Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore collapses after ship struck it

[Stephanie B]

I might be jumping to conclusions, but I'm already thinking it could be terrorism.

I'm not thinking that. The video appears to show a loss of power. I don't know what the currents were like. Those ships have a hell of a lot of sail area, which could have been a factor. But, having said that, the winds at BWI and Martin State airports were calm, which may or may not mean anything.

The Feebies are doing background checks on everyone who was on board the ship.

[RJ]

Link to Marinetraffic dot com, with a realtime view of the Patapsco River and the vessel ("Dali") stopped.

The vessels are (on my view anyway) nearby in real time. The ship has a hot link that you can click on, with the past track shown from departing the dock earlier this morning all the way to the point of impact at the bridge abutment.

Ugh.

https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais...39.216/zoom:15

[5pins]

[BillSWPA]

I hope everyone here has one of these or something similar in every vehicle.

https://www.amazon.com/Lifehammer-Br...000BN3A4Y?th=1

[Jason M]

I hope everyone here has one of these or something similar in every vehicle.

https://www.amazon.com/Lifehammer-Br...000BN3A4Y?th=1

Agreed but... some newer vehicles are coming with laminated (windshield glass) in the side windows. Lifehammer will not work on those. Bottom line, know your vehicle and have a water egress plan and gear.

[Jim Watson]

with the past track shown from departing the dock earlier this morning all the way to the point of impact at the bridge abutment.

I just lately saw that the ship was outbound, half an hour from port to bridge strike. For some reason I thought it was inbound from points abroad.

[RevolverRob]

I'm not an engineer, I don't play one on TV or in real life. I know bridges aren't meant to be hit by boats that weigh thousands of tons, but it took ~10 seconds from the hit to full collapse. That seems like an awful short amount of time, to me.

Besides a random babble, I have no solutions or additional thoughts. Except to think it's probably a good idea to replace the bridge with a tunnel.

[Jim Watson]

For We Shooters, 100,000 metric tons (close to the long ton used for ships) at 7.5 knots (about a billion and a half grains at 12.7 fps) is 552,835,172 ft lb of "muzzle energy." Obviously enough stopping power for a bridge pier.

[TGS]

I'm not an engineer, I don't play one on TV or in real life. I know bridges aren't meant to be hit by boats that weigh thousands of tons, but it took ~10 seconds from the hit to full collapse. That seems like an awful short amount of time, to me.

I'm not surprised given we invest a fraction into infrastructure compared to other first world nations, which, you know, design the breakwaters around bridges so that a large cargo ship can't physically hit the bridge. The foundation may be damaged and bridge need to be replaced anyway, but...at least it doesn't immediately collapse with everyone on it.

This is a country where a significant amount of retards still think they're safer by not wearing a seatbelt, because seatbelts are a globohomo jew conspiracy to take away your rights. So, I'm really not surprised at all.

[HeavyDuty]

@Stephanie B, you were a black shoe, right? What would a warship do if propulsion was lost in a case like this where you’re in fairly shallow waters?