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Container ship collides with the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore

kingofnerf

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MAJOR THOROUGHFARE
The Francis Scott Key bridge was the main thoroughfare for drivers between New York and Washington who sought to avoid downtown Baltimore. It was one of three ways to cross the Baltimore Harbor, with a traffic volume of 31,000 cars per day or 11.3 million vehicles a year.

Incredible, man. Lordy.
 
At some point doesn't there have to be restrictions on cargo ship sizes?
One would think. That ship looked like it would barely clearly the bridge anyway.

I wonder if loss of propulsion caused the clogs in the Suez Canal a few years ago? Same type of ship.
 
The salvage effort will be similar to salvaging the sunken battleships at Pearl Harbor after the attack in some ways.

Bridge construction contractors from the West Coast were used because of the similar technologies needed.

Coffer dams were installed around some of the sunken battleships to allow for repairs to the hulls and to keep the harbor water from overtopping the main decks once the pumps began pumping the water from inside the ship compartments.

Only enough water was pumped out to allow the battleships' hulls to clear the entrance to the dry docks not very far away as they were towed to the dry docks by tug boats. More complete hull repairs were then done in the dry docks after the water was pumped out of the docks and the ships rested on blocks.

Pontoons and steel cables were used to float the sunken minesweeper Oglala just enough to move her a short distance to open up much-need space on the 1010 dock where she capsized. The cables were worked under the hull and air pumped into the pontoons to lift the ship enough so that it could be up-righted and moved.


The bridge sections may need to be lifted or floated just enough to move them away from the shipping channel at the bridge so traffic can resume.
 

The illustrious history of the barge crane Chesapeake:

"Cheseapeake is owned by Donjon Marine Company, Inc., and was built in 1972, according to the company’s website.

When built in 1972, Chesapeake was originally called SUN 800.

It is its history as SUN 800 that makes the crane famous. SUN 800 was built to assist in the construction of the Hughes Glomar Explorer, a deep-sea drill-ship platform, according to an article from Engineering News-Record. The ship was built by the CIA to recover the 3,000-ton Soviet Golf II ballistic missile submarine K-129, which sunk in 1968, called Project Azorian, according to USNI News.

The cover for the operations was that billionaire Howard Hughes funded the crane to use it to mine the seafloor for manganese nodules, according to a 2010 piece in Proceedings.

By using Glomar Explorer, the CIA was able to recover the bodies of 70 Soviet crewmembers and parts of the submarine, the Engineering News-Record reported. The CIA planned to return to the site of the submarine wreckage in 1975 under Project Matador, but the project was cancelled, according to Proceedings.


Hughes Glomar Explorer was sold for scrap in 2015, USNI News reported."

K129_HGE_recoverysite.png

 
i wonder where exactly on the bridge the maintenance workers were when it collapsed and how much notice would they have needed to have a chance of making it to safety. i already get antsy on big bridges, i cant imagine that horror. they had policemen stopping ppl from going onto the bridge from both sides but didnt have anyone to relieve them so they could go on and try to clear the bridge.

you cant be cheap on safety. theres no excuse for a busy port like that not to have dolphins, fenders or something in place to try and prevent a disaster like this. theres speculation that even those might not have been sufficient for a vessel like this but you gotta have something in place to at least try especially considering its a port and the bridge had no redundancy .
 
I was reading an article about the crewmen who have been stuck on that ship since it crashed. Something about maritime law requiring crew remaining with on the ship until it's docked and also the fact that almost all of the crew had 1 month visas for the U.S., which have long expired. Cell phones confiscated by the FBI for the investigation. An awful situation for everyone involved.
 
"theres no excuse for a busy port like that not to have dolphins, fenders or something in place to try and prevent a disaster like this."

Correct. When the Sunshine Skyway Bridge was rebuilt after a phosphate carrier hit its western span in 1980, the new bridge towers were surrounded by dolphins to prevent them from being hit. Additional dolphins protect the rest of the bridge.

skyway1.JPG
 
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