Key Bridge in Baltimore collapses after being hit by a container ship

Manic Moran

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121940813#Comment_121940813

I just looked up the figures. Government spending in the US in FY2023 was $175.4bn on police, $98bn on prisons. $83bn was spent on the court system, though that includes civil courts and the costs of providing defense lawyers etc. The Welfare category for the same year includes $76.8bn on housing, 50.4bn on unemployment, $173bn on food/nuitrution assistance, $5.9bn on low income home energy assistance, $26.1bn on 'cash assistance payments', whatever they are, and $78.7bn on "other welfare". That's a tally of $356.4bn on law and order, vs $410.9bn on welfare so not only does the US not pay twice as much on law and order as it does on welfare, it doesn't even spend more on law and order than it does on welfare. The Welfare figure obviously also doesn't include the $1.4trn spent on Social Security, which is more of a federal government citizen-wide pension scheme, neither does it include the $7.6bn on refugee and entrant assistance. See the appropriately-named https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/ . (You can spend a lot of time deep-diving on that site, actually)

That's not to deny the fundamental point that a lot of States are terrible at upkeep of their basic infrastructure despite being well able to afford it should they choose to, many of them are. But I really do get annoyed at the hyperbolic mis-understandings of how the US governments spend their money.

Donald Trump

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121941441#Comment_121941441

Would have had plenty of bridges if the African lads hadn't taken them all for slaves.

Anyone else up for the reparations for Irish people?

Back to the topic though, I wonder if there are people looking at this and thinking how relatively easy it is to cause billions of damages to US infrastructure?

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121941203#Comment_121941203

Public works are communism.

magicbastarder

a friend of my wife's is from NY, and i can't remember the name of the bridge now, but she was telling us that there's a bridge she simply won't cross when she goes back to vist her family, and lots of other people she knows avoid it too. and i suspect that's not all that uncommon.

Calahonda52

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121941673#Comment_121941673

Increasing looks like Chinese or Russian hack of the ships systems

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121941766#Comment_121941766

Doesn't even nearly look like Chinese or Russian hack of the ships systems. Absolute nonsense.

magicbastarder

i've only been to the states once where i had the opportunity to drive, and know that i almost certainly drove over a bridge which has since collapsed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-5_Skagit_River_bridge

JVince

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121941766#Comment_121941766

Thanks for the laugh - this really is laughable.

The flat earth brigade are out in force today

Goldengirl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121941076#Comment_121941076

It was going off course quite a bit before with no correction.

Its crazy to see how the bridge just completely folded from one strut being taken out. In modern construction that seems wrong?

Poor people on the bridge when it collapsed and RIP to those who died.

Reminded me of the film The Moth Man.

ronjo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121941766#Comment_121941766

Did you get that information from Alex Jones or Andrew Tate?

VinLieger

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121941673#Comment_121941673

Yup no question about it from that footage a malfunction of the ship caused it, they lost power at the point of the turn to starboard to go under the bridge but the momentum of the ship while the power was out carried them too far through the turn and without power they couldn't correct course.

Larbre34

Modern is a relative term. The foundations of the bridge are 52 years old, the completed bridge was 50 years old.

Its no secret that the built infrastructure of the US is crumbling, in rich and poor States alike. Report after report has looked at bridges and highways built in the boom times from the mid 1920s to 1970s and thousands of examples haven't been maintained on replaced in anything like the timescale that their original design envisaged.

Today's disaster reminds me of a location I know well in Florida, the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, the original version of which collapsed when hit by a ship in 1980, at just 26 years standing.

Superficially that bridge and the one today in Baltimore look structurally similar to me, and I find it amazing that the piers of all similar bridges weren't provided with massive deflector devices, after the Florida incident, which killed 35 due to vehicles being thrown into the water below, after a ship struck a support pier in a zero visibility collision.

cj maxx

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121941764#Comment_121941764

Is it Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge . Scary bridge

Manic Moran

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121940908#Comment_121940908

I would argue that except in very specific circumstances, anyone getting killed by a train is suicide as it requires someone making a decision to go where trains obviously go (there aren't many things easier to avoid getting killed by than a train), but the last fatality I can recall in Ireland was about two months ago when a person was struck by a train near Mosney, though I've not seen motivation. The fatality in Sligo last summer was definitely unintentional, the women actively tried to get out of the way before getting hit. A check on the RAIU website indicates the last derailment was in 2017 (DART), and nothing between then and 2010, where there were eight in a three-year period, including the only freight derailment (Tara mines train) in RAIU coverage. Obviously none resulted in significant damage, but neither do most of the 1,300 US derailments.

There is a matter of scale, however. 2009-2022 Irish rail transported 710mn ton-miles of freight. US railways transported 25 trillion ton-miles over a similar period. US derailments are high enough, but on the other hand, if you divide the 1.4trn ton-miles carried by US class 1s in 2022 by 1,300, you get one derailment for each 1.1bn ton-miles, or one derailment of any size for each year's worth of freight traffic in Ireland. Of course, comparing like for like isn't all that easy: US railroads are built for freight transport, Irish rail mainly focuses on passengers. However, though US passenger rail may not be heavily used per capita, it is heavily used on a raw basis. The relative figures are 1bn passenger-miles per year for Ireland, vs 20bn passenger-miles for the US, so again, the derailment figures in the US aren't actually all that bad on that basis either.

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121941808#Comment_121941808

It was no mere strut.

tobefrank321

Not sure deflector devices would make a blind bit of difference with ships that size.

This has to be a wake up call for other bridges in the US. Wonder did anything ever hit the Golden Gate Bridge or the more famous bridges.

Goldengirl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121941962#Comment_121941962

Support? Don't know the correct term.

But scary to see it just fold like that don't you agree?

There was a lot of weight on that ship but would that not be accounted for in a port like that, or has it only been a major port in recent times?

Quin_Dub

Baltimore is a massive freight port for the US East coast and I assume it's now closed - I'm guessing that waterway is the only access.

It could be weeks/months before it's open to freight traffic again , let alone the years before a new bridge gets built.

Could be a significant supply chain impact , not unlike the Evergreen blockage of the Suez and that was only about a week.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121942006#Comment_121942006

The biggest issue is going to be vessels trapped - traffic can move, albeit with disruption; but if a vessel is stuck in the port it isn't going to be any use anywhere else.

Manic Moran

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121941346#Comment_121941346

I agree it's politics, but I disagree it's Republicans. The 'worst' states are pretty much evenly split between the two controlling parties. For highway bridges, for example.

Or roads in general.

The problem is that there are no headline-grabbing vote-winning moves in 'basic maintenance'. Politicians of all stripes are happy enough to jump on the next shiny thing instead of fixing what's already out there (in the rail sector, go no further than California's high speed rail disaster vs the problems California's commuter rail system has). Makes big news, there are ribbon-cuttings, foundation-stone layings, and whatever else politicians love to tout in their election campaigns. Not much of a PR event for "we installed new reinforcements on this bridge" or "we have a new signalling system on BART" though.

Quin_Dub

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121942010#Comment_121942010

True - Anything already at sea will be redirected to somewhere else , but whatever ships are in port are out of commission for a while - They'll offboard the cargo and ship it by land to another exit port.

Going to another port on the east coast might add a day or two overall between long sailing and a further drive on land but not the several weeks that avoiding the Suez costs.

odyssey06

Latest update

There are currently six people who are unaccounted for, none of whom are in vehicles, and two people have been rescued from the water so far.

Sonar had detected multiple vehicles underwater.

One of those rescued refused any medical treatment and “was not injured”, while the other person was transferred to a local trauma centre and is in “a very serious condition”, according to Baltimore Fire Department chief James Wallace.

The six people who are unaccounted for are construction workers who were repairing potholes on the bridge at the time, according to Maryland Transportation Secretary Paul Wiedefeld.

https://www.thejournal.ie/baltimore-bridge-collapses-6337369-Mar2024/

DOCARCH

Looking at pictures of the bridge pre collapse, the absence of protection/dolphins to the main support piers pretty apparent/shocking.

I know all well and good in hindsight, but reasonably foreseeable that someday a support pier bridge like that will get hit by a ship.

magicbastarder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121941954#Comment_121941954

she's from staten island, so could well be.

looks like they started work renovating it about 9 years ago though.

Quin_Dub

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121942079#Comment_121942079

Not good..

For people without the possible protection of a vehicle with the height of the bridge and the temperature of the water, hard to see someone be found alive at this stage sadly.

I imagine it could have been orders of magnitude worse had it happened later in the day rather than 1:30am..

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121941766#Comment_121941766

.....

Igotadose

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121942084#Comment_121942084

I grew up in Staten Island. Know that bridge well, drove over it hundreds of times. Even was in a car that broke down on it so we had to walk for help. Pretty damn terrifying, but as far as 'scary bridges' goes, the Tappan-Zee was terrifying for some reason, very wobbly feeling.

Also have driven over the (rebuilt) Tacoma-Narrows bridge. Didn't care for that bridge either, very windy and felt like it vibrated a lot.

Don't remember that Skagit river bridge as being particularly bad but I remember the collapse, was living in Seattle at the time.

And yeah, the US doesn't do well by its infrastructure. Hardly any big western country does.

irishgeo

Mayday was issued that they had lost control of the the ship. Emergency services rushed to close the bridge. Might be why you see emergency lights near the bridge.

I count a few ships caught in port.

2 bulk carriers and a car transporter.

A couple of navy supply ships too.

magicbastarder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121942361#Comment_121942361

aha! it was the tappan zee she mentioned.

Igotadose

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121942383#Comment_121942383

Yeah, that bridge is just wrong somehow. Built to be windy and scary, too narrow, somehow too low over the river. Never liked driving on it at all.