Board 8 > Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore just collapsed.

(+) Yeah! (+)

container ship ran right into the base and the whole thing fell apart. not part of it is busted, i mean the whole thing is absolutely fucking destroyed. compilation of a couple videos here:

https://twitter.com/rawsalerts/status/1772514786338619487

alternatively, individual videos here:
https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1772514015790477667

2nd one also starts with a clip (it's the 2nd video in the first link) that makes it clear that whoever was driving that ship really, really fucked up.

I was just reading about it. This is fucking horrendous. I hear 7 people went down with the bridge

Oh god, cars are clearly seen on that bridge. What a horrifying event.

That is the stuff of nightmares

Oh my god, this is so fucking horrible. The bridge just collapsed. How the hell did the ship end up going straight at the pillar like that? There has to be so many boats going through these bridges and just one freak thing happens in who knows how many years. The thing just went down in seconds. I'm in awe. There's nothing to even say. This is so tragic.

oh it's a lot more than just 7 people. unknown number of cars and people missing still, just in the double digits on the former. total nightmare fuel considering that's a mile and a half bridge just gone. the way it collapsed though is such a what the fuck, like as soon as that pillar got hit everything was gone.

Holy shit. Holy shit.

Oh my God I drove over that yesterday morning

Wanglicious posted...

total nightmare fuel considering that's a mile and a half bridge just gone.

Yeah this is what's getting me. That bridge was huge. Just holy shit.

It's soul crushing.

Besides the obvious loss of life, the beltway is no longer a loop and it's going to cost millions a day to the economy. Even if they start rebuilding now it's going to take years to get back up and running. Billions lost before it gets fixed. And now to go from Baltimore to anne arrundel county instead of taking five minutes it's going to take near two hours with traffic.

And a new Amazon complex opened up just on the sparrows point side of the bridge that is now cut off from half the state.

It's... real bad

UltimaterializerX posted...

Dude its like a Jenga tower. One wrong thing happened and it just totally poofed. Nightmare fuel is right.

I keep seeing the video from different angles and every single time i am amazed at just how instantaneous the collapse was. Just horrifying.

Plus it fucks up shipping for the entire country in general until we get the bridge out of the water.

And it was the main throughway for hazardous materials by truck since they can't go through the tunnels and Jesus Christ the more I think on it the worse it gets.

This is just crazy, the bridge has existed my entire life. When I loved in Dundalk and Sparrows Point I went over it almost every day. And it's just gone

PeaceFrog posted...

I keep seeing the video from different angles and every single time i am amazed at just how instantaneous the collapse was. Just horrifying.

The one clip I saw (because I am not watching more footage than needed on this, one is enough) it appears as if once part of one section collapses, the rest collapse without the support of that part.

Terrible event to occur. My condolences to the victims and their loved ones.

@Dantezoid I get that a huge ass ship running into the support pillar is a bad idea, but shouldn't there have been safety measures in the concrete to prevent a full collapse?

FFDragon posted...

Oh my God I drove over that yesterday morning

Thought of you immediately when I saw Baltimore, glad you're okay

This is absolutely horrifying and it's going to be difficult for me not to think of this the next time I go over a bridge (which is supposed to be Easter).

Thanks. I'm just kind of having an existential crisis right now. That bridge just was Baltimore.

I was at the (Baltimore obviously) World Trade Center for work last month and took some pictures from the observatory of the skyline and like, this was supposed to be of the Domino Sugar sign, but the Key Bridge is just there in the background right behind it doing work.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/7/7bcebf46.jpg

And now it's just gone.

Also thought of you right away FFD. I can't even imagine.

FFDragon posted...

@Dantezoid I get that a huge ass ship running into the support pillar is a bad idea, but shouldn't there have been safety measures in the concrete to prevent a full collapse?

Its a fairly old bridge, newer bridges have better safety measures for this kind of thing after a similar incident in the 80s in Florida. Even then Im not sure any bridge could withstand a 100000 ton ship

wtf

Lots of explaining to do here. This seems so catastrophic as to not even be preventable.

Bridges are held up by tension so it makes sense that it snapped like a rubber band. And the ship was so massive there's no way you could protect against it.

FFDragon posted...

I get that a huge ass ship running into the support pillar is a bad idea, but shouldn't there have been safety measures in the concrete to prevent a full collapse?

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/c/c279709b.jpg

What kind of safety measures are going to stop 165,000 tons of force with that much momentum?

The ships are what need better safety measures, because no bridge pillar is surviving that.

Reports are the ship lost propulsion and contacted MD Department of Transportation alerting them of that fact and that a collision was possible. I noticed people commenting in the videos that the boat appeared to lose power/lights shortly before the collision, not sure if it's related but sounding more likely I guess.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/live-updates/baltimore-key-bridge-collapse/?id=108500215

Two people rescued so far, one hospitalized in critical condition, other refused treatment.

I mean, I get it... but I just don't know how it could've gotten to the point where it could happen.

And the one person who got rescued refused medical treatment and just went home.

I'll also add my voice to those who immediately thought of you when I heard it was Baltimore, FFD. Glad you're safe.

I'm a bridge engineer, so I might be able to shed... Hopefully a little bit of light on the bridge questions. No background in forensic-type investigations, but I at least know enough to be dangerous. Also don't know a ton about this specific bridge so I'll have to make some guesses/assumptions.

I couldn't tell from the one video I saw what gave way first, but it looked like the column. Once the column went down, the whole pier went down, and obviously the truss followed. These bridge spans are designed to be continuous across all of the piers, which is pretty typical. You pretty much have to do that in order to reduce the magnitude of your bending forces by distributing where in the truss they occur, otherwise your bending forces would be too large for the structure to resist. So in order to span over the navigable part of the river, they HAD to design it with multiple continuous spans connected to each other. So you can see when it starts to collapse, the two spans resting on that pier begin to fall, and the span resting on the pier that wasn't hit starts to get pulled up, causing a lot of additional stress in the members that they were never designed for. Once those break, the bending forces redistribute to the span that stayed up. But since you no longer have the rest of the bridge connected to it, it puts a lot more force in the structure than it's supposed to have towards midspan (plus the fact that it's horribly unbalanced with part of the structure cantilevering off the pier). So once those forces exceed what that portion of the bridge was designed for, cue the domino effect. There may have also been hinges put into the spans to force a point where the bending forces were released in the structure, but those are less common on trusses than other long continuous spans, so I'm not sure. I don't know enough about the bridge. But if one was there, that would also have contributed to the rest of the truss spans collapsing sure to becoming unstable. There should be a joint separating the truss spans from the rest of the bridge, hence why those approach spans were left entirely intact despite the entire truss going down.

As for whether or not the columns should have been able to take the hit, that's a complicated question. Current code requires you to consider vessel collision when spanning over navigable channels, but the actual load you have to design for isn't well defined. Some states institute their own requirements, and for some states it's up to the engineer's discretion, and I don't know MD's rules there. This is further complicated by the fact that:

a) Vessel collision wasn't a code requirement until around 15-20 years ago, so it wouldn't have been part of the code at the time the bridge was built.
b) If they did attempt to design for it, information on collision at that time would have been very lacking in terms of its magnitude and how to apply it, plus the analysis tools are nowhere near as sophisticated as what we have now.
c) Even if they did design for it and did everything correctly, the size of ships have increased dramatically since the bridge was built. So even if it was properly designed for vessels of the time, that load is simply no longer valid.

One thing I'm curious about, because I couldn't tell, is if there was any kind of fender system. Those are typically required for bridges over navigable channels and are relatively easy retrofits. They both serve as a way to guide the ships along a defined path and redirect the ship. There are a lot of arguments about their efficacy and if they actually redirect the ship enough (not a whole ton of data on that), and you have to offset it from the columns a huge distance because of how much they deflect. Plus since they don't go the full length of the channel it's still possible to get behind them and hit the pier. But if there isn't any kind of fender system, I imagine that's what the feds are going to hone in on.

FFDragon posted...

And the one person who got rescued refused medical treatment and just went home.

me irl

stafoc posted...

One thing I'm curious about, because I couldn't tell, is if there was any kind of fender system. Those are typically required for bridges over navigable channels and are relatively easy retrofits. They both serve as a way to guide the ships along a defined path and redirect the ship. There are a lot of arguments about their efficacy and if they actually redirect the ship enough (not a whole ton of data on that), and you have to offset it from the columns a huge distance because of how much they deflect. Plus since they don't go the full length of the channel it's still possible to get behind them and hit the pier. But if there isn't any kind of fender system, I imagine that's what the feds are going to hone in on.

Ah and my completely uneducated brain was wondering if there could be some kind of system like that. I guess I'm imagining a below the water rails system like you see on water rides at theme parks to guide ships into the correct channels.

I'm also curious to know how far away this ship was when it lost control.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/a/a0067458.jpghttps://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/f/f1e0944c.jpg

Just to give you and idea of how big this thing was.

I started school in Minneapolis like two weeks after they had the bridge collapse there in 2008. That one was right during rush hour so a lot of people were on the bridge, but since it's only crossing the river and doesn't have to worry about cargo ships it's a lot lower so there were hundreds injured but only like 10 or so deaths

God, that's a disaster. Not just because of the loss of lives, which is by itself tragic, but because...look at that picture. Are sections of the city just...completely cut off from each other now? How are people going to get to work? Or worse, to their homes? Am I crazy in thinking a huge chunk of the town is just going to be paralyzed now?

This is awful, and the braindead conspiracies have already started.

It's definitely going to cripple transportation around the city and state. Every drivearound is going to be an hour or more, and that's before you take into account that everyone is going to have to use the tunnels now so traffic is going to be outrageous.

If you relied on the key bridge as part of your commute, just get another job at this point.

And thanks for the insight, starfox.

Also immediately thought of FFD. Absolutely tragic but glad you're safe at least.

FFDragon posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/a/a0067458.jpghttps://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/f/f1e0944c.jpg

Just to give you and idea of how big this thing was.

Which part of the bridge collapsed?

Anagram posted...

Which part of the bridge collapsed?

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/7/74cd00dc.jpg

stafoc posted...

I'm a bridge engineer, so I might be able to shed... Hopefully a little bit of light on the bridge questions.

pretty good post. thank you!

I would be surprised if there were a bridge on Earth that could withstand a ship of that size out of control slamming into it.

Dunno how many of you are familiar with the situation in Rhode Island, but for the past few months, the westbound side of the Washington Bridge in Providence has been closed due to a critical structural failure that was discovered not by an inspector or state official, but by a maintenance worker, and it was recently announced that that entire side of the bridge will almost certainly have to be demolished and rebuilt. It's affected traffic and the economy all over the state, and with the Key Bridge having serviced a bigger area, no doubt the ramifications are going to be much, much greater (especially since the bridge is completely gone now rather than just one side being closed). One of the biggest concerns with the closure of the Washington Bridge that I haven't seen mentioned here is how it will affect emergency vehicles. Not sure if there are hospitals on both sides of the Key Bridge.

Regardless, the death and destruction here really puts into perspective what could have happened to the Washington Bridge on its own without such a catalyst had the structural failure not been discovered.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/a/ac0bfffe.jpg

The ship being (relatively and all things considered) unscathed is blowing my mind too.

FFDragon posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/7/74cd00dc.jpg

Thanks. That does look city-defining.

The Francis Scott Key Bridge was a steel arch continuous through truss bridge spanning the lower Patapsco River and outer Baltimore Harbor / Port carrying Maryland Route 695 in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. It was originally known as the Outer Harbor Crossing until it was renamed in 1976, while still under construction, and is also known as simply the Key Bridge or Beltway Bridge. The main span of 1,200 feet (366 m) was the third longest span of any continuous truss in the world. It was the second-longest bridge in the Baltimore metropolitan area, after the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.

The bridge was opened on March 23, 1977, named for amateur poet Francis Scott Key (17791843), the author of the American national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner". The bridge was the outermost of three toll crossings of Baltimore's Harbor, two tunnels and one bridge. Upon completion, the bridge structure and its approaches became the final links in Interstate 695, the "Baltimore Beltway", completing a two-decade long project. Despite the I-695 signage, the bridge was officially considered part of the state highway system and designated Maryland Route 695.

The bridge was 8,636 feet (2,632 m) long and carried an estimated 11.5 million vehicles annually. It was a designated hazardous materials truck route, as HAZMATs are prohibited in the Baltimore Harbor and Fort McHenry tunnels.

The main span is what collapsed.

https://twitter.com/ywnreporter/status/1772527800387330120

god this video is rough, you can see the ship just turn directly into the support

e: not saying it was intentional, that's just how the current flows if the ship was dead in the water. And they're saying there was a mayday sent and what MTA workers were there at 1AM started stopping cars on both sides as best they could (which is a lot harder now that there are no toll booths).

Its a little hard to tell, does the power cut while theyre already under the bridge, causing them to swing broadside into the support?

Or is it more of a head one collision? I cant tell.

Directly head on. The power was cutting off and on which made it even more difficult apparently.