent a lot of time with pilots. Piloting huge cargo ships is a tricky business, and involves training and drilling almost unimaginable to us landlubbers*, despite which catastrophic incidents like this are almost vanishingly rare. Sort of like crashes of commercial aircraft.
At this point, nobody has any basis to say anything of value. Maybe we should wait until people who know what they’re doing look into this and find things out. My hot take, if I had one, would be of no value, and I haven’t seen anything yet that suggests that anyone else’s hot take is worth hearing.
*Among the things you have to do is draw a navigation chart, from memory, of the waters to which you are assigned, showing the depth, channels, impediments to navigation, and the like, with which you are, traditionally, presented upon retirement.Report
Causes of the crash (Choose all that apply):
1. Capitalism
2. Racism
3. Wokism
4. DEI
5. Hunter Biden
6. FeminismReport
I wasn’t cynical enough.
Elon Musk has already been on the bandwagon of (4) DEI.
According to Matt Schlap, it was (7) Covid lockdowns
According to Nancy Mace, it was (8) Biden investment in clean energy.
Rick Scott thinks it was (9) immigrants.
CPAC is conducting focus groups to determine if they will go with The Joos or The Mooslims.Report
This is easily the best take here.Report
I have no expertise on engineering design or tolerances of items built like this. I would ASSUME that there is a contingency designed for this, i.e. a ship hitting a support. I’d also assume that there are barriers that would be constructed around the support to mitigate a ship crashing into the pillar. The equivalent of barrels of water on highways around exits. I could be wrong, but if that’s not the case, then I’d think this is a case of not if, but when, something would happen. YMMV.Report
I believe that the barriers are called “dolphins”.
If the math below is correct, you’d need to have something capable of withstanding around 77 million newtons.
Are there any engineers on the board?
Report
There are indeed, though not as prevalent in the 70s when FSK was built. Interesting tidbit along these lines linked here as I’ve read on this today: The parallel power lines to the bridge have two towers with dolphins, and last year those dolphins were reinforced. The bridge, obviously, where not, though a dolphin or fender alone probably wouldn’t stop a ship that big, it would have to be a full fill of some notable size for that much mass going the speed this ship was reportedly going.Report
Without knowing I would assume the dolphins around the transmission pylons were built to protect against collision by much smaller boats, which would not damage the bridge but would totally destroy the very fragile pylons.
If the vessels blew away the bridge support structures, you’d need dolphins bigger than those structures to protect the bridge (or the pylons).
As much as it is easy to imagine a cargo vessel running into the bridge, the cost to protect it from such a low probability event would be astronomical. And those who now criticize the lack of foresight would have spend decades criticizing the useless waste of taxpayer money in building protective dolphins as big as the bridge itself.Report
Stuff is coming out: Cargo ship that hit Baltimore bridge was involved in Antwerp collision in 2016.
Now, this didn’t hit a bridge but it hit a quay. “WHAT THE HECK IS A QUAY?”, you may ask. A quay is built on fill (rather than on piles) and is parallel to land (rather than extending out from shore).
I’d be surprised if any of the same people involved in the 2016 incident were involved in hitting the bridge.Report
Ugh, just unbelievably terrible.Report
Terrible at 1am or whenever it happened. Catastrophic if it had happened even early into rush hour.Report
I was watching the video and urging all the traffic across. Thankfully, the impact seemed to happen during a lull in traffic.Report
They’re reporting now that the ship sent a last minute mayday that allowed the port authority to close the bridge just before impact. The 6 people still missing were a maintenance crew that was on the bridge fixing potholes. Hopefully I am proven wrong but hard to imagine they are found alive.Report
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At least it wasn’t doing rush hour traffic.Report
Thanks be to agnostic Jebus for that!Report
I watched that video and when it got the point of impact, I, uh vocalized. Crudely.
In the Pacific NW we have had many, many bridge issues, all of which are pretty noteworthy. It’s got something to do with having lots of bridges. We have the floating bridge that sank in a storm, for instance.
Nothing I know of, other than maybe Galloping Gertie, compares with this. Wow.Report
Apparently dispatchers (?) or some other employee received a mayday signal from the boat not long before they hit the bridge. And those individuals got in touch with the guys working on the bridge and told them to close it and get people off of it.
Apparently they did that, successfully, and some outlets are now saying the only dead are the six construction workers who fell when the bridge collapsed (two others hospitalized, though I think one was released already).
If that is true – well, honor upon everyone who moved fast to prevent this tragedy being even worse. I don’t know how busy the bridge would be in the middle of the night like that but some of the sources I’ve read recently are claiming the only people who wound up in the river were the eight construction workers, and while it’s terrible for them and their families, this could have been so much worse.
Not too far from where I live, barges hit the I-40 bridge (this was over 20 years ago) early in the day and a number of people (I think about 15?) and a horse and a couple dogs were killed when they all fell off the bridge. About a dozen people were injured.
At the best of times I dislike driving over river bridges, and this kind of news just makes it a little worse.Report
The news is reporting that the cops shut down the bridge 90 seconds after getting the Mayday:
The official reports seem to say that only six people died and all of them were on the pothole fixing road crew.
The cops did a bang-up job here.Report
Haven’t seen the video until today. It’s terrifying.
And really really makes me praise the police for getting the bridge shut down in time to minimize the loss of life. Which is no consolation to the families of the workers who died, of course, but that’s the terrifying part: how much traffic was moving across the bridge until just seconds before impact and collapse.Report