If that’s the case, I wonder if there’s stringent protocol ‘in case of’ for such an improbable (?) event. Could this lead to a shake up of the industry or do things just resume/continue as they are simply with hope it doesn’t happen again?If the ships need to get up the river and the bridge needs to be there then there's not much really you can do from a design perspective I don't think. Difficult to build a bridge that can withstand impact from any object that might ram into it. The health and safety is in regulating how ships pass under the bridge and who is controlling them, I would think. Obviously something's gone very wrong there.
Don't think any of the construction crew on the bridge would have had much chance unless they saw it coming and were gone before the video
Baltimore bridge collapse
- Thread starter Ekkie Thump
- Start date
I think its just quite difficult to design a bridge that both allows large ships to pass under it and is fully resistant to disproportionate collapse. I mean I'm not a civil engineer so could be wrong but if you need large gaps between your supports, taking out one is going to leave too big of a span for the others supports to then cope with. Maybe you can design it so the damaged section breaks away from the remaining structure without pulling the rest of it down but again suspect that would be complicated/difficult when dealing with sudden impact.
Probably the most practical way is to build it so it is strong enough to resist the impact but you can imagine the amount of material that would require when the impact is from a massive freight liner.
No doubt this will all form part of the investigation into why it happened though. Or should.
That's crazy. It's surprising there's no structures ahead of the bridge to divert a head-on collision like that.
It's very fortunate that it wasn't at a rush hour.
It's very fortunate that it wasn't at a rush hour.
From the position of the bridge I would guess that the port is completely cut off for the foreseeable future. Last year it moved $75bn in freight.
That's what I was thinking. Can't believe how the whole bridge disintegrates like that. Hopefully those on it will make it.
Yeah you'd think there'd be a block or guard before to take the impact, but again guess that might cause more issues than it solves.
QE2 bridge on The Thames has large concrete bases around the bottom of the support pillars, but even that I don't think would help too much if something that size hit it from the wrong angle. Or possibly any angle.
Can’t help but think: if that’s the integrity of a bridge built in 1977, what must those quite a bit older be like, and what improvements have been made since?
The inquiry into this should be quite something. Questions revolving around disaster risk assessment/analysis. Seeing an entire bridge fall like a house of cards, does the status quo remain? We're talking billions in freight, but risk to life seems to be enormous, if the only thing preventing it is these juggernauts staying on course. Imagine this same event at peak times in a day.
I'm sure ships crashing into bridges are extremely uncommon, but this current 'in the event of' seems like something that could lead to wholesale change.
Wonder how many big wigs have asked if their bridge is as flimsy in the event of as this one was.
Fortunately this is a rare event though.
Its because of the large span between the two supports. If you take out one support, particularly with force, the bridge immediately either side of it will collapse. That's most of the bridge gone straight away. Then the support the other side of the large span is compromised as the bridge is what is counterbalancing it. As soon as the bridge collapses to one side of the remaining support collumn, all the gravitational force is on the other (like someone suddenly jumping off a see saw).
You can add additional support either side of the large opening. e.g.
But I am guessing the practicality of that all depends on the bridge design, purpose, landscape either side, etc. Quite an easy solution with something like the above where you still have half a mile of bridge either side of the main arches and middle section of the river. This is also 15-20 years newer than the Baltimore bridge I think.
Bridges are usually built under a mix of tension and suspension. The way that collapsed it looks like the impact released some of the tension and it ripped the whole bridge down. I watched the video expecting a partial collapse, so to see the whole thing go down is a lot more shocking than I imagined.
I'm also kind of shocked a ship that big can lose all power. I'd of thought they'd have multiple backups, alternates and so forth for the props at least. Kind of wild it can just shut off all at once with a single-failure. Would expect way more ports to be destroyed if that's a common design flaw, cause nothing is stopping one of those things once it is in motion.
I won’t lie to you: I’m in tears right now. This is devastating for the Baltimore community and many who live around. I live just 25-30 minutes away of this bridge. Terrible, just terrible!
Our state relies heavily on bridges to connect its different parts. The Bay Bridge is even bigger than the FSK bridge. It connects the Eastern Shore with Annapolis and the rest of Maryland.
Our state relies heavily on bridges to connect its different parts. The Bay Bridge is even bigger than the FSK bridge. It connects the Eastern Shore with Annapolis and the rest of Maryland.
Absolutely shocking. Imagine if this happened during the morning rush hour. So hope they get everyone out of the water. Terrible
Here's another video that includes about five minutes of footage before the crash. You can clearly see the boat's lights going off then on multiple times. There clearly was something wrong with the ship.
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what the actual feck. That is insane. Those poor people.
Thanks, mate.Its because of the large span between the two supports. If you take out one support, particularly with force, the bridge immediately either side of it will collapse. That's most of the bridge gone straight away. Then the support the other side of the large span is compromised as the bridge is what is counterbalancing it. As soon as the bridge collapses to one side of the remaining support collumn, all the gravitational force is on the other (like someone suddenly jumping off a see saw).
You can add additional support either side of the large opening. e.g.
But I am guessing the practicality of that all depends on the bridge design, purpose, landscape either side, etc. Quite an easy solution with something like the above where you still have half a mile of bridge either side of the main arches and middle section of the river. This is also 15-20 years newer than the Baltimore bridge I think.
You could put big concrete blocks in front of the pillars I suppose.If the ships need to get up the river and the bridge needs to be there then there's not much really you can do from a design perspective I don't think. Difficult to build a bridge that can withstand impact from any object that might ram into it. The health and safety is in regulating how ships pass under the bridge and who is controlling them, I would think. Obviously something's gone very wrong there.
Don't think any of the construction crew on the bridge would have had much chance unless they saw it coming and were gone before the video
The ship turned toward the base of the bridge. Maybe they could have avoided it. Watch the first 3-4 minutes of the video.
Those poor people, difficult to imagine anyone falling from that height could survive.
I saw that too. Have they been hijacked and deliberately hit the bridge?
Only half-joking.
You'd be surprised. I personally hope that everyone made it out alive.
For yall wondering about the design of the bridge…
It’s awful stuff man. Awful.
I live on the Eastern Shore now and use the Bay Bridge all the time. Another issue is that the weather and water is still really cold. Even if you survive the fall, the cold water would be tough to overcome. Just terrible. Hopefully commuters in the area will get added telework flexibilities to allow I-95 to be more open to the truck traffic.
I think the debris and the currents from the debris will have likely killed most of those who survived the fall. If we’re lucky, we will have a few survivors. But I don’t expect any.
They had an admiral on the radio earlier and he was saying that he thinks the large amount of 'smoke' coming from the ship was probably due to having the engine at full power trying to divert the course. Can a ship like this reverse? Perhaps they stuck it in reverse to try to slow it down.
Another possibility with the 'loss of power' could be that they disabled all of the electrics etc to try to minimise the risk of fire in the aftermath maybe?
Another possibility with the 'loss of power' could be that they disabled all of the electrics etc to try to minimise the risk of fire in the aftermath maybe?
Yeah I'd be amazed if anybody survived that. In the video you lose context of the scale of it, but there is a lot of debris, extremely large objects, vehicles etc falling there. It will be a miracle if anybody does survive but let's hope for the best. Such a terrifying way to go, especially if you're quickly trying to escape the bridge beforehand.
The bridge is of a continuous truss design. This is a truss bridge which extends without hinges or joints across three or more support. It seem this particular bridge is all one stretch at 366m and was the worlds 3rd largest continuous truss.
Each support takes a bit of the weight across the span of the truss rather than a traditional truss bridge, the supports for which are designed to each take the whole weight of the entire bridge.
As soon as the ship hit and took out the one support the whole bridges structural integrity was compromised, and the whole thing went down as per video.
This will part of the investigation. CNN had earlier today McCabe and Kayyam. There is no indication yet of any malicious intent, but it would be a whole different matter if indeed there was an intent, for whatever reason.
(and I saw your white font)
@MarylandMUFan I know how much these two bridges save time for commuters. If one looks at the map of Baltimore, one can see that if you come, say from Ellicott City, to the other side, you now need a much much longer drive. It’s bad news for people who work on that side of the bridge.
Thanks for that. So it seems these bridges are not designed with impact in mind, well certainly not gigantic impacts anyway as its design works against it then and the thing has the integrity of a Jenga stack if hit correctly from the sides.
Never given a single thought to the design of bridges in terms of what goes through/underneath them, only what goes on them.
Looking at those pillars also, they look like twiglets; just no chance against that behemoth, but what surprised me is all the others fell with the weight of the steel coming down on them. Is there no integrity to these structures at all? The sides, directly hit by absurd mass, I get, but potential downward collapse not accounted for either?
There was no malice or sarcasm in the white font.
From that angle of this particular video, the ship which despite the light problems (whatever the cause was) looked like it would make it without hitting anything, then steered in the direction of the one of the main pillars. I'm not assuming anything, the investigation will tell us what really happened.
Hope everyone you know is alright mate. I’m about five minutes from the Bay Bridge, my first thought was driving across that and seeing the cargo ships go by
Some incredibly fortunate individuals whose vehicles made it across in the nick of time in the video footage.
Just mental
Wow. Would have never expected that.
I think you’re getting, maybe, just a bit carried away here.
That ship is about 115,000 tons.
CNN reported there was a crew on the bridge laying concrete, or something related to. That's probably why there are flashing lights and a few stationary vehicles or objects to the viewer's right of the ship.
If a ship takes the middle of the channel there’s tons of clearance either side. The greater risk would be the ship being too high and failing to clear the bridge deck.
In this case though, the ship was nowhere near the centre of the channel. It was so close to the support that any loss of control or slight miscalculation would massively increase the risk of a collision.
I wonder why it was taking that course. It doesn’t look like it was trying to get out of the way of anything coming towards it.
It’s like footage of a bridge going down during a war or something. Mental how it just goes like a domino affect
Somehow in my mind, I thought modern day bridges would not crash in a heap like this. Anyone knows at what pace or force did the ship ram into it.