Francis Scott Key Bridge Collapse

mmcmdl said:
News from Greg . The pilot was experienced and notified they had no power . Traffic was stopped on the bridge before collapsing .
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Correct me if I am wrong here, but my understanding was that any ship over a certain weight/size had to have mandatory MANUAL primary (rudder) control ability in cases of power loss as well as backup power to any/all secondary manouvering control systems (thrusters) should the use of such systems be required?
 
mmcmdl said:
News from Greg . The pilot was experienced and notified they had no power . Traffic was stopped on the bridge before collapsing .
Click to expand...
Sad to see this ongoing tragedy. Early reports indicate multiple vehicles went into the water.

Think a new calculus for civil engineering needs to happen. There's been several bridge and road collapses, due to these "impossible" events. Think the risk assessment has to change and changes made to improve robustness of structures. That was pretty scary watching how quickly that bridge folded up and collapsed.
 
Tugs had detached . Pilot sent out an alert of power failure but the tugs did not have time to re-engage . Traffic WAS stopped . Most likely the construction workers went into the water .

PS . I'm not a broadcaster and just repeating what I'm told from a very reliable source .
 
WobblyHand said:
Sad to see this ongoing tragedy. Early reports indicate multiple vehicles went into the water.

Think a new calculus for civil engineering needs to happen. There's been several bridge and road collapses, due to these "impossible" events. Think the risk assessment has to change and changes made to improve robustness of structures. That was pretty scary watching how quickly that bridge folded up and collapsed.
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We all know that bridge engineering is all about the art of getting away with the least possible structure to take the specified weight and in specified conditions both current and potential future conditions.

That said, protecting Pillars/Pilons for bridges with large footed, solid pontoons has been a very well known method of protection for quite some years. Yes, bridge / crossing engineering has advanced over many decades we only have to look at the original Tay bridge disaster to look at those particular lessons learnt the hard way as well as the robust response that was the result.

What has NOT happened, however, is that design of protective measures as well as bridging structures has not kept up with the weight, size and pure inertia of modern shipping vessels with the results we see in the above bridge collapse.

Cause and effect? Failure to prepare and preparation to fail by not keeping up with shipping vessel size & weight trends. It is less a case of "IF" it will happen, but "When" it happens.
 
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This YouTuber is a professor at Campbell University I believe and an ex merchant mariner, I started following him during the Evergiven grounding in the Suez. He does great analysis of shipping issues and came out with a short video of what shows the ship loosing power and why it veered out of the channel.

 
Major disaster. This will not be replaced next week.
The power line have better collision protection than the bridge. Protection could still fail when 100-200 kiloton ship hit it!
Pierre
 
8 construction workers went into the water .
 
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