The National Transportation Safety Board chair told CNN that investigators were able to board the ship overnight and obtain the data recorder, or black box, and more information will be shared with the public later today

Source? No major outlet is reporting this that I've seen.

It was reported that they had time to drop anchors. They dragged them as well, they were not found to be in the vertical position. Hard to know the sequences that led to the collision at this point.

Also reported that the ship radioed "mayday" and the bridge operators were able to close the toll gates somehow. Maybe none of this is true. News media. :D

Police audio of the police trying to stop traffic along with report of bridge actual collapse.

https://twitter.com/ExposeDemLies/status/1772803374666125735

One of the many YouTubes I've watched on this. Sorry, don't remember which one. Some expert nautical guy.

I qualified as an Officer of the Deck Underway (OOD) during my Airboss tour on a Gator.

I had my own Watch Section:

"Attention in the pilot house, LT Seahawk has the deck, belay all reports."

The Dali is easily 15 times the weight and mass of what I drove, with a huge "sail area" (container ships are really susceptible to winds, just like the Gator I was on). It is going to carry mass, regardless of speed, that will stop only after it gets tired or it meets a like mass.

Like driving an old 911, everything happens fast, slowly, when coming into or out of port. There are always Harbor Pilots onboard, even on the Navy ship I was on. Local course rules.

I have no idea how the merchant fleet does their job, but I am sure they rehearse just like we did: Sea and Anchor Detail was real and hard.

All that said, like aviation accidents, this tragedy investigation will hopefully play out with facts not supposition.

BTW, setting an anchor is not easy and a last ditch effort.

Hard to believe that something like this could happen when we're talking about people who have done their jobs for a long time and what looks in the video like not a small passage that they had to navigate. They were really off by a mile, so to speak.

I've seen a bridge disaster over water up close and personal, Minneapolis 35W bridge over the Mississippi River in 2007. I had just ridden over it on a motorcycle 30 minutes earlier, perfect summer day but lots of construction equipment on the bridge with the inside lanes closed and filled with paving trucks, jackhammer crews, etc.

I got home to my crib and called a friend in CA., when I told him that I was in Mpls, he asked about the bridge. "What bridge?" He told me to open my laptop or turn on the TV, when I did, I nearly shat my pants. I had just crossed it. I raced back down there and the scene was like 9/11 in NYC, full-on disaster response with hundreds of firefighters and cops working and both sides of the freeway bridge down in the water. Lots of dead people. It happened during afternoon rush hour. I remember Police SUVs pulling trailers with small boats rushing in from surrounding areas.

The tonnage of wreckage was mind-blowing but fortunately, the actual death toll was less than expected. I have photos somewhere on an old device, I'll try to dig them up. I feel for the people who perished, what a terrible way to die. :(

I’m thinking like you. Biggest boat I ‘drove’ was a little bigger than 1/20th the size of the Dali. The windage is a massive factor. Momentum and currents are everything else. When you don’t have power you can’t steer the bisch…

Bridges this size are huge projects that take a very long time, but in this case there is great urgency, no seismic issues, and the infrastructure bill passed a couple years ago will provide lots of Federal money. Maybe it can be done in 2-3 years?

It took a decade to replace the Bay Bridge eastern span after the Loma Prieta earthquake, but the initial repair was done in a couple months and the bridge was operable albeit vulnerable, so the urgency wasn’t all there.

I suspect they will have the shipping channel back open in a matter of days. Mebbe a week or two at most... jmo.

I agree. They will have it open.

The bridge? Who knows.

Uh-Oh....
https://www.yahoo.com/news/cargo-giant-took-bridge-had-164643466.html

This is a photo from a project I was involved with.. After 9/11 it was mandated that infrastructure in the metro NY area be hardened.

I.E. cables/supports etc... in a defined blast zone were protected..

Protection of piers and columns....

This is a robust pier protection system.. ironically the largest vessel this system may have to fend off is a 75' charter fishing boat..

Sheet piling, piles driven to refusal, reinforced concrete . and a composite piles and walers..

I doubt this could have prevented the impact


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1711578825.jpg

Design of the replacement is probably already under way.. agencies like the DOT and FHWA have "on-call" engineering firms...and I bet if I called some of the larger steel fab shops I've dealt with, they have already been notified that they may need to to shuffle the schedules for fab jobs..

Companies like American Bridge and Kiewit are probably tooling up....

Good quality video here. The collision starts at around 5:35. I didn't see any traffic on the bridge after 5:00. You can see the lights go out on the ship around 3:30 then come back on.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mULzspJZuf8?si=a9-k51EBnGNvFyLh" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>

The ship lost power, and the emergency generators came online. There is a delay before they can spin up. So the ship had electric, but did not have engine power.

Really curious what comes next here in the effort to clear the scene. Time is money. Bay is shallow, so the steel needs to come out, you can't just blow it up and sink it. I will be genuinely fascinated to see how they proceed.

They have a few barges with salvage cranes on the way. The cranes are capable of lifting
a very large amount of weight.

As a former Combat Engineer, we were tasked with blowing up bridges and then “bridging the gap” with Bailey Bridge after the fact which was like putting together a Gilbert Erector Set.

You can put up a temporary one way crossing while you are erecting a permanent structure but you have to be able to give access to maritime traffic during construction.

Maybe Vash will swing by and give his input, this is more in his wheelhouse.

There is a bridge here in Jacksonville that is the same design as the Key. Compare the below pic with the pic of the Key above. For what it's worth....

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1711586951.jpg

Looks like it was built by the same company!

I'd say designed by the same company.
Any builder can follow the same plans and it will look the same.

Rut roh....

So now it is coming out from port workers that the ship had 2 days of electrical "severe" problems at dock and left anyway.

Dali cargo ship suffered 'severe electrical problem' while docked in Baltimore days prior to bridge collapse crash that saw it suffer 'total power failure, loss of engine failure', port worker says....

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13246079/Dali-cargo-ship-suffered-severe-electrical-problem-docked-Baltimore-days-prior-bridge-collapse-crash-saw-suffer-total-power-failure-loss-engine-failure-port-worker-says.html

When they rebuild the bridge, would it be expedited if they went with the same bridge or do they design a new bridge from scratch? Obviously, adding some kind of bridge protection would be employed, I would think.

Normally, when large bridges get replaced, they have to build the new one next to the old one so that traffic is not interupted for years. I've seen this done for the Bay Bridge in SF, the 6th street bridge in LA, etc.

They don't have to worry about that for this one. They can use the existing pylons and foundations if they want.

Which bridge is that (over which road)? When I lived there, a work friend's hubby was head honcho (or one of them) for building the Dame's Point bridge. I don't mind sailing under them (that one & the Buckman, etc.) but now (as I've gotten older, I get white knuckled as I drive over both of those .... didn't used to bother me .... at all. I'm not alone .... it is a real phobia for some folks... but it just makes me uncomfortable now :(.

This won't help...

That's a ugly structure ... at least the Dame's Point bridge is beautimous :).

I could NOT drive across Lake Ponchartrain these daze fwiw :(.

From CNN:

According to a timeline provided Wednesday by the NTSB, alarms on the ship blared just before 1:25 a.m. ET Tuesday as the ship moved through the channel as it left the port. About that time, the voyage data recorder ceased documenting things like audio, GPS positions and speed. (Video available before the NTSB released its timeline shows the ship’s lights going out at 1:24 a.m., before turning back on, and then flickering off and on again between 1:26 a.m. and 1:27 a.m.)

The data recording resumed at 1:26:02 a.m. – about 63 seconds after the alarms started – and the pilot could be heard issuing steering commands to the crew, according to the NTSB timeline.

At 1:26:39 a.m., the pilot sent out a radio call for help from tugboats, which typically help ships in earlier stages of leaving port. About the same time, a pilot association dispatcher phoned the Maryland Transportation Authority duty officer regarding the ship’s lights blacking out, according to the NTSB.

At 1:27:04 a.m., the pilot ordered for one anchor to be dropped and gave additional steering commands.

The pilot radioed just a short time later that the ship had lost power and was closing in on the bridge. A duty officer for the transportation authority, using radio, ordered other transportation authority officers to shut down traffic to the bridge – those officers were already on site because construction work was happening there, the NTSB said.

At 1:29:33 a.m., the ship’s recorder captured sounds consistent with the vessel striking the bridge, the NTSB said. Six seconds later, the pilot reported to the Coast Guard by radio that the bridge was down, the NTSB said.

So… back to Craig’s posts. Do you think the ship’s computer system was hacked?

The Hart Bridge.

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

I’m gonna guess no as I can’t see why they’d cause electrical issues in port. Might’ve (should’ve?) caused them to figure it out while docked.

From the timeline above, why would the data recording stop working for about a minute? I would’ve thought it would be battery backed up, so there is no loss of data.

Does the same happen to airplanes, no power, no data?

Perhaps it was working fine but there was, due to systems being down, nothing to document.

Is the ship now considered unsafe? Must it be offloaded before it can be moved?

They are looking hard at dirty fuel.
Bunker oil is nasty stuff

Bingo
The fuel quality these ships burn is crap. Once the boat is under way its a different thing but ideling around harbor fuel quality issue.

This article states two tug boats moved the ship from the dock and positioned the ship towards the bridge . Then they peeled off which apparently is standard procedure . I bet that procedure gets changed to the tugs can peel off AFTER the ship they are guiding passes the bridge .

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2024/03/27/tugboats-baltimore-key-bridge-disaster/73123627007/

I think that would be up to the port pilot. Any word on that? Pilots here in LB take the ships out quite a way. Miles past our breakwater.

I'm pretty sure the pilots aren't saying anything about anything.

Aside from the unimaginable losses, here is what I’m curious about.

1. How are they going to remove the old bridge debris? I know there are barge cranes enroute but they can’t lift an entire bridge section.

1a. How do they cut the bridge sections into liftable segments without shock loading the crane?

1b. How do they get a man into position to cut the bridge sections? Is this torch work or some crane mounted ‘jaws of life’ type pincer machine?

2. How do they get the barges to the bridge and keep them there? Presumably they would set the anchors upstream and the barges would be positioned downstream where the bridge debris is. Likely they would triangulate the anchors to prevent side shifting. It seems like the barges need to be upstream of the bridge but they can’t get there… yet.

3. It appears to me that some sea cans fell from the Dali. How do they deal with that and the contents?

4. Will there be criminal charges against the captain or pilots? 6 people died.

5. How many ships are stranded in Baltimore right now? Who pays for this?

6. If they have to unload Dali partially before they move it, how do they do this?

7. How deep is the water there? Is Dali aground? Is there risk of it sinking there?

8. Is it time to buy Maersk stock?

My guess

Criminal charges only if crew/operator/owners knew and ignored critical operational issues that led to the collision

Insurance will be on the hook for other shipping losses delays. I read the following yesterday
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/28/baltimore-disaster-may-be-largest-ever-marine-insurance-payout-lloyds-.html

I don't believe the ship is grounded.