Putting on my old supply chain hat.
Shipping rates have increased bigly due to the Red Sea issues. More ships have to take longer routes therefore increasing their turn around time. And ship companies are looking for any excuse to raise rates after they have been cratering lately.
this won't be as meaningful to overall rates as the Red Sea, but we will see prices go up some.
That's really, really sad.
Wow. That's horrifying for a whole mess of reasons. This will be taught in engineering classes, maritime classes, case law (once culpability is sorted out), and industrial safety classes for decades to come.
I have been on that bridge every Tuesday at 8am for the last 2 years, it is the only day I have to go that way. Amazon took over the Bethlehem Steel Yards, which is at one end of it, the south deliveries are going to take a bit longer now. It's going to be a traffic (Car and Boat) for a good bit. If you had a cruise scheduled in the next 90 days, might want to cancel it
In reply to Steve_Jones :
Eesh. I'm glad we didn't lose you to this.
Since the 1980 collapse of the Sunshine Skyway one would think efforts would have been made to prevent this. 
Those that ignore history tend to repeat it.
Whoa. That's nuts.
In the late 70s a ship hit a local drawbridge, taking out traffic to a peninsula here in Seattle. Turns out the captain was a drunk. "Retired" up north where a few years later his wife supposedly killed him, cut him up and buried him in her yard.
Not any sort of engineer, but are there dolphins or barriers big enough to stop or even deflect that much mass?
That's one big boat. There are videos that show a power loss (all lights out), swerving, big smoke, another power loss, and then it drifts into the bridge. No one is saying intentional.
Bridge opened in 1977. Were there cargo ships that big back then?
Purple Frog (Forum Supporter) said:Since the 1980 collapse of the Sunshine Skyway one would think efforts would have been made to prevent this.
Those that ignore history tend to repeat it.
Millions of ships have gone under that bridge with no issues. All of the "someone should have done something" is comical.
I can't find the video I saw this morning, but it showed about 20 seconds before and right up to point of impact. All the news clips show the collapse, not much before, but you could see the ship black out, no lights, then blink, then hit which goes along with loss of power.
I'm no engineer, but don't understand why all the spans dropped and not just the one or two nearest the hit.
In reply to 914Driver :
Gravity.
iansane said:Whoa. That's nuts.
In the late 70s a ship hit a local drawbridge, taking out traffic to a peninsula here in Seattle. Turns out the captain was a drunk. "Retired" up north where a few years later his wife supposedly killed him, cut him up and buried him in her yard.
In 2007 a container ship struck one of the towers supporting the West span of the San Francisco Bay Bridge and took a huge gash out of the ship, but the tower was OK. Turned out the pilot was hopped up on prescription medicine and got the channels confused with the towers on the charts (Heavy fog. lousy visuals). Did 10 months in jail.
914Driver said:I can't find the video I saw this morning, but it showed about 20 seconds before and right up to point of impact. All the news clips show the collapse, not much before, but you could see the ship black out, no lights, then blink, then hit which goes along with loss of power.
I'm no engineer, but don't understand why all the spans dropped and not just the one or two nearest the hit.
I'm not an engineer either, but I occasionally cosplay as one. It looked to me like the whole span is connected together, and that lateral tension is part of what holds it together. Once the "chain" was broken, the other parts were unsupported.
Thoughts go out to those families affected. This is for sure going to be a clusterberkeley that affects not just Baltimore, but commerce all along the east coast and hence the whole country. Hopefully they can clear the wreckage fairly quickly and at least get ship traffic moving again. But rebuilding the bridge is going to take years, unfortunately.
914Driver said:I'm no engineer, but don't understand why all the spans dropped and not just the one or two nearest the hit.
Because it is a double cantilever truss.
The bridge bore on 2 main piers, one at either end of the main span. Each half is essentially a see-saw perched on one of the piers, with the main and side spans cantilevered out from that. The 2 halves join at the middle of the main span, and stabilize each other. The whole thing is a truss to keep the 2 see-saws rigid, and the weight of the main span is required to balance the weight of the side spans.
Every member is stressed because truss. And once one of the fulcrums went down, there was nothing to hold down the other side. If you watch the collapse video, the east half actually rotates upward as it is collapsing, because of the loss of counterbalance.
This view is from the north, the direction the ship was coming from. It smacked the right hand (west) pier / fulcrum and knocked it out. That part of the bridge collapsed immediately, breaking off at the next pier over, where the structure changed to simple span beams. Without the counterbalance of the west half, the east half rotated up (counterclockwise in this picture), overstressed immediately, and also collapsed.
If you look at pictures of the aftermath, the simple span approaches on both sides are still pretty intact. Only the trussed parts fell, because they were a closed system of balanced stresses.
914Driver said:I can't find the video I saw this morning, but it showed about 20 seconds before and right up to point of impact. All the news clips show the collapse, not much before, but you could see the ship black out, no lights, then blink, then hit which goes along with loss of power.
I'm no engineer, but don't understand why all the spans dropped and not just the one or two nearest the hit.
I was just telling my daughter (she's 3, I needed a dull bedtime story) about doing truss calculations and running rudimentary test models with different load cases when I was in college.
Loss of a few key members in a truss system, and the rest of the members aren't able to do a damned thing but fall.
Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:Wow, that's going to have so many repercussions on traffic, commerce, quality of life, et cetera. I'd imagine that they'll take the opportunity to build something entirely new with modern engineering and construction processes. Coupled with the fact that the guberment isn't good at doing things quickly, what do you guys think? 6-10 years?
I think it will be less than 5. Yes the gears of government grind slowly, but this is high profile and high impact. The powers that be will probably put it at the top of the list, not unlike when Philly had their collapse last year. Huge points to be gained with this once the dust settles (man it feels gross to type that last part out).
One of the reasons big cruise ships do not come to Baltimore is that bridge (used to) restrict it. I have to assume any new bridge will fix that issue.
Here's a straight forward to the point assessment from someone with lots of knowledge in the industry. Someone in the comments mentioned the proper calls went out and traffic was stopped to the bridge before collapse which you can see in this video (last moving car clears just before impact), unfortunately it looks like there were work crews out on the deck based on the orange flashing lights.
Puddy46 said:Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:Wow, that's going to have so many repercussions on traffic, commerce, quality of life, et cetera. I'd imagine that they'll take the opportunity to build something entirely new with modern engineering and construction processes. Coupled with the fact that the guberment isn't good at doing things quickly, what do you guys think? 6-10 years?
I think it will be less than 5. Yes the gears of government grind slowly, but this is high profile and high impact. The powers that be will probably put it at the top of the list, not unlike when Philly had their collapse last year. Huge points to be gained with this once the dust settles (man it feels gross to type that last part out).
This bridge was built in 17 months. It's 2.5 miles long and the longest cable stay bridge in North America. They can build them quickly if you let them.
You will also notice the large piles of rock around the uprights.
BoulderG said:Bridge opened in 1977. Were there cargo ships that big back then?
I just went back to my "archives" aka my sea term report from 1983. US Lines American Liberty that I rode was 700'9" by 85' beam and 18,900 gross tons loaded, built in 1968. MV Dali, built in 2015 is 984' long x 158' beam and 95,130 gross tons. So way bigger and way more containers per ship now.
In reply to Steve_Jones :
Millions of ships have gone under that bridge with no issues. All of the "someone should have done something" is comical.
I guess i respectfully disagree as probably will the families of those that fell in the 47 degree water. It is sort of the argument that millions of people drive without seatbelts and didn't get hurt. It only takes one. I think the dolphins placed around the "new" Skyway bridge are a good idea.
YMMV
Good points about how difficult it would be to protect against a hit by something that massive. I will just return to my usual habit of dying a little bit inside every time I drive over a very high bridge over a busy shipping channel. Thankfully I live on the east coast so I get plenty of opportunities to practice that.
Toyman! said:Puddy46 said:Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:Wow, that's going to have so many repercussions on traffic, commerce, quality of life, et cetera. I'd imagine that they'll take the opportunity to build something entirely new with modern engineering and construction processes. Coupled with the fact that the guberment isn't good at doing things quickly, what do you guys think? 6-10 years?
I think it will be less than 5. Yes the gears of government grind slowly, but this is high profile and high impact. The powers that be will probably put it at the top of the list, not unlike when Philly had their collapse last year. Huge points to be gained with this once the dust settles (man it feels gross to type that last part out).
This bridge was built in 17 months. It's 2.5 miles long and the longest cable stay bridge in North America. They can build them quickly if you let them.
You will also notice the large piles of rock around the uprights.
Does that include the design phase? And demo? I just remember what a E36 M3-show building the west span of the SF bay bridge was. But then, they had the luxury of a functioning span, so could have prolonged environmental studies and all that pap.
In reply to Marjorie Suddard :
A tug Ford Econobox might have helped here, to deflect the ship back into the channel. But of course, as Steve says, this is areally highly unlikely occurence. The problem is, it is catastrophic IF it occurs.
I drove over this bridge multiple times a day for 15 years:
One lane either direction, plus a sidewalk on the near side. You could walk over this if you wanted to:
For a ship of that size to have the sort of rudimentary drive system described earier (shut down and restarted in reverse???) I'm sure makes sense to build cheaply and probably works fine on the open ocean. But when navigating through high value and high risk areas maybe they should be guided by tugs to prevent blundering about like a 98,000 ton bull in the china shop of bridge stanchions. Just a thought.
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