Key Bridge Collapses in Baltimore

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Baltimore Key Bridge collapse: vehicles fall into water after being hit by ship​

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“A major bridge in Baltimore in the US state of Maryland has snapped and collapsed after a container ship collided with it early on Tuesday, sending a number of vehicles into the water.

The Baltimore fire department said it was searching for at least seven people believed to be in the water, after reports that a large vessel had crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge. The ship caught fire before reportedly sinking.


A video posted on X appeared to show much of the 2.6km bridge giving way, as multiple fell into the Patapsco River below.

“All lanes closed both directions for incident on I-695 Key Bridge. Traffic is being detoured,” the Maryland Transportation Authority posted on X. “I-695 Key Bridge collapse due to ship strike. Active scene,” it later added.

Calls to 911 had come in at about 1.30am, reporting a vessel travelling outbound from Baltimore that had struck a column on the bridge, causing it to collapse, said Kevin Cartwright, the director of communications for the Baltimore fire department. Several vehicles were on the bridge at the time, including one the size of a tractor-trailer.

“Our focus right now is trying to rescue and recover these people,” Cartwright said. He added that it was too early to know how many people were affected but described the collapse as a “developing mass casualty event”.

Cartwright said it appeared that there were “some cargo or retainers” that appeared to be dangling from the bridge, creating unsafe and unstable conditions that were complicating the rescue operation. “This is a dire emergency,” he said.

Matthew West, a petty officer first class for the coastguard in Baltimore, told the New York Times that the coastguard received a report of an impact at 1.27am ET. West said the Dali, a 948ft (290-metre) Singapore-flagged cargo ship, had hit the bridge, which is part of Interstate 695.

The Dali had left Baltimore at 1am and was heading for the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, according to the maritime data platform MarineTraffic.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...ott-key-bridge-collapses-after-boat-collision

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Ship loses power multiple times before hitting support.


Looks like were going to need to go back and place protective piles around critical supports on all vulnerable and older bridges. The ships these days are absolutely massive.

This also means the port of baltimore will be closed for a few weeks while the debris blocks the navigation channel. I’m sure theyll be able to clear it all due to it being of utmost importance, going to take years to build a new bridge/tunnel though.
 
Both heartbreaking and terrifying. Thinking of all the people who were on the bridge when it happened - a reminder of how quickly life can turn due to things out of your control, something I'm all too familiar with at this point. Sounds like, amazingly, they've gotten two people alive out of the water, on in serious condition but another uninjured, which is incredible.

There's a long time ahead to discuss the safety of these things. I wonder if there's interim procedural methods of lowering the risk of this happening while the long process of building out safety infrastructure is ongoing.
 
Reports are theres up to 20 people in the water. Praying for everyone affected and hopefully they can pull some people alive 🙏🏼.
 
The immediate focus should be on the lives of all those that may have been on the bridge when it collapsed. It is believed that not all have yet been accounted for and sonar is showing several vehicles underwater.

After all rescue and recovery activity is completed, the focus will be redirected to what to do with the collapsed bridge. This affects TWO important transportation routes - the highway RTE 695 for cars and trucks to circumvent busy downtown Baltimore AND the shipping route out of one of the nation's busiest harbors. The effects on transportation in the Cheasepeake Bay area will be massive. I would think the first order of action will be clearing the bridge debris at the channel path to allow shipping to resume once again as soon as possible. Replacing the bridge will be a much longer task that will take years.
 
Obviously this is an incredible tragedy. It's a small silver lining that happened at 1:30am instead of 8am. I'm glad some survivors were pulled from the water and I hope the recovery efforts are able to give the families of those who didn't make it closure.

Watching the footage of the collapse is surreal. I'm (clearly) no engineer, but I never would have expected so much of the deck to collapse from a single strike. If any good comes of this, I hope it's that the country takes a serious look at the quality of our infrastructure to try and prevent this from happening again.
 
Lrfox said:
Obviously this is an incredible tragedy. It's a small silver lining that happened at 1:30am instead of 8am. I'm glad some survivors were pulled from the water and I hope the recovery efforts are able to give the families of those who didn't make it closure.

Watching the footage of the collapse is surreal. I'm (clearly) no engineer, but I never would have expected so much of the deck to collapse from a single strike. If any good comes of this, I hope it's that the country takes a serious look at the quality of our infrastructure to try and prevent this from happening again.
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They are designed to hold the load of the bridge which pushes down, as the original poster noted you'd want something designed to protect from impacts to the side. If you look at the photo below, you've probably seen something that looks like this. However you'd need something a lot bigger to protect from a container ship.

You can also see that there's primarily just two main supports for the bridge, if you put a 165,000 ton ship against that there's not really anything it can do to hold up the structure. It's probably the worst possible place the ship could have impacted.

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I listened to the press conference this morning and apparently the ship declared an emergency and thats how they were able to stop traffic on the bridge, making the tragedy much less deadly than it otherwise would have. You can see in the longer video that theres lots of cars going across the bridge and then you dont see anymore for a little bit and then the ship hits the bridge. I was curious how this was accomplished so I looked on google maps and my guess is they just wrote emergency dont use bridge on the electronic signage. That would be my guess. Thank god for that!

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Pardon my engineering ignorance...

But if a bridge is located over a major shipping route, shouldn't there be safeguards be in place to ensure that a container strike wouldn't collapse the whole bridge?
 
MrDee12345 said:
Pardon my engineering ignorance...

But if a bridge is located over a major shipping route, shouldn't there be safeguards be in place to ensure that a container strike wouldn't collapse the whole bridge?
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There typically are protections for newer bridges - I've read this particular bridge in this particular area did not meet the criteria for a retrofit (hindsight is 20/20).

To your other point:

The whole truss fell because this is a continuous bridge. This means that the 3 span unit behaves as as one. If one span fails, the maximum dead loads redistributes.
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https://x.com/MattDursh/status/1772605870599238112?s=20
 
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