Container Ship Struck Key Bridge in Baltimore, Bridge has Collapsed

[Pratique]

4 hours ago, chengkp75 said:

And, it happened again just a couple days ago, in Baltimore.  Has happened 42 times in the last 3 years in Maryland waters.  Happens all the time, and will continue to happen.

What doesn't happen all the time is lives lost,  bridges destroyed, and billions in economic impact over the course of years by the failure of an $8 part. So it seems like the attitude is to cross our fingers and hope it doesn't happen again because the mitigation is too expensive for the shipping industry (which I still don't believe needs to be expensive at all, but what do I know). Doesn't have to be that way but whatever, it's not my problem to solve.

[chengkp75]

2 minutes ago, Pratique said:

What doesn't happen all the time is lives lost,  bridges destroyed, and billions in economic impact over the course of years by the failure of an $8 part. So it seems like the attitude is to cross our fingers and hope it doesn't happen again because the mitigation is too expensive for the shipping industry (which I still don't believe needs to be expensive at all, but what do I know). Doesn't have to be that way but whatever, it's not my problem to solve.

But the mitigation for the ships would not be completely reliable, while mitigation of the bridge infrastructure would ensure mitigation of the lost lives and destroyed bridges.  Would the replacement for the $8 part be 100% reliable?  How do you prove that?

[Pratique]

Just now, chengkp75 said:

But the mitigation for the ships would not be completely reliable, while mitigation of the bridge infrastructure would ensure mitigation of the lost lives and destroyed bridges.  Would the replacement for the $8 part be 100% reliable?  How do you prove that?

Who said it had to be 100% reliable? It's a false argument to say it must be 100% or not worth doing at all. But as I said, not my problem to solve.

[chengkp75]

37 minutes ago, Pratique said:

Who said it had to be 100% reliable? It's a false argument to say it must be 100% or not worth doing at all. But as I said, not my problem to solve.

Okay, would the replacement part be any more reliable than what it replaces?  Obviously, the part that failed was extensively tested, and has been used in millions (if not billions) of applications around the world (and not just in the maritime, but in all industries), and has an apparently acceptable failure ratio.

[Pratique]

Just now, chengkp75 said:

Okay, would the replacement part be any more reliable than what it replaces?  Obviously, the part that failed was extensively tested, and has been used in millions (if not billions) of applications around the world (and not just in the maritime, but in all industries), and has an apparently acceptable failure ratio.

I don't envision replacing the part. The part is not necessarily the problem. The issue is the overall design of the electrical system. I don't know enough to have any specific ideas, but I'm pretty certain there are design changes that can be made relatively inexpensively that would reduce if not eliminate this particular hazard of losing engine power under certain conditions. Any further mitigation is potentially helpful even if not 100% - since we are rolling the dice it makes sense to improve the odds, no?

 

As I mentioned before, I have expertise in the design of safety systems, so I'm not entirely clueless. I'm sure some smart grad students could spend a semester researching this and proposing some options. But as you noted, individual governments can't force foreign flagged ships to make any changes, so it would take a collaborative effort and I know that is asking a lot. Maybe too much.

 

In the meantime, let's fix the bridges too. Every little bit helps but nothing is perfect or easy. I think it's fair to be upset that the Dali collided with the bridge, and it is worth having a discussion about how to prevent it from happening again. Everything should be on the table for the solution(s) to even be considered.

[broberts]

42 minutes ago, Pratique said:

I'm pretty certain there are design changes that can be made relatively inexpensively that would reduce if not eliminate this particular hazard of losing engine power under certain conditions

 

This may or may not be true, but given the average service life of a container ship any fundamental design change would likely take several decades to effect. 

[smokeybandit]

54 minutes ago, Pratique said:

In the meantime, let's fix the bridges too. Every little bit helps but nothing is perfect or easy. I think it's fair to be upset that the Dali collided with the bridge, and it is worth having a discussion about how to prevent it from happening again. Everything should be on the table for the solution(s) to even be considered.

America's biggest weakness: keeping up with infrastructure. What to do is never the long pole. It's the when, how ($$$) and sometimes where.

Edited July 4 by smokeybandit

[Pratique]

11 minutes ago, broberts said:

 

This may or may not be true, but given the average service life of a container ship any fundamental design change would likely take several decades to effect. 

Absolutely. But they are building new ships every day so it's never too late to start thinking about it!

[TPKeller]

Looks like they're planning for the possibility of taller ships in the future!  The Chesapeake Bay Bridge would also need to be raised or replaced for this new height to make any practical difference.

"“The proposed fixed bridge should provide at least 230 feet of vertical clearance above mean high water,” Coast Guard Rear Admiral Shannon Gilreath wrote in a June letter to the transportation authority.

 

The document, written by the transportation authority and the Maryland State Highway Administration, noted changes between the new bridge’s proposed dimensions and the old span: It would have 230 feet of vertical clearance, as opposed to the old bridge’s 185 feet, and a 1,400-foot main span length, compared with 1,200 feet."

https://www.foxbaltimore.com/news/local/sun-new-key-bridge-expected-to-be-24-taller-than-predecessor

 

Theron

[smokeybandit]

39 minutes ago, TPKeller said:

The Chesapeake Bay Bridge would also need to be raised or replaced for this new height to make any practical difference.

Which will be never.

[Another_Critic]

1 hour ago, smokeybandit said:

Which will be never.

Did you say the same about the Key bridge?

[Pratique]

Well here we go. It seems like some redundancies were bypassed on the electrical side.

 

The Department of Justice called the collapse “entirely avoidable” in its claim and said the ship’s owner and manager — the Singaporean companies Grace Ocean Private Limited and Synergy Marine Pte. Ltd. — “sent an ill-prepared crew on an abjectly unseaworthy vessel to navigate the United States’ waterways.”

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/18/doj-sues-over-baltimore-bridge-collapse-seeks-cleanup-costs.html

[smokeybandit]

I bet the bridge will be rebuilt before any of that legal process gets resolved.

[chengkp75]

39 minutes ago, Pratique said:

Well here we go. It seems like some redundancies were bypassed on the electrical side.

 

The Department of Justice called the collapse “entirely avoidable” in its claim and said the ship’s owner and manager — the Singaporean companies Grace Ocean Private Limited and Synergy Marine Pte. Ltd. — “sent an ill-prepared crew on an abjectly unseaworthy vessel to navigate the United States’ waterways.”

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/18/doj-sues-over-baltimore-bridge-collapse-seeks-cleanup-costs.html

I'd be interested to see the NTSB final  report, since previous reports did not mention any jury-rigging or bypassing, and they felt the root cause was a loose wire.

[Pratique]

45 minutes ago, chengkp75 said:

I'd be interested to see the NTSB final  report, since previous reports did not mention any jury-rigging or bypassing, and they felt the root cause was a loose wire.

I'm not sure the DOJ is waiting for the NTSB. Some evidence is listed in the civil complaint, but I have not had a chance to look at it yet.

[Pratique]

This anti-vibration device on the transformer looks jury-rigged to my untrained eyes.

 

[tahqa]

From the Washington Post Article...

 

The Justice Department filing, though, offers a far more detailed and plainspoken account of maintenance issues on the ship and what caused them, as well as a timeline of the minutes before the Dali hit the bridge.

All four backstops meant to help control the ship — the propeller, rudder, anchor and bow thruster — failed to work in the critical moments before the crash because, the department alleged, the Dali was unseaworthy.

 

The department alleged that about four minutes before the Dali collided with the Key Bridge, its key “number 1” electrical transformer tripped and cut power. That transformer, according to the filing, had long suffered the effects of heavy vibration, which is known to cause systems failures. But rather than fixing the problem, the department said, the ship’s owner and operator “took a Band-Aid approach.”

 

“They retrofitted the transformer with anti-vibration braces, one of which had cracked over time, had been repaired with welds, and had cracked again,” Justice Department attorneys wrote. “And they also wedged a metal cargo hook between the transformer and a nearby steel beam, in a makeshift attempt to limit vibration.”

The Justice Department alleged that vibration problems on the ship were “not isolated.” A former chief officer reported they were shaking loose the ship’s cargo lashings, and engineers reported they were cracking equipment in the engine room, according to the filing. Those “heavy vibrations” had been reported to Synergy, according to a prior Dali captain.

 

When the number 1 transformer failed on March 26 — plunging the crew into complete darkness — power should have transferred automatically to a backup “number 2” transformer within seconds, Justice Department attorneys asserted. But that automated function, they wrote, had been “recklessly disabled,” leaving engineers struggling in the dark to manually reset tripped circuit breakers, a process that took a full minute as the ship surged closer to the bridge.

 

At the same time, a separate emergency generator should have turned on automatically and restored power steering — a backstop that maritime regulations require to kick in within 45 seconds of an outage. But it did not activate for well over a minute, Justice Department attorneys wrote, causing “more time wasted.”

Once power was restored to the ship’s steering system — known as the helm — a Maryland state pilot who had come aboard in port began issuing orders to steer the ship away from the bridge support beams. But the failed transformers meant the Dali’s propeller still was not working.

 

Then the ship lost power again.

This time, the Justice Department alleged, the cause was an improper fuel pump, called a “flushing pump,” which the attorneys said the ship’s owners used “to save money and for their own convenience.”

 

“It was not designed to recover automatically from a blackout, a critical safety feature of the proper fuel pumps that the DALI should have been using,” department attorneys wrote, calling the choice to use a flushing pump instead “grossly negligent.”

After both blackouts, the pilot resorted to the left anchor, giving an emergency order to release it in hopes of forcing the Dali away from the bridge, according to the filing. But the anchor “was not ready for immediate release in an emergency, as required by law,” and by the time it dropped, it was too late, the attorneys alleged.

 

In a separate, “last-ditch” attempt to avoid a crash, the department said, the pilot ordered the crew to apply full power to the ship’s bow thruster — a propeller on the front of the vessel that helps it move side to side. But when nothing happened, according to the filing, the pilot was told the bow thruster was unavailable.

 

At 1:28 a.m., the ship slammed into the bridge.

Six people were killed and two were injured as the roadway fell into the river below, cutting off the Port of Baltimore’s shipping channel for months as the state and federal government worked to recover the bodies of the construction workers and remove massive chunks of debris.

The Justice Department said in the filing that Grace Ocean and Synergy mismanaged the Dali and failed to train its crew, adding that during a recent inspection, officials found “loose bolts, nuts, and washers and broken electrical cable ties inside of both step-down transformers and electrical switchboards.” The ship’s electrical equipment “was in such poor condition that an independent testing agency discontinued further electrical testing due to ‘safety concerns,’” the filing said.

[smokeybandit]

The DOJ is like any other prosecution case.  Accusations that may or may not be backed with real evidence.