Risk management doesn't happen unless it is incorporated into the design of these things. Hopefully they do an assessment of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Think of the nightmare that would be.

Traffic this morning, gives an idea of the routes. Not that bad at 7:30 am today. For people commuting across the bridge, next way across the river is the harbor tunnel. Hazmats will go around the beltway.

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Heard the bow is sunk into the mud, but that maybe the weight of the debris on the the ship. If needed they could off load containers to lighten the load and raise the ship before pulling it back.

And they unloaded containers from it. You have to do both, depending on how bad. Still ~20ft of water there. So hopefully won't be bad to pull it off.

I understand that Joseph Hazelwood is on the steering committee and will be serving refreshments.

Will be interesting to see how long it takes to get the remaining bridge debris off the ship, then unload all of the containers required for safety then pull the ship out.

Let alone clear the channel of debris.

Under/Over one month?

The Dali has already lost two containers overboard, and there are more that are damaged and sitting on an angle to the port side. Some more of those cans are liable to fall off when the bridge superstructure is removed, right into the channel. I'll take the Over.

I hope no Haggis Fathom or Centaur machines were on board.

That speed clip is fantasy...

A ship that massive, at that speed, when it strikes solid ANYTHING - it will self destruct, as in "rend", "deform", and "platicize" to the point of ignition. You heard that correctly, ignition, as in burning and oxidizing steel.

The aircraft carrier USS Forestal, when it collided with a (IIRC) I think it was a destroyer, during a maneuver, the destroyer missed the call for a turn to port and basically drove right into the side of the carrier. The metal deformed so quickly, and got hot enough to burn, that both ships burst into flames when they contacted each other.

That cruise ship from that film clip would have self destructed, there would be a huge melted and burning pile of steel from the bow to the bridge just due to friction alone.

As it is, the Dali pulverized the main support, turning it into concrete dust in a milisecond... which is some of the fireworks you see right at the impact site when it hits.

currently building a similiar sized bridge over the mississippi river just south of st. louis. just started it few months back and expected to be finished in november of 2026. So right around 3 yrs from start to finish. so im sure that length of time at the earliest.

That's the trade-off you make... maritime disaster that is hard to clear (see recent Suez Canal example of stuck ship)... or disaster that includes losing a major piece of infrastructure.

A grounded boat is better than a broken boat+broken bridge. But in reality they don't do this enlarge because the trade-offs are acceptable or it's just not viable for that area.

All prevention is based on what scenarios you hope to protect against and their probability.. then you decide which solution is the most attractive given your constraints and the trade-offs it presents.

All bridges are face issues like boats running into them. But their first response is not build land enclosed bridges, but in fact improve navigation, aids, etc.

The Bay Bridge downstream of Baltimore faces all the same kind of shipping traffic.. and it too has 'exposed' piers... and would face catastrophe if a significant ship ran into one of her towers.

Simply put... the bigger we make things, the more risky they become as they start moving

Risk Management is part of the design. It's not like these things were built by neanderthals. But that process always results in some outcomes you accept as possible, but you're not going to design to prevent. You often rely on other systems to do their part. Just like you don't build skyscrapers to be able to withstanding 757s hitting them.

We can agree on this- but look at the barrels of water/sand (and then concrete pilings/ metal I beams) that we use on the freeways- they are there to arrest a certain amount of impact and this can be engineered around if they wanted, but cost becomes a factor and you will see compromise.

If you are saying the bridge design was fine, then I don't like your bridge standards. I bet they won't roll out the old blueprints and construct an identical bridge. It will be improved to better manage the risk. Unsafe conditions, unsafe actions, bad decisions, all lead to terrible accidents like this one. Hopefully they better engineer out some of the possible bad outcomes for the bridge design this time around.

No, I responded to your inference that Risk Assessment hadn't been done or won't be done unless something is done differently. It was done - just because an accident still happened doesn't mean it wasn't or that the situation wasn't assessed and a conclusion made.

An identical bridge won't be built for the same reason if it were replaced w/o an accident.. because build building capabilities have changed in the last 50 years as well as expectations. But still I doubt the new bridge will be able to take a direct hit from a 100,000 ton container ship either. And if the next bridge gets taken out by terrorists or a meteor... I still won't have second guessed if Risk Management was part of the process just because it happened.

I think that is actually the argument, the amount of actual mass required to stop it in it's tracks is exactly it's own mass PLUS mass to account for deacceleration of the momentum... you can have that much mass sitting as sand in barrels, or water, or name your energy absorber, by the highway, but it has minor (semi's worth) mass involved. So you would need something the size of the ship and then bigger in order to absorb the energy required to halt all forward motion if mass was your only defense.

You need to look at energy disapation and absorbance, so plastic deformation, or mass displacement technologies, because brute force blocking of the supports is NOT an option unless you want a VERY large immobile pile of sand, rock and dirt piled right next to the waterway that you have to dredge to maintain draft clearance. That is a maintenance nightmare for the waterway.

I get that a multi tiered soulution would be best- in this case, flaired sunk bars of rock/sand could have arrested the ships movement when it started to push out of the channel, but again expense. The key here is you could potentially account for ships like this and bridges if expense were no object.

The most compromised thing is location- we usually build these where we need them not where it would be ideal to locate them.

The port of Virginia is going to pick up a lot of the Baltimore shipping. This makes sense in some ways, and is problematic in others. We are much closer to the Atlantic, so ships don't have to navigate all of the way up the Chesapeake. We have well established rail lines (Norfolk Southern), but they are really geared more toward bringing coal here to export by sea rather than moving stuff to the interior. The highways are a problem. There are so many bridges to traverse that it will really slow down road freight. Finally, there is the largest U.S. Naval base. That traffic usually takes priority.

Funny you mentioned him. Within minutes of hearing aboot this mishap, I checked if he was possibly involved; He wasn't, he kicked the bucket in 2022.

.

I’m still trying to reconcile myself
To the idea that maybe Speed 2:
Cruise Control isn’t 100 percent scientifically accurate.

If I can’t trust speed 2 who can I trust ?!

Of course there have been technological advances in the last 50 years that builders will consider, which would make the bridge safer and perhaps speed up the building process…. But there are also environmental standards that probably didn’t exist 50 years ago, that would probably slow the build… and you know folks get all squirrelly when talking about environmental stuff and the Chesapeake Bay…..

Am I the only one who was reminded of Godzilla when watching this catastrophy?

I'm amazed at how many bridge experts we have here.

Should have seen that covid thread.

Hey, this is pinside, your go to place for all things.

While I understand where your comment is coming from, I think it is funny. Pinside is mostly a collection of very bright, motivated and high achieving individuals. We all wouldn't be in this hobby nor be able to afford the collections we have if we were not intelligent. Yes, we may not be bridge builders, but I personally love hearing everyone's thoughts and ideas. Everybody brings something different to the table and the collected comments in this thread show deep thinking and problem solving aptitude.

Not a bridge expert, but have been close enough to big boats and tugs to have actually driven a tugboat, been a line handler on a Navy vessel, and seen my share of big boat accidents and their aftermath. Yes Pinside has all kinds of people with all kinds of experience... take me, I am a Navy trained nuclear reactor operator from the cold war who spent 7 patrols on a kinda big submarine, and happen to have a cousin who piloted tugboats on the Ohio river and let me take it out for a spin (with nothing tied to it, because shit happens) and warned me NOT to just jam the throttle open, it will sink us in less than 3 seconds. so I said, fine, you do the throttle, I'll just drive...

You could have fooled me.

"Be curious, not judgemental" Walt Whitman.

We are not fooling anyone... or trying to. I got all kinds of physical evidence of my past adventures, including a video from the sail as we traversed the Firth of Clyde heading to our dive point, boatloads of memorabilia from all the Pin Expo's and tournaments I have been to and played in, plus boatloads of photos and swag from the many factory tours of Stern, Gottlieb etc... my cred is up there. Ive been doing pinball since 1968 when I could see over the lockbar of my first wedge head. I love being the smartest guy in a room, and I have been most of my life. You may think half the people on pinside are phony tools, but some of us, for reals, are the real deal. If Bublehead says he has done something, you can take it to the bank... because Bublehead don't need to lie, he's been happily married for over 35 years and I did all my impressing to win that girl 35 years ago. "Be curious, not judgemental" Walt Whitman.

Thank goodness for Wikipedia and Google. No need for civil and mechanical engineering degrees.

Yes, I'm being sarcastic...

Also cyber hacking experts and people who have a pinpoint lock on where any given elected government official is at any given time.

& don't forget all the experts who know how a pinball manufacturing company should be run.

And what is wrong with every thing, every where, all at once.

The “Tits Up Consortium.”

Exactly... now let us count teets...

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Or alt currencies….

And those that know the best way to operate a pinball arcade on the Las Vegas strip.

We had a ton of draw bridges in NC.
Then the "Sail Boat Capital" movement came about.
They replaced all but one of the drawbridges with pop-ups.

Not sure the Mast height matched these container monsters.
It sure freaked us out first travel over one of them.

Roll the windows up, turn off the radio and concentrate. Nose bleed levels
over the Sound going round New Berne.
Albemarle was the most amazing bridge second only to the Lynn Cove Viaduct (not Coastal but in the Mountains)

I know this is called a "vertical lift bridge" Maybe that's what he meant but calls it a different name.

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