Experts discuss Baltimore bridge collapse investigation, early findings 

Anybody thinking that the condition of the bridge would allow it to withstand the force of a 900-ft container ship is an idiot. Even if it was an 11 out of 10 condition it would fold. Y'all have no idea the amount of energy behind that mass. Combined with the fact that it's a bridge... Not a damn safety net. It was not designed to take that impact

The reporter is questioning the state of the bridge maintenance. Looking at the mass of the ship it would not matter whether the bridge was in excellent condition. This is a ship problem, not a bridge problem.

The kinetic energy of a fully loaded 900ft container ship traveling at 8knots, is around 2.5 times the kinetic energy of an Airbus a320 flying at cruising speed. That’s a lot of energy!

Listen to structural engineers not internet trolls and armchair quarterbacks.

As terrible as this is, it could have been SO much worse if it had happened at 9am....

Kudos to everyone for sending out Mayday notice to warn people to not drive onto the bridge and get everyone possible off the bridge. This could have been much, much worse.

What it sounds like to me is this ship's crew did everything they could, they just lost critical systems at the worst possible time.

That captain really did exhaust massive effort to try and stop that ship. Within that 60 second time-frame, at that speed....and still managed to recycle ship power twice, full power reversed, and dropped early anchor....because his anchor was dragged for a while before hitting the bridge. Hats off to that captain for at least trying to prevent this from happening.

Possibly other port cities should look at having all large ships like this be escorted in and out of port with tug boats pushing the ships past these fragile bridges. It is almost impossible to design bridges with dolphins or similar options to actually stop a ship of this size. Best thing is it happened at 1:30 AM instead of right after lunch.

😢 Very sad. My thoughts and prayers are with you all at this horrendous time.

Guys. There is no way a piling will withstand a 100,000 ton ship at ~12 kts. It will either be destroyed or yanked off of its foundations. Whether the "health index" is 0 or 100. Comon man.

Not well reported is that the bridge was closed as soon as the mayday went out which is why there were so few vehicles on the bridge vs the traffic you can see at the beginning of the video.

People don't see the amount of wieght this ship is carreing. Each container that is loaded can wiegh up to 50,000 lbs. Muliply that be 100 or more plus the wieght of the ship. At 8 nots, which is about 5 mph. There is no stopping this ship in less than 5 thousand ft.

If you lost power you don't have steering... The prop forces water over the rudder.

Why are they talking about the condition of the bridge? It could have been brand new, excellent condition l, and it would have collapsed the same way. Bridges aren’t designed to withstand an impact from a 150,000 ton cargo ship.

Barring some unimaginably stupid act of sheer harbor pilot incompetence (which seems highly unlikely), the cargo ship likely lost propulsion and steering capability shortly before the collision, and it had no way to stop nor control its forward momentum in time. Captains and harbor pilots know their line of work very well and don't usually steer or guide their ships into stationary objects they could crash into.

This is a massive undertaking for rescue and safety missions to clean up this disaster. All first responders are doing an excellent job with this.

Word is that they did drop anchor & u can see the vessel swinging shifting in the water. Possibly the smoke was the indicator when the ship regained power against the anchor. IMO they did what they could given mechanical failure & size of the ship. The power seems to only come back partially.

That bridge collapsed like a piece of paper. Life is so delicate 😞

It's good they notified transportation but I feel bad for the construction crew. I think a year ago there was another freak accident on the same highway where a car crashed on top of 6 construction workers.

This reminds me of the ship that lost power in New Orleans in 1996 and took out half the Riverwalk Mall. Fortunately that one had no loss of life. This is sad😢

There is much gnashing of teeth in the Board of Directors room of some insurance company.

The ship's 95k tons moving at 8.5 knots. Even at 3 knots, hitting the bridge support would drop the bridge. Tragic.

Plane crashes on house, reporter asks... what was the state of the house maintenance, how did the house just crumle in 1 second,,,,

You can be a very well trained ship pilot but if your ship loses power and the current takes over and your anchors don't work you will have no control over the ship.

The lawyer was right about the impact of these to the life lost ,injuries, business in the city and the consumers.Where is the black box.

Im an Ironworker. My observation is that in addition to the caisson strike the upper part of the bow made direct contact with the actual bridge structure. Generally speaking, if it was a brand new bridge it would have collapsed, particularly given the mass of that fully loaded vessel and the momentum of the same. I pray for those workers and those in transit. Just a terrible dam thing

My heart goes out to all who are harmed and hurt by this terrible tragedy ❤

Oh this is going to be expensive!

I just watched a 4+ minute video of the impact and I saw no vehicles on the bridge. There was an 18 wheeler and another truck like a bread truck that finished crossing just before it hit but no visible headlights anywhere else going in either direction. So lets pray that was the case

It sounds like the ship is more important than the people still lost, I’m in Baltimore and nobody knows what’s going on…families are waiting around to hear from family members…this is tragic…Baltimore City needs your prayers more now than ever…and we’ve always needed them…God Bless I pray for you

This could just be incredibly bad luck. If there's any scandal here, it's be a Boeing- type deal, where the ship was built or maintained cheaply, which resulted in a critical failure, but it doesn't seem like anyone else made a mistake here.

You can SEE the deployed anchor in the video. No bridge could have handled that impact, even new.

How sad, this happened at south oadre island a couple of years, ship hit bridge and couple of cars went down.

This is a contemporary replay of the Tampa Bay Bridge disaster. That one was caused by the ship going off course in fog. This one is loss of power. But the rest is the same.

Port anchor was dropped .depending on the tide if the water was moving in the same direction as the ship then without power it doesn't matter if the rudder is functional or not..water has to be moving for a rudder to work. You can see when the ship last power also..lights went out

The main reason for the collision is the blackout. Why they had a blackout is hard to tell but one interesting question is how many auxiliary engines where they running at the time. You would normally run at least two in restricted waters just in case one breaks down. The reason why the lights came on fairly fast is because the emergency generator started automatically. I suspect that the black smoke that we see comes from the auxiliary engines they are trying to restart. They would have had no time to start the main engine. You can forget about going astern with the vessel was doing even though it could explain the turning to starboard. If they got the engine back at the time it would be logical to give full ahead and try to steer under the bridge. Here we see Murphy’s law displayed. I presume that in the future ships of certain size will have to have escort tugs until they are out in open waters.

The portside anchor was dropped but probably dragged a bit before setting into the bottom

Bridge not designed to be hit by great big ship. Weak bridge issue covers every bridge every built.

Without power, there is usually no steerage way. A ship like this needs to do 7-8 knots to have steerage. If the ship lost power, the rudders were not going to be effective, and when a ship is slowing, it is losing steerage.

C'mon, the cause of this is the ship lossing power where it did and destroying the piers that support the suspension part of the bridge. Some in the USA are questioning the viability of the bridge that has been there for 50 years, any bridge of its type would come down from such a collision. Bridge construction costs would be prohibitive if they were required to survive even unthinkable circumstance.

A bride with 100% passing grade is still not designed to withstand this type, location and magnitude of impact. And it would not.

The forces involved in this impact were beyond anything a bridge could withstand. Its condition was irrelevant. This is a horrible tragedy, but the crew and workers acted heroically and probably saved many lives. Thank god it wasnt during rush hour.

Our hearts and minds are with American friends! It is a sad day for the USA! I am one of millions of Canadians wishing the best recovery for our friends in the south of the border!

As a marine engineer my thoughts on this accident.... A ship of this size can have 3k or more kilowatt electric motor for bow Thruster... Even load sharing did not work properly it seems at high load. . when power restored it seems bow Thruster might be operated again in panic so black out two happened . .. Usually ship of this size there is a safety circuit system bow Thruster will work only if there is enough reserve power available on dg .. Some clever guy or someone override system bypassed this safety ... Investigation is goin on... In addition steering gear hydraulic system couldn't able to restart soon after blackout might make the rudder stuck in a position steering to starboard side..series of all events on the engine room and bridge will be recorded in ship vdr and in ecr printer logs... The top 4 will be in trouble especially captain & ce since this happened in the USA and the whole world knowing this... They won't be able to leave the USA soon ...undergoing many investigations further. ..🙏 seriously unlucky

Why did the bridge not have "dolphins" around the supporting piers? "Dolphins" are massive concrete or stone barricades around the piers that would deflect an errant ship. The Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Tampa, Florida was hit and collapsed in 1980. When rebuilt, the bridge now has "dolphins" around the piers.

Sucks knowing people may have survived the fall into the water..but not able to get out of their cars due to the water pressure

Hi Baltimore. I used to live in Maryland. My heart goes out to those who lost family and friends on this bridge. Hugs and prayers.

It broke like the bridge I made in shop class when we put the weight on it.

1:22 "...we see a lot of loss of propulsions here in New York harbor..."

I'm hearing it was, in fact, being towed by tugs before it reached the bridge.

We are talking about a bridge and channel system built in the late 1970's when container ships carried between 770 to 2950 containers. That means the total dimensions of the ships were much smaller as was the total mass. The bridge s' latest safety score was a 6 out of 9. One thing I noticed was that the channel did not have any side guard abutments when approaching the bridge in the channel, at least not any comparative to the size of todays' ships.. I was on that bridge once in 1998 returning to Baltimore from New York and I remember it being massive. There will be a lot of finger pointing and a lot of 'should haves' tossed around in the coming days. Only time will tell what went wrong and what could have been done different if anything. In the meantime our thoughts and prayers go out to the families of the missing.

so, watching as of 5.30 the VDR comes into play, it will be weeks/maybe months before we get to the bottom of what actually happend to the ship, going through that whole VDR recording isnt a 5 minute job

We can't catch a break in 2024......stay safe Baltimore

Prayers to the people who perished. Hope they find them soon. That bridge fell perfect just like it was designed to do. Broke off on both approaches and lost the whole bridge deck. I worked on alotta bridges here in Minnesota. We lost 13 people on I 35w bridge fell in the Mississippi River back in I think 07.

All is speculation till the chief engineer onboard the ship speaks. But I agree with what is clear on the surface. The ship did what they could to stop, anchor dropped, power restored and full back down, but it takes a long distance to stop a ship of this size even at such a slow speed. I think the focus is going to shift from the ship to the bridge structure failure.

"Experts" making guesses. Difference of opinion here.

Unbelievable. The people on the ship endured several minutes of knowing what's about to happen, but the folks on the bridge never saw it coming.

My prayers for all involved in this tragic event. May GOD Bless All.

You can see the anchor dropped and being dragged can’t stop that weight with just an anchor. Look at the video the ship is steaming out last night & the power goes out.the ship is moving straight when power comes on the caption throws it in full shutdown and the ship turns to the right. Black smoke from the stacks engine issues

They did drop Anchor

Measuring in football fields again unironically lol

Very historic. So sad 🙏

man that has unlocked a new fear for me, and i go through some bridges that are also around a lot of these big ships off the port near long beach

In the future it should be required that tug boats escort / guide all large vessels under crucial bridges . These ships do not have steerage under a certain speed.

TUG BOATS would have prevented this. Why don't they mandate escort Tugs until ships are clear of bridges????

I can see all bridge bases being re-inforced with a larger sub-slab to direct large ships away from the support, in all other major ship ports.

Praying 🙏 for all those unaccounted for

How many power checks does a boat that size have to do before leaving port?

How vital is this bridge to Baltimore?

The collision energy transferred to the bridge was roughly equivalent to 80 kg TNT concentrated explosion (assuming 40.000 tonnes ship and 8 knots speed)

while i believe the NTSB will do a through investigation into what happened, considering in the video that shows the ship losing power twice before the ship crashed into the bridge, the first thing the NTSB will most likely look at, is the maintenance records of the ship. you don't lose power twice before running into a bridge with a well maintained vessel. the crew appears to have been doing whatever was within their power to prevent disaster, radioing a mayday call, and getting traffic off the bridge was one of professionalism. another was the weighing anchor. the only thing the crew could've done was get people of the bridge and putting out a mayday call. the biggest problem is not rather or not the bridge would withstand it, its like what the former head of the NTSB said, its impossible to build a bridge that can withstand such forces. however i see what CBS is trying to do, and that is put the blame on americas aging infrastructure. nothing can be done to prevent this disaster, the only thing you an do is make sure the boats have enough ability to stop before hitting the bridge piers. putting reefs up before the bridge piers is gonna be key, and among other ways to put artificial stops so the ship doesn't hit. the bridge had those in place, but not enough to save the bridge. ultimately it comes down to getting the bridge rebuilt now, taller, and safer with greater pier protection in mind.

4 hours ago Sal reported they dropped their anchor. "What is going on with Shipping"

Ok so all there experience & many miles of travel this happens. I won’t make any assumptions but it’s just not surprising in this world anymore Planes,Trains & Automoboats !

very informative

Was thankfull it wasn't rush hour sorry for your loss families and friends.

As a Harbour Pilot myself, and having had Piloted this same ship in the past, if there was no propulsion creating sufficient water flow over the rudder, the Pilot would have had very limited ability to steer this vessel. As a river port/harbour, any water flow/current that was flowing out with the ship, would've reduced the flow over the rudder and further reduce the ability to steer. Given the size and draft of this ship, in a confined channel like this, there is also shallow water and bank effect which would've had added more difficulty to an impossible situation. If the vessel had lost rudder control as well as propulsion, even with only light winds blowing onto the port side of the ship and causing it to drift towards the bridge support, there was nothing that could be done by the Pilot. All he could do was to try and reduce the impact, which given the circumstances was an impossible task. The only way to have prevented this happening would've been to have had a tug or tugs escorting it until clear of the bridge. My thoughts go out to the Pilot, as he/she would've done their best to save it, then waiting for the inevitable, knowing how heavy and sad the consequences would be. Especially knowing there were people on the bridge. Sad day for all.

Drop anchor? first you need to muster the deck crew at the anchors. I doubt they were out there.

Carnival Cruises had the bridge squarely on target, but the Singapore boat got there first! Sorry you missed it, Carnival. Better planning next time.

wasn't just any bridge... Amajor bridge that collapsed in Baltimore after getting hit by a ship is named for Francis Scott Key, who turned a wartime experience in the early 19th century into the poem that became the national anthem of the United States. Key was a prominent attorney in the region during the first half of the 19th century. In September 1814, two years after the War of 1812 had started between the United States and the British, he was on a ship to negotiate an American prisoner's release and witnessed a 25-hour British bombardment of Fort McHenry.

Where were tug boats ?

Sad

CBS should get their terms right. This ship would have a Master or Captain. In addition it may have also had a Pilot onboard for the departure phase of the vessel out until the open sea. The Pilot would probably also be qualified to Master Mariner status and would have local knowledge of the estuary waters and how to safely navigate such a ship through the channel. He would advise the Master of the ship as they proceeded out and would leave the ship once out at sea. I also wonder why there is no mention here of the vessels bow thrusters which would have been a critical component of the vessels ability to maintain course at low speed.

Its very noticiable that the electric power line pylons have very substantial protectors around their bases, the starlings. But round the bases of the bridge piers nada, nothing to deflect anything, not even a rowboat before they hit the pier..

Ship is at fault but dang, that bridge looks flimsy..like it should have been built better!! Shouldn’t have sustained that much damage down the line from the impact.

The brain rot in these comments is staggering

Letting go the anchors minute before crash would do nothing but stretch out the chain.

The mere fact that the cargo ship stayed in tact and the bridge crumbled should be an indication of the force the cargo ship was coming with.

Everyone wants to blame someone, but something like this usually only happens after multiple failures from multiple parties

I'd like to know why the lights were coming on an off. That should not be happening.

The second guy in the ‘Boeing Center for Aviation & Aerospace Safety’ (Really???) Was totally wrong on one thing. A bridge can be made to survive such impacts. They’d need to build an island around the bridge supports so the ship hits that first. It’s done on all new bridges.

Never mind the length, it's the mass.

Meanwhile Crimea bridge sustained drone / missile attacks, and still in good condition. USA should asks Russia for some architects. 🤣

Why are the tall power poles protected by concrete, but the pillars of the bridge obviously not?

@10:22 lol…that bridge couldn’t take any hit like that from a big ship. Even a ferry ⛴️ could have that. The bridge wasn’t designed for that type of impact

A tragedy but could have been worse if it happened during rush hour, I hope everyone is accounted for

That was one of those Bidenomics bridges!

Shipping is under unregulated, this episode will help regulate america into a stand still economy

This does not tell me anything. The reporter has no clue of engineering. Why loss of propulsion? Problems with equipment, poor maintainability procedures; bogus spare parts, unqualified technicians; lack of periodic quality audits, malfunction analysis reports, failed parts, off the shelf spare parts; faulty drawings, etc. User error? What about outside interference with intent to cause harm? Why move this container late at night? Bring in the engineers trained in Quality, and Reliability and Maintainability.

It was an awesome sight to see the Midway fully loaded with all kinds of aircraft riding the rolling waves while waiting for a typhoon to pass right outside Subic Bay in 1984. I was aboard the USS cape Cod (AD 43) also waiting for the typhoon to calm down.