Baltimore bridge collapse
Discussion
Abbott said:
is it strange that there does not appear to be anything from the Coast Guard or Port Authorities suggesting there was a Pan, Pan, Pan or Mayday signal sent out as soon as they understood they were in deep st.
Why would they? What are they going to do to help? It will be reported after, not while they are dealing with the problem. Quite rightly 'communicate' is at the bottom of the list.FourWheelDrift said:
The Hypno-Toad said:
He won't drown though, turds always float.hidetheelephants said:
Responsibly run ships will have anchors ready to drop when in harbour or narrow channels; there would be a crew on the forecastle to do it, no controls on the bridge.
Good point.LimaDelta said:
Abbott said:
is it strange that there does not appear to be anything from the Coast Guard or Port Authorities suggesting there was a Pan, Pan, Pan or Mayday signal sent out as soon as they understood they were in deep st.
Why would they? What are they going to do to help? It will be reported after, not while they are dealing with the problem. Quite rightly 'communicate' is at the bottom of the list.From BBC
LimaDelta said:
RustyMX5 said:
IMHO it might have made a difference but it would depend on vessel speed, how soon before impact and which anchor they decided to drop. The video doesn't seem to show much in terms of a bow wave (so a lowish speed is implied). The water looks fairly flat which suggests a fairly low wind speed. An anchor drop early enough should have avoided the incident. My guess, and it's just a guess, is that if they'd dropped the anchor at the first 'lights out' then they might well have avoided what happened.
Wind was NE 8kts, and the track and speed of the vessel can be seen in the link I posted on page 1.As to why they didn't drop on the first blackout, see my post on normalisation of deviance.
LimaDelta said:
Abbott said:
is it strange that there does not appear to be anything from the Coast Guard or Port Authorities suggesting there was a Pan, Pan, Pan or Mayday signal sent out as soon as they understood they were in deep st.
Why would they? What are they going to do to help? It will be reported after, not while they are dealing with the problem. Quite rightly 'communicate' is at the bottom of the list.Vipers said:
On another site, it was mentioned how a machinery failure could occur, I was on an offshore rig in the North Sea a few years, three generators, one being maintained, one on line and one standby.
The on line one failed, and the standby failed to start, st happens, and stuff on rigs doesnt get neglected.
I worked at a base in Aberdeen in connection to the Hospital, during a local power failure, the emergency generator failed to start as the change over switch failed big time despite being function checked on regular basis.
From the vid of black ship twice, not difficult to guess there was a black ship situation.
Even our latest aircraft carrier has problems
We had a standby generator at a previous work, regularly tested but not under load, just checked it would start if the power tripped with a test button...The on line one failed, and the standby failed to start, st happens, and stuff on rigs doesnt get neglected.
I worked at a base in Aberdeen in connection to the Hospital, during a local power failure, the emergency generator failed to start as the change over switch failed big time despite being function checked on regular basis.
From the vid of black ship twice, not difficult to guess there was a black ship situation.
Even our latest aircraft carrier has problems
It was an old ships engine driving a large generator
First time it was needed in anger, the shaft to the generator fractured - sheared completely.
As for our Carriers - nope - lots of redundancy
Two Rolls-Royce MT30 36MW gas turbine alternators to power the Type 45 integrated electric propulsion system, and then there's an additional four medium speed diesel generators, generating close to 110Mw
Prince of Wales had a power loss in Portsmouth whilst carrying out trials. It wasn't operational then and that was because a storm pulled out the power cable that was feeding the ship from the dock. The engines weren't running.
RustyMX5 said:
LimaDelta said:
RustyMX5 said:
IMHO it might have made a difference but it would depend on vessel speed, how soon before impact and which anchor they decided to drop. The video doesn't seem to show much in terms of a bow wave (so a lowish speed is implied). The water looks fairly flat which suggests a fairly low wind speed. An anchor drop early enough should have avoided the incident. My guess, and it's just a guess, is that if they'd dropped the anchor at the first 'lights out' then they might well have avoided what happened.
Wind was NE 8kts, and the track and speed of the vessel can be seen in the link I posted on page 1.As to why they didn't drop on the first blackout, see my post on normalisation of deviance.
swanny71 said:
We don’t know for yet if they did or didn’t drop anchor(s) before hitting the bridge - pics I’ve seen show port is down (before or after impact?), the area around stbd anchor is badly damaged so hard to tell. I doubt it’d help much anyway stopping a 100,000 gt vessel doing 8 knots a few hundred meters from the bridge.
No vessel I’ve served on would have useful steering in the immediate aftermath of a total electrical failure. Painfully slow rudder movements (achieved manually) at best assuming crew were closed up in the steering gear compartment. This vessel is single prop so no steering there either.
That's a safety violation and if discovered PSC should land on like a heavy thing, no doubt the class society too. The emergency generator should start within 45 seconds(I've never encountered a set that didn't start within 10) and power the steering gear.No vessel I’ve served on would have useful steering in the immediate aftermath of a total electrical failure. Painfully slow rudder movements (achieved manually) at best assuming crew were closed up in the steering gear compartment. This vessel is single prop so no steering there either.
The CCTV footage I've seen is too grainy to show if the port anchor was released prior, but the chain is straight up and down and the guillotine could have been released by the falling debris. Given there are no reported casualties on the ship it's not unreasonable to speculate that there was no-one on the forecastle, so no anchor release.
Wills2 said:
LimaDelta said:
Abbott said:
is it strange that there does not appear to be anything from the Coast Guard or Port Authorities suggesting there was a Pan, Pan, Pan or Mayday signal sent out as soon as they understood they were in deep st.
Why would they? What are they going to do to help? It will be reported after, not while they are dealing with the problem. Quite rightly 'communicate' is at the bottom of the list.I.e. how long do you think it would take you to have the road closed outside your office (at 1AM) - even if you had the local Mayor or MP's phone number? One minute? five? thirty?
Well done to all involved if they actually managed to do so.
swanny71 said:
LimaDelta said:
Abbott said:
is it strange that there does not appear to be anything from the Coast Guard or Port Authorities suggesting there was a Pan, Pan, Pan or Mayday signal sent out as soon as they understood they were in deep st.
Why would they? What are they going to do to help? It will be reported after, not while they are dealing with the problem. Quite rightly 'communicate' is at the bottom of the list.From BBC
LimaDelta said:
If, and it's a big if, they managed to get a warning out, to someone who could communicate with someone who had the power to stop traffic on the bridge, who then had time to do so, then the whole chain of events started a lot further back than the footage which is available shows.
I.e. how long do you think it would take you to have the road closed outside your office (at 1AM) - even if you had the local Mayor or MP's phone number? One minute? five? thirty?
Well done to all involved if they actually managed to do so.
I'd imagine the coastguard or port authority have a big red phone for whoever is in charge of the bridge, a bridge strike is a predictable event and one that's happened many times before, albeit the outcome has been very much more severe than usual.I.e. how long do you think it would take you to have the road closed outside your office (at 1AM) - even if you had the local Mayor or MP's phone number? One minute? five? thirty?
Well done to all involved if they actually managed to do so.
RustyMX5 said:
If you have a look at this link and select the 'track' option on the left and then turn on the Speed Color Track, it certainly looks like they were desperately trying to scrub off speed.
I'm speculating but the visible funnel smoke is very likely to be the result of full astern power being applied.hidetheelephants said:
RustyMX5 said:
If you have a look at this link and select the 'track' option on the left and then turn on the Speed Color Track, it certainly looks like they were desperately trying to scrub off speed.
I'm speculating but the visible funnel smoke is very likely to be the result of full astern power being applied.oobster said:
I’m wondering if the ship has been holed below the waterline and if so is it going to require another ship coming alongside and offloading a sizeable chunk of the containers before the ship can be moved?
Nothing's moving anywhere for a long time. There's half a bridge sitting on top of the ship. Somebody clever is going to need to bring in a very big floating crane and work out which bits to lift first. It'll take a while. Can't start fiddling about with cargo until that's sorted out because the vessel would move as cargo weight was reduced. It's a properly tricky one to sort out. Leaving aside the human tragedy there'll be massive disruption of road network and a truly humungous bill for insurers.
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