The States: Maybe A National Divorce Is A Good Idea After All

[French Rage]

I understand the thought here, but the physics just don't work.

concrete piers would not stop that. It would need to be dozens of feet wide (if not north of 100) and long. It would turn anything smaller into sand..

a dolphin is like the plastic cover over your bumper. It's meant for like 1/4-mph rubs. There is nothing you could put in that harbor that's going to slow a car down from Mach 4 to something survivable. That's the order of magnitude we're leaking about here.

Might it still have deflected it slightly enough if it was placed better? (I have no actual idea, just curious.) It doesn't necessarily have to stop it completely, just angle it or take a bit of the edge off?

[St. Clown]

I'm not a mechanical engineer but I read that this ship weighed around 300 million pounds when it struck the pier, and it struck it absolutely dead on. Ain't nothin' gon' stop that.


One of the other "now what" issues I didn't see here is that this was one of two HAZMAT pathways through/around Baltimore. Now all of that traffic (and I have no idea what the volume is) will be diverted to the 695 beltway, which already has pretty grueling traffic.


I don't know how this compares to I35, but this is a truly big deal for getting around and through Baltimore.

The I-35W bridge collapse was a drop in the bucket compared to the impact of the bridge collapsing. I-35W doesn’t have nearly the economic impact as the MSP area isn’t nearly as big as the Baltimore area. We could also easily reroute traffic and add a single lane to each direction of traffic on those routes to mitigate the short-term traffic issues.

That said, Minneapolis suffered a greater human loss at 13 people as it was rush hour traffic. We were very lucky isn’t wasn’t more people dead. A number of people were stuck in their cars, injured, and a few unscathed.

[bronconick]

So, what you're saying is no one did the math on what would happen if one of those ships hit that bridge? I find that hard to believe.

How much math do you need for "It's going to crush it because the ships are a thousand times bigger than 50 years ago?"

[St. Clown]

Yep. I would say the failure here is entirely on Risk Management. We decided it was ok to go to this global marketplace and to build these huge ****ing cargo ships to get goods around. Great. But, apparently no one ever thought about what would happen when these huge cargo ships would happen to RAM into a bridge like this one.

And if they did, then they knew this was going to be the result. And if they knew this was going to be the result, they also knew what would happen if they shutdown this harbor for this long, and what it would do to the economy of Baltimore, and frankly the entire United States.

I have no doubt they will figure out alternatives, but shutting down that port is a major freaking blow, and I highly doubt was properly planned for ahead of time. Yet, that risk existed as soon as they started bringing in those huge ships.

I wonder if we will see a change to how those ships are routed and handled in the future in that port once that bridge is rebuilt. Which is going to take a freaking long time.

Sam Seaborn knew.

[MichVandal]

They probably did...they probably also did the math on the chances something like this would happen and it is very low.

Even so, with the kind of impact we see, many times the decision is to do some prevention or mitigation measures.

[Swansong]

I'm not a mechanical engineer but I read that this ship weighed around 300 million pounds when it struck the pier, and it struck it absolutely dead on. Ain't nothin' gon' stop that.


One of the other "now what" issues I didn't see here is that this was one of two HAZMAT pathways through/around Baltimore. Now all of that traffic (and I have no idea what the volume is) will be diverted to the 695 beltway, which already has pretty grueling traffic.


I don't know how this compares to I35, but this is a truly big deal for getting around and through Baltimore.

[ScoobyDoo]

They probably did...they probably also did the math on the chances something like this would happen and it is very low.

I agree. But what is the threshold for acceptable risk on that port, and that bridge? The threshold has to be very low.

[Handyman]

So, what you're saying is no one did the math on what would happen if one of those ships hit that bridge? I find that hard to believe.

They probably did...they probably also did the math on the chances something like this would happen and it is very low.

[MichVandal]

No one ever expected one of these ships to get knocked sideways and wedged into a canal either **shrugs**.

Reality is that none of this was considered really until it actually happens. Pre-planning is nice and all, but the innovation has come so quick, the world is forced to be reactive instead of proactive. We're at a point where what we have now will be obsolete in 20-30 years. You can't plan to accommodate constantly moving goalposts.

Some was done. The protection around the power pole is pretty large, and there was one dolphin installed. But it was far enough away that the ship fit neatly behind it.

To say “meh, nothing could have been done”- yea not so much. Could have lessened the impact on shipping- deflect it enough to totally damage the bride but keep the shipping lane open.

[MichVandal]

I understand the thought here, but the physics just don't work.

concrete piers would not stop that. It would need to be dozens of feet wide (if not north of 100) and long. It would turn anything smaller into sand..

a dolphin is like the plastic cover over your bumper. It's meant for like 1/4-mph rubs. There is nothing you could put in that harbor that's going to slow a car down from Mach 4 to something survivable. That's the order of magnitude we're leaking about here.

Doesn’t have to stop it, but it can deflect it and lessen the damage. It certainly would have slowed it.

[ScoobyDoo]

No one ever expected one of these ships to get knocked sideways and wedged into a canal either **shrugs**.

Reality is that none of this was considered really until it actually happens. Pre-planning is nice and all, but the innovation has come so quick, the world is forced to be reactive instead of proactive. We're at a point where what we have now will be obsolete in 20-30 years. You can't plan to accommodate constantly moving goalposts.

So, what you're saying is no one did the math on what would happen if one of those ships hit that bridge? I find that hard to believe.

[RaceBoarder]

No one ever expected one of these ships to get knocked sideways and wedged into a canal either **shrugs**.

Reality is that none of this was considered really until it actually happens. Pre-planning is nice and all, but the innovation has come so quick, the world is forced to be reactive instead of proactive. We're at a point where what we have now will be obsolete in 20-30 years. You can't plan to accommodate constantly moving goalposts.

[ScoobyDoo]

The energy that ship had if it were at 5 mph was like your car traveling at the speed of sound. At 10 mph it would be 3200 mph

Yep. I would say the failure here is entirely on Risk Management. We decided it was ok to go to this global marketplace and to build these huge ****ing cargo ships to get goods around. Great. But, apparently no one ever thought about what would happen when these huge cargo ships would happen to RAM into a bridge like this one.

And if they did, then they knew this was going to be the result. And if they knew this was going to be the result, they also knew what would happen if they shutdown this harbor for this long, and what it would do to the economy of Baltimore, and frankly the entire United States.

I have no doubt they will figure out alternatives, but shutting down that port is a major freaking blow, and I highly doubt was properly planned for ahead of time. Yet, that risk existed as soon as they started bringing in those huge ships.

I wonder if we will see a change to how those ships are routed and handled in the future in that port once that bridge is rebuilt. Which is going to take a freaking long time.

[dxmnkd316]

From the construction photo that MDOT posted just three days ago, that's how it was designed.

it was also designed to withstand the strikes of the day, which happened to be like a tenth the size of the boats in that harbor today.

[dxmnkd316]

I think itâ??s reasonable to ask about the dolphin configuration, too. It missed the one pretty cleanly, and the ship easily fit behind it. Could there be a configuration that can lessen the odds of a direct hit?

I understand the thought here, but the physics just don't work.

concrete piers would not stop that. It would need to be dozens of feet wide (if not north of 100) and long. It would turn anything smaller into sand..

a dolphin is like the plastic cover over your bumper. It's meant for like 1/4-mph rubs. There is nothing you could put in that harbor that's going to slow a car down from Mach 4 to something survivable. That's the order of magnitude we're leaking about here.