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Baltimore Bridge Accident

Mikefule said:
It's a natural emotional reaction to frame it that way. However, given that the loss of control has happened at all, the "What are the odds" question is, "What are the odds of a ship, out of control in a busy sea lane, near a multi span bridge, hitting nothing?"

Put more simply, we would also have heard of the incident, which would have been newsworthy, if it had hit any one one of the other bridge piers, or a passenger vessel, or another cargo ship, or a fishing vessel, or a rocky shoal, or ruptured its fuel tank and polluted the water, etc. We seldom hear of the incidents, errors, cock ups and break downs that do not result in disaster.

A few years ago, in the UK (Lincolnshire if I recall correctly) a tired driver fell asleep at the wheel, crashed, went down into as railway cutting, and his vehicle was hit by a train, derailing it. Many people died.

If he had fallen asleep 10 seconds earlier or later, he would not have gone onto the railway line. If he had gone onto the railway line 10 minutes earlier, perhaps they would have been able to slow down or stop the train. If he had been going a tad slower, perhaps he would not have completely blocked the railway line. And so on.

Many many drivers fall asleep at the wheel (I write as a former claims investigator) and simply go off the road into a ditch, or hedge, or field, or parked car, or wall, and their story never makes the news.
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That's based on the assumption it's was accident, which it probably was. The other possibility are that the ship's controls were hacked into.
 
kesavaross said:
The other possibility are that the ship's controls were hacked into.
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… which btw was not what I was suggesting. My use of the term hacker was purely derogatory. As a contrast to actual trained professional ship technicians. I’m saying it probably could have and certainly should have been avoided. Business is saving pennies at a massive cost to civil society. People die because greedy fuckers cut corners.
 
Ogdred Weary said:
So, have the Mothman sightings started yet?
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SOMEONE will report this, for sure. And you can guess where.

Screenshot 2024-03-30 at 8.53.59 AM.png
 
3D Sonar Images of Baltimore's Key Bridge Reveal the Underwater Wreckage in Detail

Hamstrung by poor visibility in Baltimore’s Patapsco River, divers are using sonar to help navigate the underwater wreckage of the Francis Scott Key Bridge.

Clean-up and salvage efforts are underway at the site of the bridge, which collapsed into the river in the early morning hours of March 26, after being struck by the cargo ship Dali, which had lost power. Six construction workers who were filling potholes on the bridge died as a result of the accident.

BB1l8SkA.img


Three-dimensional sonar images shared publicly for the first time on Tuesday show the “sheer magnitude of the very difficult and challenging salvage operation ahead,” according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

The images were captured by the U.S. Navy’s Naval Sea Systems Command Supervisor of Salvage and Diving. To get a detailed look at the submerged wreckage, officials used a sonar imaging tool called Echoscope.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/3...the-underwater-wreckage-in-detail/ar-BB1l8Sln

maximus otter
 
Xanatic* said:
You could have crunchable barriers, to absorb the energy of anything incoming.
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Here's where I chime in
In 1980, the Sunshine Skyway bridge in Tampa Bay was struck by a freighter during a storm, killing 35 people.
When the bridge was rebuilt, they added bumpers to the supports. It's sad that the US government didn't learn from this and now it's happened again in Baltimore.

https://weather.com/news/news/2020-05-09-sunshine-skyway-collapse-40th-anniversary

Also, I never heard of this until the late 80s when my grandmother told me all the gory details....as we were driving over the bridge! :D
 
Aydee_Aitchdee said:
Here's where I chime in
In 1980, the Sunshine Skyway bridge in Tampa Bay was struck by a freighter during a storm, killing 35 people.
When the bridge was rebuilt, they added bumpers to the supports. It's sad that the US government didn't learn from this and now it's happened again in Baltimore.

https://weather.com/news/news/2020-05-09-sunshine-skyway-collapse-40th-anniversary

Also, I never heard of this until the late 80s when my grandmother told me all the gory details....as we were driving over the bridge! :D
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Well I suspect they will certainly do that now but I don't know how feasible it was to retrofit all bridges with bumpers. It was finished in 1977.
 
A Massive Crane Helping With the Baltimore Bridge Cleanup Was Built to Recover a Sunken Soviet Submarine


Cleanup efforts are underway in Baltimore, where the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed into the Patapsco River last month after being struck by a cargo ship.

Removing pieces of the mangled bridge from the river will be a massive undertaking that could take weeks. To help with this process, officials are bringing in several large cranes, including one with an unusual past: the Chesapeake 1000.

More than 50 years ago, the Chesapeake 1000 (originally dubbed the Sun 800) played a vital role in a secret CIA mission called Project Azorian, a multi-year effort to recover a sunken Soviet submarine.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...ith-baltimores-key-bridge-clean-up-180984085/

FTMB thread on Project Azorian.

maximus otter
 
"How about we ask someone who has actually run a cargo ship?"

"Naw, where's the fun in that?"

This guy knows what he's talking about, and is not having any of the bullshit spewing from every direction. Comments are interesting too.

 
With no explanation, the FBI is now looking at this event as a criminal investigation.
 
I wonder if the Feds are looking to see if it is a case in their jurisdiction? I'm not American and have a limited understanding of the crimes that the Feds investigate.
 
charliebrown said:
With no explanation, the FBI is now looking at this event as a criminal investigation.
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I'm pretty sure I've read that the Federal Government has jurisdiction over any crime (and for crime, read 'potential' crime) that occurs at sea within US waters. If that's correct and - as is likely - there is an investigation in regard to potential negligence, then maybe it's not so strange that the FBI would be the first call.

Edit: I'm pretty sure I've read of this in the context of criminal cases based on US cruise liners back in the 80's or 90's. Ships at sea are a jurisdictional nightmare, and ship's owners and their captains (who in the context of their ships have an overweighted influence in regard to matters which, as in the case of a criminal investigation, they are not qualified) have been known to be very unhelpful, to the point of obstruction, where they believe that investigation to be outside their immediate interests.
 
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The FBI sometimes ends up being the "goalie" in US law enforcement. That's often good, sometimes not so much. Their resources and power are vast. The ship is very much in US territory. The NTSB is investigating, but they are not law enforcement. The National Transportation Safety Board deals with all kinds of things, from car seats for infants to airliners shedding parts in flight. They have a lot of authority, but I'm not sure of the exact mechanism as far as regulations go.
 
charliebrown said:
With no explanation, the FBI is now looking at this event as a criminal investigation.
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There is an explanation:

Monday morning, agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) went aboard the ship called DALI as they began looking into whether the crew left port knowing that something could be wrong with the ship.

National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy said last week that investigators are focusing on the electrical power system of the massive container ship that veered off course, according to the Associated Press.

Navigable waters in the US are federally controlled, therefore, the FBI has jurisdiction.
 
The port of Baltimore losing 15 million dollars a day sounds like an “ electromagnetic pulse “ conspiracy.

Rumors are China are into EMP bombs.
 
An EMP bomb would presumably be quite noticable today, as everone in the vicinity would get their mobile phones fried.
 
Xanatic* said:
An EMP bomb would presumably be quite noticable today, as everone in the vicinity would get their mobile phones fried.
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They must've developed a selective EMP bomb, obvs.
Any whisper from those who think it's a gub'mint 'false flag' operation to test their own EMP bomb & blame the Chinese? :hahazebs:
 
This morning the FBI gave out a little more information.

It seems that before this cargo ship left port, crew members reported warning alarms going off indicating serious electrical problems, but the ship set sail anyway.

Strangely a 1851 maritime law only holds the owner of the ship to damages to the ship.

But a defective ship might imply a criminal act.
 
This reminds me of the Titanic leaving port with a raging fire in coal bin number six.

Both ships were doomed before they left port.
 
"Clearly unseaworthy": Baltimore accuses Dali cargo ship owner, operator of negligence


The city of Baltimore said the cargo ship that struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge was "clearly unseaworthy" when it left the Baltimore port last month, per court documents filed Monday.

The big picture: Baltimore's mayor and city council accused both the owner of the container ship Dali, Grace Ocean Private, and its operator, Synergy Marine Group, of being "grossly and potentially criminally negligent."

https://www.axios.com/2024/04/23/baltimore-ship-negligence-claim-bridge-collapse

maximus otter
 
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