Mayday
I was accidentally awake in the middle of the night, as I often am, so I saw that clip of the bridge disintegrating soon after it happened. It grabbed my attention rather. I live in a port city and see container ships chugging in and out all the time. Seattle is also a very bridge-having city, because of being so up and down, so seeing a massive bridge go from normal to in the water in pieces in a matter of seconds is a shocker.
The DALI container ship that struck Baltimore’s Key Bridge dropped its anchor prior to impact as part of its emergency procedures after losing propulsion, the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) said in a statement Tuesday.
It apparently happened insanely fast.
Here’s a timeline of how the incident unfolded. All times are ET:
- 1:24 a.m.: The DALI container ship’s lights flicker as it travels down Patapsco River, according to video from the scene.
- 1:26 a.m.: The ship begins to change course toward the Key Bridge’s pillar, CNN analysis shows.
- 1:26 to 1:27 a.m.: The ships lights continue to flicker on and off, video of the ship shows.
- 1:27 a.m.: The ship hits the Key Bridge, quickly causing it to collapse.
Three minutes.
An emergency call from the container ship gave officials time to begin closing the Francis Scott Key Bridge to vehicle traffic before the ship slammed into it, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said on Tuesday.
“I’m thankful for the folks, once the warning came up and once notification came up that there was a mayday, who literally by being able to stop cars from coming over the bridge — these people are heroes. They saved lives last night,” Moore said.
I guess Seattle is fortunate in having no bridges for container ships to go under.
More details about the bridge and why it collapsed here. Apparently the bridge had protective devices of some sort for the columns, but they were designed to protect against ships traveling straight toward the column, not at an angle.
That bridge is a major route for trucks traveling along the east coast, as they cannot use either of the tunnels. One sliver lining is that it happened early in the morning, so there wasn’t much traffic. But on the other hand, there was a construction crew of eight doing repairs; two have been rescued.
Ugh; I didn’t know that about the construction crew.
Man, just watched one of the longer videos, just seeing that ship sort of creep in and rooting on the lorry drivers (even though I know they’re fine) as it comes full-on…
Fuck man, that’s just, I don’t even…
Singapore registration? Since international standards of seaworthiness were established, the Invisible Hand has ensured that most shipping is registered in places like Liberia and Panama, where a spot of floating rust will be accepted as a safe ship.