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.
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.
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?
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.
I’m so confused why a mayday wasn’t sent out earlier though. Like they had to have known collision was imminent.
Prolly something like:
“Aww nah, theres no need m8, I’m sure we’ll figure something out”
I’ve heard the same thing with another issue
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.
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]
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
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.
Well that looks expensive
The scale doesn’t even come across in the video.
That bit you see collapse is half a mile long.
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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.
Wow, that was a wild shot of the collapse.
Better to wait for more details to come out than to speculate wildly.
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.
Sigh.
Yeah, not everything bad that happens is intentional despite how much some people want that to be the case.
FBI confirms not an act of terrorism rn
Idk I’m going with space lasers and you can’t convince me otherwise.
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.
It doesn’t look like it was lined up right to begin with.
It was. Just a weird angle on the camera.
Time for a redundant array of inexpensive bridges?
(computer joke about backups and resilience.)
Or on a more serious note, maybe a tunnel?
So which version of RAIB you thinking? Because obviously, this has to be hardware, can’t do this with software. IMO, RAIB-5 is probably overkill but I think the locals would appreciate it.
I’m thinking RAIB-0. Not one problem there. No problems at all.
Just a Bunch Of Bridge.
I was thinking RAIB 10 . .no need for parity checking.
RAIB-0 would be interesting enough. Each car split into equal parts across multiple bridges.
What sort of cabling, do you suppose?
Strong Cable Support Infrastructure?
Looks like most crossing upstream are tunnels.
They are, with restrictions for hazmat, propane, and similar materials, so another tunnel with the same restrictions would be a major headache.
They also have a tunnel and other Bridges
There are two tunnels, plus you could go the long way around or on local streets. However there’s a lot of traffic, plus the tunnels have restrictions against hazardous or oversized loads
What kind of RAIB array would you suggest?
The Beowulf Bridge.
A portion? That looks like the entire thing dropped.
Everything in camera collapsed, but the whole thing was 1.6 miles.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Scott_Key_Bridge_(Baltimore)
Why is he listed as “amateur poet” if his work was so famous that we named a bridge after him 130 years posthumously.
Francis Scott Key famously wrote the lyrics for the Star Spangled Banner. But professionally, he was a lawyer. :)
That was pretty much the whole thing, looking at a Google Earth image of the thing:
Like, there are ramps over land that the cars drive up to get up to the bridge’s full height, but what was in the image was more-or-less the portion that was over the water.
Ah I see!
It didn’t just collapse ‘after’ being hit. It was destroyed by the collision.
Well yeah, I don’t see how it’s wrong to say it collapsed after being hit by a cargo ship.
I have to agree, if the headline says, “Man dies after drinking Drano,” nobody is under the impression it was a coincidence.
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.
Time to move. Or switch jobs.
Which is super easy to do. /s
If the traffic is bad enough you might not have many options.
Sounds like a problem for the people who use cars. Leg commute gang
Hopefully employers will allow WFH for jobs that can be feasibly done remotely. This will also help reduce traffic for those who cannot WFH.
But people do have dozens of jobs lined up at least, right?
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’.
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.
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.
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…”
All lanes closed both directions for incident on I-695 Key Bridge
All lanes no longer in existence on I-695 Key Bridge.
They’re still in existence, just a little wetter than usual.
That’s not very typical, I’d like to make that point.
Well how is it untypical?
What about the environmental impact?
For the uninitiated:
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:
I wonder how quickly one can get a RORO ferry up and running? That bridge isn’t gonna be rebuilt any time soon.
Even the largest ferry can’t come close to matching the capacity of a 4 lane highway bridge.
No doubt. I don’t mean to suggest that it’d eliminate issues.
Wow really? I totally can’t believe that /s
Its not the same thing at all but they got the I-35W bridge rebuilt in 13 months after the bridge collapsed into the Mississippi. Its only 1/2 mile long and the river span is of course tiny – no supports required in water.
No joke, and I bet it was heavily used too… Better jump on those infrastructure dollars!
Hazmats are prohibited in both tunnels. About the only option for those is to go all the way around 695, adding the better part of 50 miles.
Just looking at that map makes me crack up as someone from Ireland. Baltimore is a small town here on the south coast of Cork. Dundalk is up in Northern Ireland. Pasadena is a place in California.
I just think it’s funny when America has random place names taken from elsewhere.
Thank your ancestors for that. Couldn’t think up any new names on their way over so they resused a bunch.
Thank your ancestors for that.
Well, his ancestors’ cousins, at any rate.
Specifically this guy right here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Calvert%2C_2nd_Baron_Baltimore
California is down in St. Mary’s County
Interestingly, there’s a St. Mary’s church there.
And Florida is cold and snowy
Wait until you find out about Springfield…
You do realize how little that narrows things down.
Cultural appropriation is US culture. The UK and Ireland were just some of the earliest donor countries.
If you want a laugh, check out cities in Texas. We have a Moscow, Paris, etc.
It also has a place called Ireland.
Just as long as you stay away from Vidor , you’ll be fine. According to the stories they used to have a billboard that said, “Don’t let the sun set on your black ass.”
I’m not black though, so I think I’ll be fine regardless. But thanks for your concern.
I live not super far from there, so I make sure I warn everyone I can to avoid it.
As does Maine. I’ve never looked it up, but I think Maine might be the state with the most places named after another place.
And there’s a Brooklyn Park in Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon, and South Australia.
We have a London in Canada.
I saw this just now on goog-ul and the first thought was… two ships collided on the bridge? But ships don’t even drive on bridges!
Achtually
It’s gotta be the Dutch! It’s always the Dutch. I’ve also seen the one where the boat swings up on a rotating platform. Freaking Deutch.
Us, we live in the land of bridges made for cars only.
I’ve also seen the one where the boat swings up on a rotating platform. Freaking Deutch.
If you’re talking about what I think you’re talking about, that’s British.
But ships don’t even drive on bridges!
They’re a tricky lot, those ships.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navigable_aqueduct
EDIT: Though for at least some of those, they’re smaller and the right term is probably “boat” than “ship”.
Seven people likely dead so far. What a horrible, terrifying way to go.
You’re making your regular commute, a bit annoyed with the sudden traffic backup, and then you’re suddenly falling with no warning, then struggling to not drown in your car.
It’s insane how everything can go from normal to terrifying. I hope those who lived through this have help coping, and am sorry for the victims and their families. It’s so tragic.
Nah, I’d say that it’s probably fast and even if you’re alive and conscious after you hit the water, you’re gonna drown pretty quickly. Probably one of the better ways to go.
Dying generally isn’t all that pleasant.
Navy eod told me drowning feels like your lungs are on fire.
Had a green beret buddy tell me the same thing. He had to go through a pretty intense water survival training, and part of it was “drown-proofing”. Said it was the worst part of his training.
Grandma told me once your lungs fill with water it’s pretty chill. She almost drowned twice.
Reminds me of that story Michael Caine tells in The Prestige.
" Remember that sailor I told you about who got tangled up in the sails and drowned?"
“Yeah, he said it was like going home.”
"I lied… He said it was agony.
I technically drowned when I was 12 and being an idiot ‘riding’ waterfalls. I got sucked into a big crack in a rock and when my friends finally got me out I was clinically dead, and all of my fingernails were ripped in half from trying to claw my way out. All I can remember is abject fear, and then the burning as my lungs gave up.
I would rather die by almost any other means.
How long were you dead for? How did they make you alive again?
My friends and I all took water rescue courses in cub scouts so they knew how to do mouth to mouth and clear water from lungs. One friend ran for help and the rest pulled me out and two did the mouth to mouth.
The EMTs who ahowed up after I was pulled out said they figured I was ‘gone’ for a minute or so. I don’t really remember the exact details but it was something about the color of my skin that could tell them how long I was without oxygen.
Scary stuff - thanks for sharing the details, and glad you guys had the training!
Didn’t die but passed out and had water in my lungs, didn’t do same as you but went in the rapids in a river swimming during the summer as a kid, large amount of rain and a tree fell. Got sucked up under it and was trapped between the branches and the river gravel. Burning lungs and my face feeling like it was being drug across a cheese grater is the only thing I remember. Horrifying way to go.
Drowning has to be towards the bottom of my list of ways to die
Drowning or fire? I can’t decide.
Drowning after falling from a great height.
Yeah I would expect vehicle occupants to have serious injuries after a fall like that. Water can be plenty “hard” enough to break your back if you hit it with something flat like a car
I used to think drowning was the worst until I heard two accounts of people who drowned and were resuscitated. They said it was terribly peaceful. I’m good with it now.
Uh, source? It’s a slow and scary death.
Just anecdotal. I think it was enough to not fear it so much. The recollection is that the bad part is you are fighting to stay alive but when you give in and swallow all of the you get a state of euphoria… so I figure if you’ve got no choice just suck the water in and die happy.
Die happy. Yeah right.
I sincerely doubt that your lungs filling with water would be “euphoric” considering any water in your lungs feels like burning. Even if the last seconds felt nice, you’re discounting the terrifying minute or two of suffocation and panic.
That’s like saying getting stabbed in the chest isn’t a bad way to die because the pain sends you into shock and you pass out before dying
Whatever you tell yourself to help cope with your own anxiety about drowning I guess… I nearly drowned and I can tell you it was not euphoric breathing in water.
Did you hear this in the prestige? Cause it was revealed he was lying
Nope.
I’ve heard this before but it doesn’t make much sense to me.
Dying of a stroke in your sleep sounds peaceful.
Being unable to leave your submerged car because your back is broken, watching freezing water coming in, taking that last breath. Sounds fucking terrifying honestly.
It’s worse than that. People don’t understand what drowning is like at all, it is a terribly unpeaceful way to go. We all tend to think that you run out of air and then suddenly go unconscious but prior to that:
Water will enter your lungs which, fun fact, really don’t like that and so it is apparently extremely painful. It also triggers an involuntary reaction. You are now conscious on adrenaline, with very painful water in your lungs, and have lost all control of your body. Your body will attempt to flail wildly out of control while you suffer until you lose consciousness from lack of air. All of this happens quickly but probably not as quickly as you want it to given the circumstances.
I think you got bad information.
Not trying to defend him, but there are accounts of people who nearly/drowned in freezing water say they had feelings of warmth and euphoria. It’s likely due to shock setting in long before the drowning panic.
This wasn’t just drowning, though. This was drowning after likely sustaining significant impact injuries after hitting the water from many dozens of feet in a vehicle that basically belly-flopped, which is the worst way to impact the water. It’s like hitting concrete from that distance. And then panicking because you’re strapped inside your sinking vehicle.
This was anything but the peaceful drowning scenario you’re referencing that some people have.
This was not a good way to go.
Agreed… They had a bad day.
I’ve heard it was construction workers filling pot holes.
The bridge at crest is around 185 ft off the water, and footage shows the collapse took about 6 seconds where the cars were.
Imagine doing a mind numbing job in the dead of night and then all of a sudden the floor starts dipping below you. The street lights go out a second or two later, and not long after you’re falling for close to 2 seconds. Then either crashing hard into the concrete below you that just parted the water, having a flood of water hit you shortly after. or just jetting directly into freezing cold water.
How the fuck did this happen?
will this close down one of the biggest ports on the East Coast? how will other ships get by?
Yes, and they won’t for the moment.
As soon as the investigation is finished, they’ll get on removing the debris. That area has no shortage of transportation engineering companies. I’m sure people from the governor’s and mayor’s respective offices are already reaching out to line up inspections and eventual bids. Once the investigation is over, their top goal will be getting the port opened up.
They aren’t going to wait for an investigation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Baltimore
Currently, the port has major ro-ro (roll-on roll-off) facilities and bulk facilities, especially steel handling. The port handles around 700,000 vehicles annually. Most Mercedes-Benz cars that are imported into the U.S were handled here as well in 2004.
The Port handles one-fourth of the country’s coal exports.
Yeah they won’t get by, in bound traffic will reroute to Norfolk, Philadelphia and NY until a plan is in place. I would guess they have the channel open in 2 weeks or less.
Yeah DOT confirmed the port of Baltimore is closed to sea traffic, local truck traffic from port is still active so the closure won’t be felt immediately. But it will be significant the longer it’s closed. 9th largest port in the US.
That’s gonna cause some delays.
That sounds like a traffic armageddon around Baltimore for the next few years…
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.
I doubt the harbor will be blocked that long, maybe a week or so at most.
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.
You’re not lifting it out of the way, you’re gonna pull it out of the way with a tugboat.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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The Left Coast Lifter is in NY and can be on site in about 24-30 hours depending on currents going up Delaware Bay. It can make picks up to approx 1,600 tons, it would laugh at what the Key bridge weighs.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I saw another article today where they said exactly that. The remaining vehicles are under concrete and its now converted to a salvage mission.
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.
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.”
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.
I think we all know someone who was forced to buy TP on ebay in the early pandemic.
No. I don’t know anyone, aside from Internet memes.
Do they ship much toilet paper by boat?
You can clear the debris in a week or two. It will take multiple years to build a new bridge.
The AP article says the exact opposite, that it is in fact not a major cargo port.
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.
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.
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…
