All lanes closed both directions for incident on I-695 Key Bridge
All lanes no longer in existence on I-695 Key Bridge.
They're still in existence, just a little wetter than usual.
Seven people likely dead so far. What a horrible, terrifying way to go.
I've heard it was construction workers filling pot holes.
The bridge at crest is around 185 ft off the water, and footage shows the collapse took about 6 seconds where the cars were.
Imagine doing a mind numbing job in the dead of night and then all of a sudden the floor starts dipping below you. The street lights go out a second or two later, and not long after you're falling for close to 2 seconds. Then either crashing hard into the concrete below you that just parted the water, having a flood of water hit you shortly after. or just jetting directly into freezing cold water.
How the fuck did this happen?
The investigation report is going to be interesting. While bridges can only take so much punishment, they are usually designed to survive some collisions with their pylons. I wonder what the state of the bridge was, prior to the collapse. If it's anything like the rest of the infrastructure in the US, it was probably not good. Though, this may also be a case that the designers in the 70's planned for a collision with a cargo vessel of the times, which were tiny bath tub boats compared to the super container ships we have now. The Dali was built in 2015 she is a 300m ship capable of carrying 116851 tons. That's a lot of mass for the pylon and it's barriers to stop.
I'm pretty sure no bridge is designed to survive a collision with a large cargo ship, even a brand new one. It would balloon the cost so much nobody would be willing to pay it.
New bridges are built with protections such as pylons to prevent ships from even getting close to bumping into the bridge after the sunshine skyway bridge collapse of 1980.
I live not five minutes away from the Key bridge and the sound of this woke me up last night. My GF takes this bridge to work every day. Driving through the city now for her every morning is going to be fucking awful.
I watched it on the news last night all the way from Australia and I said 'man they just fucked that whole cities traffic up for a long time'.
Yeah, IIRC it is the route for hazmat trucks. Gonna fuck with a lot of businesses down the line for a bit too.
As an aside, they used to have a rave down in the park under the west side of the bridge a decade or so ago, and it was always awesome being on the beach stage looking at that bridge at night and as the sun would come up.
I'm just glad it happened in the dead of night and that the ship sent a mayday several minutes before it happened. State Police were apparently able to close the bridge and clear most of the traffic (it's 1.6 miles/ 2.6 kilometers long) off of it before it collapsed. It's sad that there were still construction workers and some cars still left on it, though.
That’s the ship that hit the bridge. It’s still there as I write this, but there are a bunch of tugs on scene right now.
Marine traffic can show you all the active AIS contacts in real time.
Found a photo of the bridge on it.
At least it happened in the very early AM hours when traffic was low and there were no visibility problems, unlike the Sunshine Skyway Bridge.
The fact that it was early morning probably saved hundreds of lives, from what I'm reading
That sounds like a traffic armageddon around Baltimore for the next few years...
Not just Baltimore. This is also a major cargo port. That harbor will be blocked for a long time. Get ready for supply chain disruptions and more rising prices.
holy shit. I've been getting alerts about it, but that video is so much worse than I imagined.
That doesn't look like a little repair, which is what I had assumed. That looks like the ship's insurer is buying Baltimore a new bridge.
googles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Scott_Key_Bridge_%28Baltimore%29
The main span of 1,200 feet (366 m) was the third longest span of any continuous truss in the world.
Smooth.
The bridge, at an estimated cost of $110 million
Construction of the Outer Harbor Bridge began in 1972, several years behind schedule and $33 million overbudget.
So $143 million in 1972 dollars...
https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/
$1.06 billion in 2024 dollars.
EDIT:
https://www.vesselfinder.com/vessels/details/9697428
95k ton displacement.
Convention on Limitation of Liability for Maritime Claims (LLMC)
The Convention provides for a virtually unbreakable system of limiting liability. Shipowners and salvors may limit their liability, except if "it is proved that the loss resulted from his personal act or omission, committed with the intent to cause such a loss, or recklessly and with knowledge that such loss would probably result".
The limit of liability for property claims for ships not exceeding 2,000 gross tonnage is 1 million SDR.
* For larger ships, the following additional amounts are used in calculating the limitation amount:
For each ton from 2,001 to 30,000 tons, 400 SDR
For each ton from 30,001 to 70,000 tons, 300 SDR
For each ton in excess of 70,000, 200 SDR
So that'd be 29,200,000 SDR.
https://www.imf.org/external/np/fin/data/rms_sdrv.aspx
1.325610 US dollars per SDR.
So about a $39 million limit on marine liability for a ship of that size, or under 4% of the price of the bridge.
Maybe Baltimore taxpayers are gonna be buying Baltimore a new bridge.
EDIT2: I wonder how owners of larger ships managed to get lower per-ton liability limits than owners of smaller ships.
EDIT3: Oh, wait. Apparently the US isn't party to that treaty. Sounds like the US uses law even more favorable to the shipowner.
https://iclg.com/practice-areas/shipping-laws-and-regulations/usa
The United States is not a party to the 1976 Convention on Limitation of Liability for Maritime Claims. Instead, the United States continues to apply the Limitation of Liability Act (the Limitation Act), passed in 1851 to encourage investment in shipping. Under this Act, vessel owners (including demise charterers) may limit liability to the value of the vessel and pending freight in certain circumstances where the loss occurred without the privity or knowledge of the owner.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limitation_of_Liability_Act_of_1851
The Act was passed by Congress on March 3, 1851 to protect the maritime shipping industry; at the time, shipowners were subject to loss from events beyond their control such as storms and pirates, so the Act was designed to limit the shipowners' liability to the value of the vessel. Without it, American shipping was "at a competitive disadvantage" compared to other maritime countries where similar limitations applied.[1]: 260
Section 3 of the 1851 Act states "the liability of the owner or owners of any ship or vessel ... shall in no case exceed the amount or value of the interest of such owner or owners respectively, in such ship or vessel, and her freight then pending".
I guess if you're gonna knock down a bridge with a container ship, the US is probably a good place to do it.
US uses law even more favorable to the shipowner.
Color me surprised.
Police audio from the event:
It sounds like police got their just in time to stop traffic. One of the officers says that as soon as backup arrives to take over stopping traffic he would go and evacuate the workers; when we get the report that the bridge is gone.
If you watch the stream of the crash, you can see that traffic was flowing just moments before it fell.
Wow, damn. Unfortunately similar to the Tasman Bridge collapse
May all involved find peace, that's so tragic.
I had to find a map, yeah, this is going to be a major cluster fuck in the morning. It's possible to route around it, but the next crossing is aways away:
Just looking at that map makes me crack up as someone from Ireland. Baltimore is a small town here on the south coast of Cork. Dundalk is up in Northern Ireland. Pasadena is a place in California.
I just think it's funny when America has random place names taken from elsewhere.
There was a live-stream where you can scrub to the minute where the bridge is gone (1:28:43 by the time-stamp inside of the video, not the YT timestamp). The Ship apparently lost all the lights 2-3 times shortly before impact. Maybe it was a problem with that. We also noticed a lot of hacking activities in the last weeks. Maybe it was that.
Better to wait for more details to come out than to speculate wildly.
Idk I'm going with space lasers and you can't convince me otherwise.
A guy at work showed me the footage on his phone. Whatever shit news site he was pulling from had the headline, "DEI focus by The transportation department under Pete buttigiege results in bridge collapse".
They didn't even wait half a day to start lying.
A portion? That looks like the entire thing dropped.
Everything in camera collapsed, but the whole thing was 1.6 miles.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Scott_Key_Bridge_(Baltimore)
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