Bridge Collapses in Baltimore
- Thread starter CYaeger
- Start date
Yeah, no way to get in contact with them other than physically, and had to stop traffic first. Minutes either way kills more or saves more, pretty tough situation.
The guy was like “I’ll drive up there and get them” with no regard for his own life.
These guys 100% saved lives. But, I didn’t hear a ton of urgency in their voice, so I’m not sure they realized the ramifications of the situation they were in
Not all heroes wear capes. Said with zero sarcasm for a change.
Certainly, you make good points, but I have to take offense to "wrapping children in bubble wrap". I only point to the Delaware/New Jersey consortium who are in the process of building Islands to protect a bridge in one of their seaport bridges due to the size of modern ships. My point is not about individual deaths caused by this accident, which of course is horrible. But this was a major transportation nexus, and in my mind was below modern standards, and should have been modernized. It would have been a hell of a lot cheaper to install adequate "bumpers" than to rebuild this bridge, let alone the additional cost to the economy to less optimal shipping/ supply chain ports for the next few years. This "accident" was not caused by an "act of god" and could have been prevented by reasonable human intervention, if we can manage resources effectively.
I certainly didn't mean any offense and some of my thoughts were also broadly responding to the overall thread conversation. Who tf are any of us to speak in terms of right or wrong on the subject we're just observers. I deal with these sort of things by thinking out loud, and frankly I've found a lot of interesting information in the first dozen or so pages.
I don't know much about this specific bridge and absolutely agree that a focused effort to protect this bridge from an incident of this type was within the reach of engineering design, probably for decades. I was shocked at how shallow the water is in that area. 50' assuming that graphic was correct, which seems to be reasonable given photos of the bridge structure still visible. Some sort of earthen berm seems reasonable.
What I'm getting at is that someone, or more likely a task force or committee, had to weigh that option against a rail bridge in Ohio and an elevated interchange in Phoenix and decide which is in most critical need of funding.
We know we're dangerously behind on infrastructure spending and maintenance and incidents like this continue to underscore it in blood. Maybe this bridge had been identified as needing dire attention and that wasn't acted on fast enough. I haven't seen that come out in the reporting yet, but you certainly have more direct knowledge than I do. My bigger point is that ships that big have been passing within a couple hundred feet of that piling for years. We had the potential for that to have happened thousands and thousands of times. It was mitigated by a web of safeguards. Backup generators, harbormasters, modern navigation aids, etc. Those safeguards and many others kept that bridge safe for 50 years. One single breakdown of all of those safeguards took down the bridge. Perfect storm cliche fits well here. I absolutely don't want to diminish how absolutely devastating the scale of this accident was. Fortunately our failures are usually far less costly than this in terms of both lives and dollars, but should our automatic response be to bumper every piling that can interact with a ship that large? I think the proposed solution will be more nuanced than that.
We learned a lot about how our airports and highways react during one of those events after the big one that struck Raleigh in 1965. Hopefully we'll be better prepares for the next one.Now you’ve got me worried about shartnadoes. How can our infrastructure be prepared for those?
2 way radios are an easy way to stay in contact with people. In a dangerous situation like working on this bridge at night. There may not have been enough time to get off the part of the bridge that collapsed, it only takes a couple seconds to warn the workers.
I worked at an ethanol plant and during shut down times we might have 70-100 contractors on site 24 hours a day. Each crew got a radio to carry on their person so we could quickly notify them in case of danger, so everyone could get to safety. Each crew went through a safety meeting, so they knew where safe areas were that they were supposed to go to if the situation came up.
I worked at an ethanol plant and during shut down times we might have 70-100 contractors on site 24 hours a day. Each crew got a radio to carry on their person so we could quickly notify them in case of danger, so everyone could get to safety. Each crew went through a safety meeting, so they knew where safe areas were that they were supposed to go to if the situation came up.
Tunnels are great but limit hazardous cargo traffic. This bridge took pretty much all of such traffic since other routes already are tunnels.
Make a right turn at the giant chemical plant! You can't miss it!
I imagine this will have a ripple effect on safety for ports.
www.kgw.com
Columbia Bar pilots taking look at updating safety measures after Baltimore bridge collapse
The Columbia River Bar pilots, who navigate cargo ships through the Columbia River, met with the Coast Guard to go over potential changes to enhance safety.
Camanche - get it correct
Wait she was married to someone from my hometown? Yup know who the guy is - this is nuts.
In my defense, it has been almost 40 years since I played there.
So...can multinational corporations use this tragic incident as an excuse to raise prices for various goods? I want to be wrong, but the Covid terror was used as an excuse, due to supply chain issues, they said. Why won't they do it again? Please don't let this be a black swan event.....
If they have that kind of market power where they can set prices however they want whenever they want then they don't need to wait for some paper-thin fig leaf of an excuse like that to do it.
Others with more knowledge of shipping patterns have pointed out, too, that the port of Baltimore is a relatively small share of East Coast port capacity and the spring is off-peak for shipping traffic. There should be plenty of capacity at the remaining eastern ports (e.g., NY/NJ or Norfolk) to take up the slack.
Reading the accounts of how quickly the captain called to get the bridge closed, and local authorities acted on it, is truly amazing. Has any analysis of how many people might have normally been on the bridge at that time of night been reported on? Or how many cars were stopped at both ends?
I also wonder what this would have looked like had it happened at 1:30 in the afternoon instead of 1:30 in the morning. Or during rush hour. Asking just for curiosity's sake.
I also wonder what this would have looked like had it happened at 1:30 in the afternoon instead of 1:30 in the morning. Or during rush hour. Asking just for curiosity's sake.
