A portion of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore has collapsed after a large boat collided with it early on Tuesday morning, sending multiple vehicles into the water.

At about 1.30am, a vessel crashed into the bridge, catching fire before sinking and causing multiple vehicles to fall into the water below, according to a video posted on X.

“All lanes closed both directions for incident on I-695 Key Bridge. Traffic is being detoured,” the Maryland Transportation Authority posted on X.

Matthew West, a petty officer first class for the coastguard in Baltimore, told the New York Times that the coastguard received a report of an impact at 1.27am ET. West said the Dali, a 948ft (29 metres) Singapore-flagged cargo ship, had hit the bridge, which is part of Interstate 695.

  • @derf82@lemmy.world
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    511 year ago

    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.

  • @homura1650@lemm.ee
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    381 year ago

    Police audio from the event:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/03/26/baltimore-key-bridge-collapse-maryland/#link-SG74QTQZKNCI7CT3KCUCWYEZYQ

    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.

    • @derf82@lemmy.world
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      581 year ago

      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.

        • @Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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          51 year ago

          Port of Baltimore is top ten in the US for international trade. It falls to top 20 when domestic shipping is included, but it’s absolutely a major port.

        • @muthian@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Vehicles from Europe coming via ROROs come to Baltimore primarily. This will impact them as diverting to Jacksonville or Savannah is going through take a lot of landside logistics to figure out.

          • @grue@lemmy.world
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            11 year ago

            If I’m not mistaken, it’s Brunswick, not Savannah, that is Georgia’s major port for automobiles/ROROs. Savannah is bigger overall, but that’s due to other types of cargo.

            This article mentions Brunswick having a goal of surpassing Baltimore, which is #1. I guess this disaster makes that more likely…

      • @someguy3@lemmy.ca
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        101 year ago

        You can clear the debris in a week or two. It will take multiple years to build a new bridge.

        • @Treczoks@lemmy.world
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          71 year ago

          Good luck finding the necessary crane capacity. There are a handful of seriously big cranes in the 7000 tons plus range, but they are Dutch or Japanese, primarily. Wherever they are, they are probably busy and will take ages to get there. While the weight/mass of the bridge is not available online, it surely exceeds the weight limits of cranes currently in existence by far, so the bridge segments need to be cut up prior to removal.

          Even if the US spends insane amounts of money, this issue will take quite some time to resolve.

            • @Treczoks@lemmy.world
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              11 year ago

              At a 1,600 tons limit, one would have to cut the debris into a lot of small pieces. There is no info on the net on how much mass the Key bridge had, but assuming the build and the size, half a million tons is probably not to far off.

              • Tug
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                11 year ago

                It won’t come out in one piece, but it can come out in much larger pieces with a big crane. This one specifically was used to build bridges and put in far larger sections than this job would require. Smaller crane barges will work on the smaller pieces simultaneously. They’ll clear half the channel (most likely the section away from the Dali) and open it to one-way traffic while they continue clean up.

          • @someguy3@lemmy.ca
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            11 year ago

            You’re not lifting it out of the way, you’re gonna pull it out of the way with a tugboat.

            • @Treczoks@lemmy.world
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              41 year ago

              It still is thousands of tons of steel, which will not be pulled that easily. And it is steel that does not swim, but drag along the muddy ground.

              • @someguy3@lemmy.ca
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                1 year ago

                You cut it into pieces, add some buoyancy things. Naval operations can be impressive. Hell the Navy probably already has stuff to do this exact thing in case of war and a bridge out of Port gets destroyed. You don’t want your Navy blocked in. You also don’t need to move it far to get shipping back.

                • drphungky
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                  21 year ago

                  Feels like an army corps of engineer training exercise, especially after Biden committed to help rebuild. Be really interesting engineering coming out of both the cleanup, rebuild, and post accident analysis.

                • @Treczoks@lemmy.world
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                  21 year ago

                  The “cut into pieces” will be interesting. There are a shitload of large pieces, and everything is under tension. The links between the pieces are rather large, and a good amount of them are under water. That’s going to be serious work.

        • @francisfordpoopola@lemmy.world
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          261 year ago

          That’s a crime scene and a death scene. It’s not going to go quickly. The good news is that it’s a critical roadway and waterway intersection so the feds and state government have motivation to make haste.

          • HobbitFoot
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            41 year ago

            The accident didn’t happen in the middle of the navigable channel, so you can maintain the pier and ship while clearing the main span.

            As for being a death scene, you likely aren’t going to be able to access the site with divers as it is too dangerous.

            • @bitchkat@lemmy.world
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              11 year ago

              I saw another article today where they said exactly that. The remaining vehicles are under concrete and its now converted to a salvage mission.

          • @fishos@lemmy.world
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            231 year ago

            Except there is no mystery as to the deaths part. Investigations take a lot of time when there are a lot of questions. The only question here is “why did the boat plow straight into the bridge?”. There’s very little question how/why the bridge collapsed(it got hit directly by a massive cargo ship). No one’s going to question the physics of it. The only question will be “was it captain error or ship error so we know who to fine”. Recovering the ship will be part of answering that and the rest will be communication and maintenance logs.

            • @tal@lemmy.today
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              1 year ago

              There’s very little question how/why the bridge collapsed(it got hit directly by a massive cargo ship).

              I recently – in the context of IS being in the somewhat bizzare situation of having to argue with the Russian government that they did in fact commit their terrorist act in Moscow – linked to an old The Onion satirical video. It dated to a bit after 9/11 and had the Al Qaeda representative being interviewed – irate at the 9/11 Truther also on the show, who was claiming that the World Trade Center was downed with thermite bombs – using almost the same phrase:

              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_OIXfkXEj0

              “We flew an enormous airplane into a building, okay? I think it is obvious what caused the building to crumble.”

      • @____@infosec.pub
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        111 year ago

        I think we all know someone who was forced to buy TP on ebay in the early pandemic.

        This could send us right back there. Doesn’t much matter why stuff can’t move from A to B, prices will increase and people will take the opportunity to profiteer.

  • @jordanlund@lemmy.world
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    331 year ago

    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:

  • @Gestrid@lemmy.ca
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    721 year ago

    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.

    • @someguy3@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Crazy. Even with the mayday I’m amazed they could get police in position fast enough.

      • Maryland has the MTA police (tunnel rats) who are in charge of the toll roads (originally just the tunnels but it’s expanded) so I’m sure there there MTA cops lurking about. Thank God they jumped to action.

        • @tal@lemmy.today
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          11 year ago

          According to WP, it was still pretty quick. They had about two or three minutes from loss of power to collision. That had the pilot assess the situation, call a mayday and request the bridge be closed, dispatch to order the cops to act, and them to act. Then it had to take time for the bridge to clear.

          One cop said on the radio that as soon as he got the traffic shut off, he was going to go evacuate the bridge workers, which obviously they didn’t have time to do, but that was still quick. I would not have expected that to have happened so rapidly.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Scott_Key_Bridge_collapse

          Dali left the Port of Baltimore at 12:44 a.m. EDT (04:44 UTC) on March 26, 2024,[24] bound for Colombo, Sri Lanka.[25] Two local pilots were piloting the ship.[10] At 1:26 a.m.,[26] the ship suffered a “complete blackout” and began to drift out of the shipping channel (a backup generator did not power the propulsion system).[13] The ship dropped its anchors as part of its emergency procedures.[3] At about 1:26 a.m., a mayday call was made from the ship,[26] notifying the Maryland Department of Transportation that control of the vessel had been lost and that a collision with the bridge was possible, citing loss of propulsion.[1] One of the pilots requested that traffic be stopped from crossing the bridge immediately.[3][27][28][29] The ship’s lights went out and came on again some moments later; the lights then went off again and powered back on immediately before impact as renewed smoke spewed from its funnel.[10][30] Following the pilot’s request, Maryland Transportation Authority Police dispatch requested officers to stop traffic in both directions at 1:27:53 a.m. Northbound traffic was stopped at the south side after 20 seconds. Southbound traffic was stopped at the north side at 1:28:58 a.m., with less than 30 seconds before collapse.[31]

          At 1:28 a.m.,[32] the ship struck a support column of the bridge, beneath its metal truss and at the south-west end of its largest span, at 8 knots (15 km/h; 9.2 mph).[11] AIS data shows the ship traveling at a speed of 8.7 knots (16.1 km/h; 10.0 mph) at 1:25 a.m. before departing the channel and slowing to 6.8 knots (12.6 km/h; 7.8 mph) by the time of the collision two minutes later.[30][33]

    • @PutangInaMo@lemmy.world
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      11 year ago

      I’m so confused why a mayday wasn’t sent out earlier though. Like they had to have known collision was imminent.

      And weren’t there local authorities on board that were guiding them through the waterway?

      • @chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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        311 year ago

        They lost power, dropped anchor, and called a mayday. By the sound of it the pilot probably did everything perfect. But whatever caused the power loss and engine failure is gonna be looked at very closely.

        I think new procedures for having tugs hooked up until ships are entirely clear of port may be on their way - even if they’re mostly just escorts unless the ship’s engines fail.

        There’s gonna be a lot of pointing fingers and yelling, but hopefully in the end things will be safer than they are today. From the sound of it we got really lucky on the “lives lost” side of things.

    • @ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
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      11 year ago

      It’s sad that there were still construction workers and some cars still left on it, though.

      Hopefully police told the people to evacuate their vehicles

      • @Gestrid@lemmy.ca
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        91 year ago

        Unfortunately, it would’ve simply been faster for them to drive to either end of the bridge. The Maryland Department of Transportation had already closed the bridge. The only traffic left on the bridge was the traffic that got through before the closure, but everything happened so fast I don’t think they had time to get off the bridge.

        One article I read said that the mayday call, the bridge closure, the collision, and the collapse all happened in the span of about two minutes.

  • @MeaanBeaan@lemmy.world
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    1221 year ago

    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.

    • @bluemite@lemmy.world
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      211 year ago

      The construction workers that died is fucking awful. The traffic situation won’t be great, but at least she’s alive with a job to go to.

      • Pyr
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        1 year ago

        Most people would take that as a given. He was just pointing out the effect on his own personal life.

        It would be pretty annoying if everyone shared their own effect but had to precede it with a standard “I know it’s more awful for those with lives lost, but this affects me because…”

    • @Woht24@lemmy.world
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      521 year ago

      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’.

      • @Dozzi92@lemmy.world
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        271 year ago

        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.

  • @A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
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    -141 year ago

    which is a prime example of a why a bridge built in a shipping lane should be built to stricter standards that would prevent a total fucking collapse from a errant ship.

    • @FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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      1 year ago

      For sure, and furthermore the city should have some sort of tugboats capable of stopping a rogue ship if it had time to give out a mayday. Just attach a line to the back of the hull when it enters the channel and give throttle in the opposite direction to halt it.

      EDIT: People downvoting like “snort small ship not pull big ship, so dumb”

  • @SeemsNormal@lemmy.world
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    591 year ago

    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.

  • @SamsonSeinfelder@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • @Pretzilla@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Here’s a quick take on the crash. Informed and conspiracy free, based upon the video:

      • Ship power cut off and the pilot panicked and threw engines into reverse (as seen by engine exhaust)
      • ‘Prop walk’, which happen when you operate a propeller in reverse, turned the ship starboard into the bridge support

      Some speculation in there about the state of mind of the pilot in trying to explain their actions. Hopefully the NTSB report will shed more light on things. The state of the steering particularly.

      • Flying Squid
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        131 year ago

        Yeah, not everything bad that happens is intentional despite how much some people want that to be the case.

      • @ashok36@lemmy.world
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        271 year ago

        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.

  • @I_Miss_Daniel@lemmy.world
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    221 year ago

    Time for a redundant array of inexpensive bridges?

    (computer joke about backups and resilience.)

    Or on a more serious note, maybe a tunnel?

  • sylver_dragon
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    1351 year ago

    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.

        • @Telodzrum@lemmy.world
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          -81 year ago

          This structure was hit head on by a laden container ship. Container ships weigh between 50,000 and 200,000 tons depending on size and cargo. There is not a structure capable of being created by man which could sustain that amount of force, head on, and retain its structural integrity.

          Buncha armchair idiots think they know more about bridge construction than civil engineers. Gods, this place is just more and more like Reddit by the minute.

          • drphungky
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            91 year ago

            Kinda crazy how those same construction and civil engineers are going to be investigating if the normal means of protection for this very foreseeable event was done correctly, because we design things to avoid these head on collisions:

            https://wjla.com/features/i-team/questions-investigators-will-be-asking-about-francis-scott-key-bridge-collapse-baltimore-container-ship-collision-port-engineering-economy-shipping-hub

            Also, not for nothing but even if they find out the dolphins in place were sufficient based on prior standards…this event will likely update the standards, same as the sun bridge in the 80s. Regulations and best practices are written in blood.

            • @AlexWIWA@lemmy.ml
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              41 year ago

              People always forget that deflection exists. I don’t know why that guy is hung up on stopping the ship instead of just nudging it forcefully. If we can figure out a way to deflect explosions and sabot rounds, we can deflect a ship.

              • drphungky
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                Yeah also just the basic concept of sacrificial parts and things designed to wear. The derailleur hanger on your bike, crumple zones in cars, plastic gears in your KitchenAid mixer - lots of engineering practices are designed around shunting failure to a particular piece or in a particular way, to avoid otherwise catastrophic or very expensive damage.

            • @Telodzrum@lemmy.world
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              -41 year ago

              Oh my god! No way! They’re going to investigate and learn from a rare event! That’s shocking!

              We study things all the time. Your extrapolation that an investigation means something was preventable is evidence that your higher brain function has been damaged.

              • drphungky
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                31 year ago

                You: "There is not a structure capable of being created by man which could sustain that amount of force, head on, and retain its structural integrity.

                Actual engineers in the linked article: literally describe how to build secondary structures to deal with giant ships and prevent head on collisions on bridges.

              • drphungky
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                1 year ago

                I know you stopped responding but I’m piling on because I’m apparently in an impish mood:

                Sherif El-Tawil, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at University of Michigan with expertise in bridges, said if the Key Bridge had been built after those updated standards from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials were put in place, the span could still be standing.

                “I believe it would have survived,” El-Tawil said.

                From: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/03/26/how-key-bridge-collapsed-baltimore/

          • It takes a pretty special kind of small mindedness to think that this accident will be uninteresting to engineers because container ships are simply too heavy to consider building against.

          • @SorryQuick@lemmy.ca
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            31 year ago

            The amount of force needed to deflect a large object is much smaller than to stop it. In fact, if done over a large enough distance, a tiny amount of force is sufficient.

            Need an example? Imagine your big brother is skating down a slope. Could you block him, head on? Probably not. But what if your sister, who was skating next to him, were to slightly steer him out of the way so that he doesn’t hit you?

            As an alternative, you can also slow him down over a long distance, requiring the same(?) force but applied in a smaller amount, longer.

    • @PrincessLeiasCat@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/bridge/inspection/

      I think you can look up certain characteristics such as this here, I’ve done it before and exported data into Excel when I was looking into something else. If this isn’t the specific site I apologize, I’m on mobile, but it is publicly available.

      Edit: these links may be better:

      https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/bridge/nbi/element.cfm

      https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/national-bridge-inventory-system-nbi

      https://infobridge.fhwa.dot.gov/Data

      https://geodata.bts.gov/datasets/5e58970e89934e818f38772859addf43_0/explore

    • @grue@lemmy.world
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      1331 year ago

      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.

      • @You999@sh.itjust.works
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        641 year ago

        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.

      • @Blackmist@feddit.uk
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        221 year ago

        I suspect there’ll be a lot of places taking a good long look at their current chunks of concrete they put around bridge supports and wondering how they’d stand up to the monstrous ships that are now the norm.

        This kind of incident may not happen often but it does happen.