Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed after ship hit it

Purple Frog (Forum Supporter) said:

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

A few weeks ago I took these pics from a Grady White under the Skyway bridge ( assuming you all are talking about the one in Tampa Bay). It appears to  have pretty effective protection...

In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :

It didn't include demo.  They built the new bridge across the top of the old ones and did the demo later. 

The bridge was a design-build project so the design was happening as construction started. Including the two large interchanges that went with the project, the total construction time was just shy of 5 years. The contractor pocketed a pretty large completion bonus for finishing it a couple of months early. 

KyAllroad said:

For a ship of that size to have the sort of rudimentary drive system described earier (shut down and restarted in reverse???)

That's actually extremely common, not rudimentary.  It's just as fast (if not faster) as shifting a transmission that size would be, without the added weight and complexity of a gearbox.  Can you imagine the clutch plates for a trans that big?

gsettle said:

Purple Frog (Forum Supporter) said:

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

A few weeks ago I took these pics from a Grady White under the Skyway bridge ( assuming you all are talking about the one in Tampa Bay). It appears to  have pretty effective protection...

That one was built after the old one collapsed, so of course it was designed better.  Saying the designers of this bridge should have planned for much bigger ships, 40 years in the future, that might lose power at the exact wrong time, again is comical.  That's like saying a 1977 Mustang should have had airbags because a 2023 Yukon might run a red light at some point as that car was going by.  You can not plan for something that might happen one time in 40 years...

Was just under it 4 times on a cruise ship. Royal, Carnival, and NCL have some work to get their passengers to their cars now. 
 

Horrible for those who died or injured. 

Steve_Jones said:

 

You can not plan for something that might happen one time in 40 years...

You can't, no.  However when designing something you do have to take into account worst case scenarios and in long term projects you have to take growth into account.  Your figures might be off on those, but you have to do it. 

Brainstorming for the case of a ship hitting one of the supports probably happened at some point.

Remember that time they designed the "unsinkable" cruise ship?

In reply to Duke :

Thank you, good explanation.

Adam525:

That's what I saw this morning, but at the time of my post the talking heads weren't showing the first part.  Thanks.

Purple Frog (Forum Supporter) said:

Since the 1980 collapse of the Sunshine Skyway one would think efforts would have  been made to prevent this.   

First thing I thought when I watched.  To then see the larger view of Baltimore and the unprotected pilings, after the learnings of the FL bridge collapse, I was surprised.

Mr_Asa said:

Steve_Jones said:

 

You can not plan for something that might happen one time in 40 years...

You can't, no.  However when designing something you do have to take into account worst case scenarios and in long term projects you have to take growth into account.  Your figures might be off on those, but you have to do it. 

Brainstorming for the case of a ship hitting one of the supports probably happened at some point.

Yeah, dolphins can be added to an existing bridge just fine. They only had 44 years to plan and execute, it didn't exactly have to be a last minute thing. 

Ugh. Water rescue sucks on a good day; 0130 in a busy shipping channel? No thank you. 

Also, wth does Ford Econobox replace? 

In reply to dculberson :

While I can't speak for other states, our road funding is horrendously mismanaged here in PA, while our roads and bridges are mostly in poor or worse condition.

No amount of planning will make up for the lack of funds from the millions annually that go out of state from the privately owned most expensive turnpike in the freaking world or into the state police general slush fund from the highest gas tax in the country that is SUPPOSED to be ear marked for road and bridge maintenance. 

My actual point:

If money for maintenance and upgrades isn't going to maintenance and upgrades, nothing will change or improve until after it's too late and it winds up costing exponentially more. But for some reasons our states are like the stock markets, only caring about short term gains and not thinking long term strategies.

Esc0rt = Ford Econobox

Recon1342 said:

Ugh. Water rescue sucks on a good day; 0130 in a busy shipping channel? No thank you. 

Also, wth does Ford Econobox replace? 

 

In fairness, I doubt it was very busy after that impact.  

Recon1342 said:

Ugh. Water rescue sucks on a good day; 0130 in a busy shipping channel? No thank you. 

Also, wth does Ford Econobox replace? 

 

Another name for a prostitute. The Ford ______

Mr_Asa said:

Steve_Jones said:

 

You can not plan for something that might happen one time in 40 years...

 

Brainstorming for the case of a ship hitting one of the supports probably happened at some point.

I'm sure it did especially when it was designed. However, ships of that size did not exist when it was designed. You can't brainstorm for something that doesn't exist

Steve_Jones said:

Mr_Asa said:

Steve_Jones said:

 

You can not plan for something that might happen one time in 40 years...

 

Brainstorming for the case of a ship hitting one of the supports probably happened at some point.

I'm sure it did especially when it was designed. However, ships of that size did not exist when it was designed. You can't brainstorm for something that doesn't exist

I like that you ignored the part of my post where I covered this. 

Growth happens.  Time happens.  Any engineer that doesn't account for it needs to be drummed out.  The figures can be off, your safety factors can be off.  But they designed for it.

Also, as was stated, protective measures can be installed on existing structures.  They could have looked at the Skyway collapse and said "we also have a busy shipping lane, let's put in something to prevent that from happening here."

dculberson said:

Mr_Asa said:

Steve_Jones said:

 

You can not plan for something that might happen one time in 40 years...

You can't, no.  However when designing something you do have to take into account worst case scenarios and in long term projects you have to take growth into account.  Your figures might be off on those, but you have to do it. 

Brainstorming for the case of a ship hitting one of the supports probably happened at some point.

Yeah, dolphins can be added to an existing bridge just fine. They only had 44 years to plan and execute, it didn't exactly have to be a last minute thing. 

44 years of no issues.  Blimps have been flying over stadiums for over 50 years and none have ever crashed into the crowd. A roof can be added to an existing stadium just fine so lets require all stadiums to retrofit a roof just in case, right?

Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:

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.

They also spent a lot of that time arguing about how it wasn't fair that Oakland got the "freeway on stilts" ugly side of the bridge whereas SF had the high elegant suspension bridge instead of actually building stuff.

The Francis Scott Key bridge did / does have dolphins installed to protect the bridge abutments but their location assumes that the ship is already lined up with the normal shipping channel.  In this case from the video and pictures it looks like MV Dali was to the right of the upstream dolphin in the picture above.  (The round thing to the left of the support)  If that is the case, the dolphin could have had the unintended effect of actually directing the bow of the ship towards the support. 

The flare of the bow at the main deck height is a factor too where protection is concerned, with a 158 foot beam there's a roughly 70 foot overhang to the left and right of the centerline in that part of the ship which means it can reach out further around a protected area and still hit structure.   This looks to be one of the one in a million occurrences we don't ever want to happen.  Loss of propulsion, steerage and a trajectory that was not anticipated.

Edit to add clarity to my theory above:  Aircooled posted a ship track on page 4 that shows they were on the channel side of the dolphin not outside as I theorized above.  The video angle I saw earlier when I posted this made it look that way but the track says otherwise.  On looking at the video again I think the main deck height area of the bow contacts the upside down "Y" shaped main support.  In any event not something I ever expected I'd see happen in real life literally as I turned the TV on this morning.  Just tragic for all involved.

In reply to Steve_Jones :

Not sure why you keep moving the goal posts to blimps and cars.  Regardless I'm not interested in debating those topics and you don't want to talk about the actual bridge so I'm out. 

Steve_Jones said:

dculberson said:

Mr_Asa said:

Steve_Jones said:

 

You can not plan for something that might happen one time in 40 years...

You can't, no.  However when designing something you do have to take into account worst case scenarios and in long term projects you have to take growth into account.  Your figures might be off on those, but you have to do it. 

Brainstorming for the case of a ship hitting one of the supports probably happened at some point.

Yeah, dolphins can be added to an existing bridge just fine. They only had 44 years to plan and execute, it didn't exactly have to be a last minute thing. 

44 years of no issues.  Blimps have been flying over stadiums for over 50 years and none have ever crashed into the crowd. A roof can be added to an existing stadium just fine so lets require all stadiums to retrofit a roof just in case, right?

How many people have been killed by blimps crashing into stadiums? How many have been killed by ships crashing into bridges? How many lives are worth it to lose before the money to adequately protect the bridges that we know are vulnerable to ship strike makes sense?

Don't make up farcical situations to defend your position. It does you no favors.

Mr_Asa said:

In reply to Steve_Jones :

Not sure why you keep moving the goal posts to blimps and cars.  Regardless I'm not interested in debating those topics and you don't want to talk about the actual bridge so I'm out. 

His analogy is actually on point. Planning for everything everywhere is not possible and best done in hindsight by armchair engineers.

In reply to dculberson :

How many lives are worth it to lose before the money to adequately protect the bridges that we know are vulnerable to ship strike makes sense?

You better believe there are formulas to figure this out. Insurance companies have these numbers, auto makers have these numbers and weigh them before recalls, ship builders, it stands to reason that other engineering sections would too. 

Just because it's rather cold and not fun to think about doesn't mean it's not real. If something like this only happens every 40 years, frankly the lawsuits from the lost and ruined lives are worth less money than all the red tape and labor to make upgrades to prevent a maybe maybe not situation would have been. A drop in the bucket compared to the rebuild costs for sure, but that is it's own problem.

We cannot bubble wrap the world, we can't plan for every possibility. Even if engineering to 100% beyond current capabilities, we're eventually going to get past that size/capability/capacity. How future proof should we make things if we can't predict the future?

At the same time, a much bigger problem than ships hitting bridges is bridges crumbling and falling apart from neglect and years of offput maintenance because the money always needed to go elsewhere or get trimmed for a budget. Which should be the focus for the limited available annual funds? Fixing known problems that could totally cripple an area or trying to protect from random events? There's only so much money to go around, and there's more hands in the cookie jar than ever before.