Exclusive: Engineers blame $3m structural
'flaw' for Baltimore's Francis Scott Key
bridge collapsing - and tens of thousands
of bridges across US could also have fault
Daily Mail (UK),
by
Petern Hess
Original Article
Posted By: Imright,
3/27/2024 12:54:24 AM
Engineers have blamed the deadly collapse of Baltimore's Francis Scott Key bridge on a design flaw that is present in tens of thousands of US bridges.
Several experts told DailyMail.com that the Maryland bridge was missing critical protection systems that would have stopped the the nearly 105,000 ton container ship from smashing into the bridge's support.
The Francis Scott Key Bridge was built in 1977 and anti-collision devices like fenders or protection cells were not introduced until the 1980s.
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Reply 1 - Posted by:
Tet Vet 68 3/27/2024 1:02:30 AM (No. 1686573)
1/2 M x V2= Force at impact. !/2 the Mass of the ship times the ships velocity squared = the force on the bridge. No wonder it collapsed.
18 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
EJKrausJr 3/27/2024 1:59:25 AM (No. 1686579)
Didn't engineers design the bridge. If the bridge was missing key protection systems when it was built, why weren't they retrofitted? The bridge snapped like a bridge made of toothpicks. Engineers and bureaucrats should be ashamed of themselves. Don't forget the designers of container ships. Why aren't manual controls invoked when electrical power is disrupted? Or if they are, why were the manual controls applied when the power was disrupted? Or was the crash into the bridge done on purpose by the Ukrainian Captain?
16 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
Trigger2 3/27/2024 2:48:40 AM (No. 1686589)
What malarky. Do those 10s of thousands of bridges have 1,000 ft. tankers traveling underneath them? I think not.
16 people like this.
#3 - No, but this may be just what the gay secretary and the regime need to trigger a Manhattan Project-level effort to backfit every waterway crossing in the country. We're saved!
13 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
bighambone 3/27/2024 3:02:12 AM (No. 1686599)
Biden has already said that the US Taxpayers will be picking up the tab for rebuilding the destroyed bridge which will probably take a number of years to rebuild. Even though it appears that the foreign owners of the ship that collided with the bridge no doubt should be held liable, all those owners have to do after their ship sails away is go bankrupt through some Third World legal system to get off the hook for paying any damages.
21 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
franq 3/27/2024 4:24:22 AM (No. 1686612)
I would think the ship's owners should have liability insurance to cover the cost of rebuilding the bridge. But Zhoa has already stepped up to the plate. Throw that money around, man.
22 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
Rinktum 3/27/2024 5:11:06 AM (No. 1686613)
The bridge collapse is a stark reminder that all those infrastructure projects that are promised by Congress never come to fruition because the political class is too busy giving money to illegal aliens, Ukraine, and pocketing funds. Clearly, they do not care about the safety of American citizens. They have overlooked our crumbling bridges and roads because they just don’t care. Our tax money goes to whatever pet project these fools decide is worthy, like 3.5M dollars for parade balloons in Michigan. Each time we are told the money is shovel ready, it somehow never gets to where it is needed. Watch, these morons will come out and suggest a new tax to cover the cost of repairing and replacing critical structures and the money still won’t go there. Why is it always America last or more correctly, America never?
32 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
SweetPea3 3/27/2024 5:54:46 AM (No. 1686619)
I recall a scathing report about the aging and failing infrastructure of American bridges where most bridges received a mark of C- or D+. This was before the Mianus Bridge collapse in CT in 1983.
12 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
WhamDBambam 3/27/2024 6:41:14 AM (No. 1686637)
Ex post facto “flaw” announced to help local lawyers.
11 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
skacmar 3/27/2024 6:46:54 AM (No. 1686644)
There will be lots of armchair quarterbacks criticizing what coulda, shoulda, woulda been done to prevent this accident. Of course things could have been done to prevent the accident. Unfortunately you don't know what they are until the accident occurs. Would the bumper system have stopped a 950 foot fully loaded cargo ship without power? Maybe, maybe not. It might have barreled right over it due to speed and weight. We will never know.
11 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
Muguy 3/27/2024 6:59:10 AM (No. 1686648)
Was this one of NoBama's TRILLION dollar "shovel ready" jobs?
Or was it the Vegetable's TRILLION dollar spending bill for "infrastructure" to repair roads and bridges? Maybe it was part of the Covid-1984 appropriation that gave $25 million dollars to improve the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.....
NO ONE REALLY KNOWS because once the money is approved and signed away, the funds keep getting shuffled around for OTHER 'important' projects without Congressional OVERSIGHT and accountability!
15 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
mifla 3/27/2024 7:00:35 AM (No. 1686649)
It is an age old debate. How reliable do you make something? Do you spend millions making something idiot proof, having backup systems for the backup systems, or do you put normal precautions into place and not worry about the once in a lifetime event?
13 people like this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
privateer 3/27/2024 7:59:06 AM (No. 1686694)
Untold billions to be let in contracts to union labor to retrofit countless bridges. Just in time to help Joe, since his Sickratary of Trans will be in charge. But it took a major disaster to grease the skids.
9 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
philsner 3/27/2024 8:13:41 AM (No. 1686717)
Pshaw. And all this time I thought the collapse was caused by a massive ship hitting the bridge support.
15 people like this.
Reply 15 - Posted by:
Rumblehog 3/27/2024 8:16:33 AM (No. 1686722)
From, what is known so far, it was a failure of procedure to allow an old garbage scow like this cargo ship, to be navigating without two Tugboats assisting her IN and OUT of the harbor. In fact, regardless of the operational condition of the ship, it should have been a requirement to have Tugboats assisting.
Second, that Bridge was nothing more than an Erector Set project when it was built in the 1970's and did NOT have the "fender" protections surrounding the Piers that a modern bridge would have. Granted, hurling a large, fully laden, Cargo vessel directly at one of the Piers doesn't help, which brings us back to the First recommendation.
They need to build a Tunnel to carry the amount of traffic this bridge had come to know prior to collapse. If they build another Bridge, it will heed to be a Cable Stayed Bridge for speed of construction. Look for the leftist idiots of Baltimore to "demand" the Key Bridge be rebuilt exactly as before, since it was on logos of the City, State, etc.
We all know that once they agree to a design, it will be renamed the "George Floyd Bridge," now don't we?
17 people like this.
Reply 16 - Posted by:
mjwall69 3/27/2024 8:33:04 AM (No. 1686741)
The "flaw" was a ship running into one of the supports. Minus that "flaw" it seemed to be holding itself up pretty well.
12 people like this.
Reply 17 - Posted by:
Strike3 3/27/2024 9:21:29 AM (No. 1686771)
As usual, a bunch of bullsquirt coming at us from the geniuses at the DMUK. An out-of-control, three hundred-yard long, fully loaded container ship is going to move anything in its path - anything.
6 people like this.
Reply 18 - Posted by:
NorthernDog 3/27/2024 9:32:16 AM (No. 1686782)
The fact is we cannot replace even a fraction of the 20th century infrastructure that is gradually deteriorating. The cost of everything has increased so drastically that we can only patch things up as they falter.
6 people like this.
Reply 19 - Posted by:
red1066 3/27/2024 9:32:24 AM (No. 1686784)
Exactly #2. There could have been buffers built around the bridge supports that would have minimized the damage. There are power lines that run parallel to the bridge. The tall electric poles have buffers or as I call them islands that surround the poles. The ship managed to miss one of those islands before it hit the bridge. Those buffers were installed around the supports of the new Skyway Bridge in Tampa Bay after the old bridge was hit and downed by a ship in 1980. Retro fitting those buffers would have been relatively easy to do.
5 people like this.
Reply 20 - Posted by:
cor-vet 3/27/2024 9:43:27 AM (No. 1686791)
I'm sure there's a member of the Bribme family or a contributor that has the solution to the problem, and for untold millions, will be glad to fix it.
4 people like this.
Reply 21 - Posted by:
swarfer 3/27/2024 9:56:45 AM (No. 1686796)
All vessels sailing into international ports have marine causality insurance such as Lloyd’s of London. Think oil spills, collisions, etc. It will not cover the losses but will ultimately pay to the extent of the insurance. Of course the vessel will be impounded and at this point is considered technically a salvage situation. This bridge should have been replaced with a modern suspension bridge spanning the navigable waterway let alone installation of advanced protection schemes to deal with modern shipping. The resources to modernize have been squandered on countless wasteful and counter productive endeavors at home and abroad and political giveaways. This bridge looked embarrassingly antiquated, a remnant of a bygone construction era of spindly truss designs even though built in the mid ‘70s. I suppose many around the world seeing this as a lead news story are astonished as well.
2 people like this.
Reply 22 - Posted by:
DVC 3/27/2024 10:56:43 AM (No. 1686839)
Re #2....because it costs money today to prevent a 'possible' problem at some future time. Demonrats NEVER spend vote buying, welfare money on infrastructure until something actually FALLS DOWN.....and then they have to spend 100 times as much to fix it as the money required to prevent it.
Dems are ALWAYS short sighted, and never, ever seek to plan for the long term, and make sensible, ADULT decisions.
6 people like this.
Reply 23 - Posted by:
Gordon Mills 3/27/2024 11:31:14 AM (No. 1686869)
#10, are you saying no one ever asked what would happen if a ship lost power?
0 people like this.
Reply 24 - Posted by:
JimBob 3/27/2024 11:54:25 PM (No. 1687273)
The usual hyperventilation from the D-M.
They SCREAM the word FLAW as if there was something wrong with the bridge that made if fall down all by itself.
Regarding the ship and the 'accident chain' of events that led to the ship hitting the bridge.... I wonder if the ship had an anchor, and if so, did they have the means to drop it, and so stop the ship before it hit the bridge. (This info may be available... I have been working in my shop all day and have not kept up with what is available.)
0 people like this.
Reply 25 - Posted by:
NYbob 3/28/2024 10:21:42 AM (No. 1687535)
More fake news. This never even happened, because the viral and dynamic Joe Biden fixed our failing systems when 2 term President Obama put him in charge of that mega billion ' shovelready ' project. Is there ONE fakenews propaganda ' news ' outlet or talking head that will remind the world of that rat theft of taxpayer money that did nothing to fix the problem it was supposed to address????
0 people like this.
Reply 26 - Posted by:
MickTurn 3/28/2024 11:40:43 AM (No. 1687628)
But, But, But, it was build by Union Workers and NO (LIE) Shortcuts were taken. The Design has worked before so they keep using it, not understanding that bridges supports need to be able to withstand accidents like this. SO Who gets SUED over the Deaths?
0 people like this.
Reply 27 - Posted by:
zoidberg 3/28/2024 1:25:30 PM (No. 1687725)
#15 makes some good points, but it needs to be a bridge, not a tunnel, so that trucks carrying hazmat can use it (Baltimore already has two other tunnels where hazmat is forbidden). But the design needs to be better.
0 people like this.
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