Baltimore bridge collapses after a barge hits it. How does a bridge collapse like that?

[smahala1991]

A bridge has collapsed in Baltimore, people are feared to still be in the water.

[WindAtMyBack]

Bridges are designed to withstand hits like this. But those ships have gotten huge. They are much bigger than they were when that bridge was built. The size of modern ships are controversial for more reasons than this. Modern bridges are built to withstand hits by big modern ships. But 50 years from now the ships might be twice as large as they are now.

The problem was not with the bridge. The problem was with the ship. It was huge and they lost control of it. A ship that size hitting something will do a lot of damage. They lost power. We still don't know why. But losing power on something with that much momentum shouldn't happen. They need double or triple redundancy so it doesn't happen. Or just stop making such big ships.

Ships get bigger. Bridges get bigger, higher and longer. Buildings get bigger. Planes get bigger. Trains get faster. Everyone wants to outdo each other by building something bigger. Everyone wants bragging rights.

How tall will skyscrapers get before one collapses?

This stuff is a disaster waiting to happen. Eventually it will be far worse than this bridge collapse.

[Lynx122]

Most of the infrastructure in the U. S. was built after the second world war and it hasn't been renewed or maintained that well. Because most of the politcians get paid to keep taxes low for the rich so they can't invest in infrastructure because that costs money. A lot of bridges are in danger of collapsing a lot of dams are in danger of breaking etc. But this one got hit by a huge cargo ship so that at least is some kind of an excuse. A lot of bridges are close to collapsing without anything hitting them just from the strain of traffic for decades.

“230,000 U. S. Bridges Need Repair, New Analysis of Federal Data Finds”

That figure represents 37 percent, or more than a third, of all U. S. bridges.

46,000 Are “Structurally Deficient” and in Poor Condition

[sage2021]

I keep heard our President speaking about fixing bridges and highways, etc., but they never do anything about it. Especially now, when they are spending tax payers money of stupid things, of which there are many.

Look at what is happening to our commercial airplanes. Doors flying off the plane high in the sky. Wheels just coming off the
plane shortly after taking off, and putting hardware on planes that are just a little bit too big, but when the mechanic told the supervisor, he said to put them on anyway and that plane crashed! People died.

It's the same thing with the bridges. They don't do maintenance on them, and frankly, people just don't do good workmanship - they don't care.

The trains that have been one disaster after another. Same thing.

There could have been maintenance being done at the time the barge hit the bridge, making it even weaker at that exact time.

I'll watch the news in the morning, because I hadn't heard of this yet.

[strateguy632]

blabbing biden, blab but not do, several other examples of this in my mytakes. sigh.

[Sirenboobzilla]

It took a container ship to the support colum. Not many things will remain standing after that type of collision. The Key Bridge is connected by steel beams throughout the center span. One part collapsed, then all those steel beams pull on all the other steel beams causing the whole thing to fail.

[Massageman]

The things that irk me about this are: 1. This particular ship has had problems before. Maybe they weren't fully mitigated. 2. The ship was leaving port just after midnight local time. Not exactly the best conditions to actually see things. 3. This is a TOLL bridge. People PAY to use it. Management of the bridge should be SAVING some of those tolls for accidents. Granted, this isn't just a little speck of rust. But, the prez was way, way, WAY out of line to issue a blanket statement that the feds would pay for a new one!!! Possible lack of maintenance and repair, stupid operations scheduling and poor money management now means that a politician who can't walk up stairs to even REACH a bridge, says that WE TAXPAYERS are going to have to pick up the tab for this broken Tinkertoy. No! The shipper, the shipper's insurance company, and the profit from the bridge operations should pay for this mess. -30-

[SueShe]

Sloppy construction. As simple as that. The US is known to not pay too much attention to quality of their work on bridges. Look at the first such recorded event with the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse in 1940 that was due to aeroelastic flutter that were not taken into consideration when building the bridge.

In 2021, there were 146,000 bridges in the US National Highway System. And as of that June, 44,000 of them were in “poor” condition (source: https://usafacts.org/articles/what-is-the-state-of-americas-highway-bridges/ ).

In Europe, such an accident would not likely to have had such dramatic consequences. It shows that hurrying construction and disregarding the most basic safety rules can have harrowing impact.

[Sirenboobzilla]

Poor construction or no, there aren't many bridges in the world that could survive being struck by such a large vessel.

[Jersey2]

In 1940 the Europeans were murdering millions of people. But that was 84 years ago.

The US built amazing and famous bridges like the Golden Gate in 1937. The Key bridge that was struck by the container ship was built in 1976 and had no issues until its support was destroyed. Maybe is the US didn’t s-end money defending Europe with Nato we could spend it elsewhere.

[Jersey2]

Spend*

[SueShe]

@Jersey2 and yet today, the US are murdering people everywhere in the world under the pretext to defend the US!

[Jersey2]

It will eventually be shown that this was caused by shoddy maintenance by the crew and owner of the ship. You seem very emotional in your responses which when coupled with your shallow understanding of the world has you saying ridiculous things. You look foolish.

[SueShe]

There is a huge difference between looking foolish and being foolish, which is an adjective that best suits you!

[Sirenboobzilla]

Dali has a shotty record already. It was involved in another accident in Belgium in 2016. Also used a questionable company to inspect the vessel which already had sub par auxiliary systems.

We get a lot of our freight from container vessles up here. Some we have to sort through for distribution and others we move directly to their destination. There are times when vessles are held up for various reasons sonour shipments are delayed. The cost, in part, trickles down as we have to schedule pickups in advance; make sure we have proper documentation, permits, trucks alreadynin regulation, etc. Missing a shipment means we either have to try and pick up other cargo, or lose money.

I add that last bit as Baltimore is effectively sidelined until they can clear the debris and ready the channel for passage. Shipping companies down there are going to be heavily impacted. Those ships now waiting to go to port will have to be rerouted to other deep water ports like Philadelphia, Wilmington, Norfolk, and Newark.

[SueShe]

@Sirenboobzilla how can anyone build a bridge over such thin and frail support pillars? One of its reinforced concrete column was downgraded from a health index, or condition rating, of 77.8 to 65.9, which is considered as "fair" but certainly not good or safe.

Elderly bridges were built with substantially more stable support pillars like the one in this picture. Had the Baltimore had such construction, it would not have suffered the catastrophic failure.

upload.wikimedia.org/.../...e_Bruecke_ohne_Dom.jpg

Alas, architects want to become famous with minimalistic constructions that are perhaps aesthetically pleasing but a horror in terms of safety.

[Jersey2]

@sueshe I don’t see any container ships going under the bridge you posted. It’s just silly to compare it. At best, the bridge could have had a fender system installed for further protection. So now you can use that bit of information to rail against the construction in other posts because that seems to be your objective… to rail… I guess it provides you a sense of superiority which is usually caused by an emotional need.

[Sirenboobzilla]

Let me start by saying that I'm no expert on bridges and that my knowledge comes from having to manage small and big rig trucks and how they can safely traverse bridges.

I do agree with you that the Key Bridge should've had thicker support colums. Though it seems to be a common design choice for truss bridges like the Key Bridge. I assume somewhere in the engineering of the structures it makes sense. One thing that stands out to me when looking at it is the lack of dolphins and bumbers around the structure. There wasn't anything to deter ships from getting too close especially for the Bridge having such a narrow center span (1,200 feet vs the Dali at 984 feet).

I do know the arch bridge design in that link wouldn't work scaled up to the Key's size. Structure would be far too heavy and likely dangerous with heavy wind. Tall bridges need to have little drag as to not suffer like the Narrows bridge.

[Unnaturalthinking76]

What about that bridge in Minneapolis that collapsed in 2007

[SueShe]

@Unnaturalthinking76 A federal investigation into the 2007 Minneapolis bridge collapse found a "design error" that made the span incapable of supporting the weight that led its supports to give out.

[Jersey2]

“ On November 13, 2008, the NTSB released the findings of its investigation. The primary cause of the collapse was the undersized gusset plates, at 0.5 inches (13 mm) thick. Contributing to that design or construction error was the fact that 2 inches (51 mm) of concrete had been added to the road surface over the years, increasing the static load by 20%. Another factor was the extraordinary weight of construction equipment and material resting on the bridge just above its weakest point at the time of the collapse. That load was estimated at 578,000 pounds (262 tonnes), consisting of sand, water and vehicles. The NTSB determined that corrosion was not a significant contributor, but that inspectors did not routinely check that safety features were functional.[128]”.

It lasted 43 years but they poured 2 inches of additional concrete on it in later years increasing the weight. At the time of the collapse there was also heavy construction equipment. The gusset plates were discovered to be cracking and a problem years earlier but not replaced.

[AviatorTom]

The ship lost power as it was exiting the port of Baltimore, which caused it to go out of control. It struck the main pillar support for the bridge's central span, fully loaded, at 8 mph. That caused the main pillar to buckle and collapse, causing a knock-on effect to the rest of the bridge. With nothing else supporting the main central span, it collapsed, and, causing high stresses and forces in the rest of the bridge, resulting in almost the entire bridge to collapse and fall into the water.

[exitseven]

Ship that hit the bridge was almost 1000 feet long and it was fully loaded. The sheer mass ot the ship made it impossible to stop. Its power suddenly went off and the pilot could not control the ship.
The bridge was never designed to withstand a direct hit by a loaded container ship.

[Dargil]

The bridge was designed as a 3-dimensional trussed frame. It relied on it's geometry to be a holistic structure. When the abutment was struck, it lost one bearing point which initiated the collapse and then the eccentric load of the bridge materials, pulled the rest of it down.

[blueonblack22]

Hear the full video of the collapse. It happens 5:35 in the video. More terrifying than I expected.

It looks like there was a 2-4 delay from when the boat hit the column and the subsequent collapse. This has to do with suspension engineering for bridges and how one weak point can be catastrophic for the entire bridge.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/wEkRjlSgIIQ

[slatyb]

Simple. The barge moved the bridge support away from the bridge it was supporting.

You might consider "How do bridges stay up?" Bridges are designed to withstand movement of wind and water and the vehicles they carry. They aren't designed to withstand being rammed by a 250,000 ton ship.

[Peter_Penetrator]

That bridge construction wasn’t engineered very well. I have seen sixty year old bridges that did not collapse after trained, explosive experts could not bring it down the first time. Example: Broadway Bridge in Little Rock Arkansas.


This bridge failure was a result of “lack of imagination”. I find it difficult to believe that engineers never considered a container ship leaving port impacting its support structures.

[Fireguy17]

It takes 2 supports to hold up a bridge.
You take one away you no longer have a bridge.
There wasn't any strength left to hold it up.
Most newer bridges have an island around the piers, so something like this shouldn't happen to those bridges.
It's sad that people died.
Just think about the mess they have now.
Ships can't get in or out, traffic will be all messed up, same amount of traffic, less ways to cross.

[itsclearlynicholas]

It's crazy and unexpected on the world stage, also imagine how it's probably probably gonna take years and expense to fix that bridge. Years and expense 😲😲😲 that's awful for you American taxpayers. Anyways, awful impacts to trade and of course the poor souls. Anyways

[lorenzomichael]

How did the bridge collapse like that? Well let me tell you, I'm a union iron worker i build Bridges buildings, schools, stadiums, hospitals, arenas. you name it I probably have built it. The Key bridge is a "continuous truss bridge". And if pillar or column collapses or fails. The entire bridge will collapse. That's why.

[itsclearlynicholas]

Was there any mention of the horn being sounded to alert those on the bridge or at least a distress signal of "get out of the way" or run away 🚢⚓🔊🚢😲😲😲😳 did you hear in local news? Im Aussie yet I just wondered if the ship did anything to warn those of the impending on the bridge to emphasis "get out of the way!!!" 👀

[Redstang88]

It wasn’t a barge, it was a loaded container ship. Bridges aren’t designed to withstand impacts like that. ~150,000 tons x 8kts is an IMMENSE amount of force
Think of the bridge like a table. You can put a lot of weight on it as long as it’s stable, but kick one leg out and it’s coming down. Hard

[MrDaveAPSI]

Container ship hit it. We don't know why it did.

Maybe it got loose, after not being tied up properly. Maybe the people on board, were dead, so the ship was just lazyily listing to the left

We don't know. All we know is, the container ship hit it

[RebelinSteel]

You do realise how much mass a fully loaded container ship has. Now imagine that hitting a single support point. Usually though bridges have large outer supports to deflect things like large ships.

[katiesmuff]

Well if you watched the video as I did you see exactly how they collapse like that. By the way that wasn't a barge, it was a transport ship.

[smahala1991]

I thought barge and ship were the same

[NathanDavis]

take out the support... it falls

simple

[OlderAndWiser]

How much does a fully loaded cargo ship weigh? The answer is in inertia.

[Massageman]

In this case, the container ship was reported to be about 95,000 tons which is around 190 MILLION pounds, a heck of a lot of inertia.

[OlderAndWiser]

@Massageman I REST MY CASE!

[Massageman]

Also, the bridge was a truss bridge rather than a full suspension bridge (which, arguably, might have had less damage, or at least might have swung around leaving a travel lane available in the river). But, when a main support is hit with somewhere between 20,000,000 and 45,000,000 foot/pounds (I've heard SO many guesstimates) of torque force, SOMEthing's gotta give - - - - -- and it was unlikely to be the 190,000,000 pound cargo ship (which already has had problems in the past).

[Tamera952]

When a fucking cargo ocean liner crashes into it, how do ya think?

[itsclearlynicholas]

Was the horn sounded at all? They didn't mention or i never heard the news coverage specifically about "horns* before hand, apart from a supposed signal distress radio beforehand. Ah well. Smoke stacks horn honk 📯 🚢⚓ 🔊🔊🔊

[JayBones2469]

Joe Biden ownes a bridge making company. 3 major bridges pess than 100 miles frome this company have mysteriously collapsed or burned down. It's just 10% for the big guy and only 6 people died this time

[Agape93]

Bad construction, erosion, damage, too much weight, etc