Maryland bridge collapse Special Report: Rescue operations underway 

Thank goodness it wasnt rush hour.

The bridge was completed in 1977. That's at least 45 years of wear and tear in a river bed, where sand shifts all the time and wears concrete away. Cargo ships the size of today's ships didn't exist then. I am sorry for the people that got caught up in this. To survivors and all families involved. God speed. Keep safe.

I’m so sorry this looks horrific, sending love from the UK to you all, stay strong cousins 🇬🇧❤️🇺🇸

"How can one ship take out the whole bridge" Do you know how heavy the average cargo ship, loaded with thousands of containers, is. Hundreds of thousands of tons of steel will take down most bridges.

It's a sad day in my beloved State of Maryland. 😢

Imagine not knowing that your loved one was driving across that bridge or that they were even out driving last night. 😢

This reminds me of when the 35W bridge fell in Minneapolis. Thank goodness this bridge wasn’t full of rush hour traffic. Although, any number of casualties is too many. 😢❤

I use to drive the bridge all the time. The idea that one ship could do this is insane.

My main fear when driving over a bridge 😮

My prayer goes to everyone in the ship as well as the people who were on the bridge. May God protect them and keep them safe 🙏 ❤️

Props to the Emergency Response Teams. That scene is cold and dangerous AF. Current, undertow and temperature are just the obvious. Props to the Young Mayor being an example of genuine compassion and caring. Be that good brother.

Head of Transport says local pilots used on ships getting them in and out of port. Fire Brigade says two rescued so far. One unhurt. One in serious condition at a trauma centre. Prayers for more survivors.

I'm praying for the paramedics , fire department ,and victims.

1980 skyway bridge is calling. You had 44 years to see the pylon wasn't protected. Amazing

This is almost exactly what happened to the Sunshine Skyway (old) bridge back in 1980. A ship hit a pylon. The new Sunshine Skyway has great big circular bumpers that protect the new bridge. When I say new, we're still talking about the 80's.

Bridge was built back in the 1970s. Back then ships were smaller, the threat to Us infrastructure was minimal. So yes, the bridge would have remained standing if a ship from 1960s had crashed into it. That container shop seems to be loaded thus a heavy massive mass hit a pylon built in the 1970s.

I hope they find everyone who was on the bridge and on the cargo ship, and my prayers for those who survived the collapse and for the families of those who didn't. Wow, what a sad and terrible tragedy!

she needs to learn to listen and stop interfering with his reporting 🤦🏽‍♀️that was frustrating

Prayers for the bridge workers, drivers on the bridge at the time, the first responders, and all family & loved ones involved. 🙏

Prayers for everyone; family, responders and medical workers.

"how could something with tens of thousands of tons of energy behind it, do so much damage to the post of a bridge anchored in sand?" these people CANT be this dim.

Reminds me the bridge in Italy that collapsed and a van or a truck was hanging on the edge and the person managed to get out. But other lives were taken RIP 🥀 But this is awful my thoughts from England 🌹

Crazy. I use to take that Bridge to work on DCA1 Sparrow Points Amazon. Prayers to anyone impacted by this horrific and scary incident

This isn’t a search and rescue, you’ll be searching for bodies, prays go out to anyone that was on that bridge when that happened.

A fully loaded cargo ship can weigh up to 200,000 tons - imagine 200,000 SUV's hitting the bridge at one precise point - that will take out anything.

Baltimore drivers be ready gridlock traffic

Francis Scott Key wrote The Star Spangled Banner- I know you know but a lot of these young kids don't know.

🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼for any people on that bridge

They taking about they don’t know if the ship sunk when it right there in our face. 🤦‍♂️

This probably over 200 ton ship fully loaded, that's over 440 Million pounds with forward momentum of likely 10mph for a low end, that's over 200 Million lbs of force. Aint no bridge in the world that is stopping that kind of power.

Please Pray 🙏🏻 for everyone impacted by this tragedy

Prayers go out from California. We can only hope no casualties are involved 🙏

"How was this bridge so vulnerable to being taken out by a single cargo ship" -- Well, sonny -- it's physics. We have the worst media in history.

Wow! That bridge folded like a bunch of twigs!

Massive lawsuit incoming

Wow, so freaky..prayers from Australia 🇦🇺

My full condolences to the victim family and friends involved.🙏. This is absolutely heartbreaking,

These ships have trippled in size in the last decade.

The smoke was probably from the pilot reversing and gunning the engines, those things have a LOT of momentum, and the final position of the container ship is telling - I am no expert though, just watched a lot of maritime activity at the Port of Cleveland and on the Cuyahoga River.

"It's time to work for America" " It's time to work for American people "!!!!!!!

I'm praying for the family and hopefully there are rescues.

I pray that no one went into the cold water...😢 everyone is going to be safe

Just tragic, I'm sending prayers to everyone in Baltimore that suffered a loss, may God be with you and your families through these trying and difficult times. God Bless

Either intentionally done or gross incompetence. This bridge was almost 50 years old. Never been struck like that. Dozens of ships come and go every day out of Baltimore’s harbor. It’s not lack of maintenance as they’re always working on that bridge as well. This is unbelievable.

FUN FACT: Francis Scott Key was the author of the American National Anthem. He witnessed the "Bombs Bursting in Air" at Fort McHenry in 1814 during the War of 1812.

Just speculating, but the smoke is probably evidence of a full astern command to the engine room resulting in heavy diesel exhaust.

I saw a tractor trailer on that bridge going down

Hope that everyone will be rescued.

this is so heart breaking God bless the people that were involved in this

Going further back in the video: You can see the ship has a momentary loss of power about a minute before hitting the pylon. The ship drops anchor and tries to back down, but there's not enough time to come to a stop. When backing down on a ship like that, you lose the ability steer, which looks like it cuases the ship to drift into the pylon.

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 Captain Hindsight onboard, and 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.

The same thing happen to the skyway bridge may 9 1980

Geez is our infrastructure trash?! That tore down the whole bridge easily! Yikes! This is just crazy!!

Bridge 47 years old and The Waters checked in at 47 Degrees

The ship was most likely being piloted by the harbor pilot. It went dark because it lost power, and the power restored just before impact, and the black smoke bellowing was due to engine malfunction. The pilot probably was trying to recorrect course when power went out, which caused the ship to veer off it's initial course, and slam into the pylon.

This bride came down like the World Trade Center, it was demolition

I can see right now people are not understanding it is a huge cargo ship that is overloaded every time😮

The captain is ALWAYS responsible for the ship, the Pilot advices the captain.

YOU CAN BET YOUR BOTTOM DOLLAR THAT HOMELAND WILL GO THROUGH EVERY SINGLE CONTAINER ON THAT SHIP, MUST HAVE BEEN A TERRIFYING EXPERIENCE FOR THOSE ON THE BRIDGE

An infrastructure bill with checking all bridges in the country is needed..this is a shocking total collapse.

Jesus! 😭 this was hard to hear this morning, and even harder to watch. I’m praying for the love ones lost and those grieving

Love and prayers from Canada ❤

Bridge engineer here! I can see that this bridge had some structural flaws. According to bridge standards, in navigable waterways where vessel collision is possible, structures shall be designed to resist the design vessel collision forces and evaluated to meet a minimum level of safety. At first glance, it appears that this bridge is not robust enough to resist these collision forces and lack some degrees of hyperstaticity. A hyperstatic structure, in view of its redundant degree of constraint, will undergo deformations also of a mechanical nature and thus internal stresses different from zero that provide some robustness to the structure. Therefore, structures with hyperstaticity can offer advantages such as better resistance to lateral loads and improved structural efficiency.

Omg!! Praying for all!!

We're not spending money on infrastructure and sending trillions to other countries.😢

My prayer for everyone in the bridge 🌉 and the cargo ship. God bless America 🇺🇸

THAT is what I'm thinking is HOW isn't there better protection of bridges around these kind of ports? There is a youtube channel "What's going on with shipping' that does an analysis of the video where the ship looses power; and all the attempts that ship would be making to prevent the bridge strike. This harbor is FULL of cameras 24/7 and this will definitely help with the investigation. BUT HOW are these bridges not better protected from these huge ships?

Im absolutely inlove with architecture and bridges and i am a huge fan of bridge disaster stories. I cant wait for unbiased reporting on the investigation.

How could the entire bridge go down with only one pylon hit?

Prayers from Canada 🇨🇦

A Singapore ship? Interesting!

I'm having Tampa Sunshine Skyway bridge flashbacks. I wonder why they didn't retrofit the bridge supports with rocks or something to prevent this. Our infrastructure is falling apart but hey, let's send another $100 billion to Ukraine.

Seems like there would be dozens of rescue boats i dont see many at all in video.s.

If that boat was smoking black smoke just before it hit the bridge. That was intentional, they were picking up speed.

Its was the slowest bridge crash ever… literally a huge cargo ship aimed and slowly approached it and never changed direction. Odd.

God bless all the first responders 🙏🏼and the deceased 😢

I'm surprised they don't have some kind of traffic camera on each end of the bridge that they can go back through the footage to determine how many cars were on the bridge at that time and work backward from there.

This is looking very suspicious 😮 Hope it wasn't a terrorist attack. Praying for the survivors to pull through this tragic incident. God bless America 🇺🇸

the bridge was renamed in 1977. it opened well before that and there was only one tunnel when it opened.

Let him speak lady

Pylon is 75 feet wide roughly Distance between each pylon is 1100 feet roughly Ship managed to escape the wide open space and hit the 75 ft structure wow.

#Breaking News #Absence of leadership essential for port entry and departure day and night! In the absence of management supervision, the access situation room is negligent! Situations where cartels and corruption are suspected

Prayers to everyone on that tragedy. I hope they're all rescued and safe. 🙏😟

PRAY FOR THE VICTIMS !😢 The Question that everyone is asking: how could this happen ?

Stop thinking about everyone else and let's get America back together 👀

The durability of this bridge is very much in question!

They needed to have protection barriers in front of the support structures. We have them in our area for our interstate bridges since we have barges going up and down the rivers. A barge took out I-40 bridge in Webbers Fall in 2002. Since this is major port why were there not any barriers in place.

I couldn’t work with Savannah 😵‍💫😂

The U.S. needs to be ready to deploy the National Guard and U.S. Military throughout America to protect America.

And just like that the P-Ditty news is gone.

Sunshine Skyway Bridge May 9 1980. 37,000 ton empty ship destroyed that bridge. Today, fully loaded 100,000 ton ship destroys FSK bridge. That kind of weight against something that collapsed like an erector's set. An unprotected bridge is supposed to fall.

The harbour pilot will have a lot of questions to answer !

This is why $$ needs to stay in this country, not to fund foreign wars.

How does one plane bring down a building?

God bless the family’s investigation ❤️

The ship doesn't burn diesel fuel it burns bunker different

Terrible that some people wont arrive at their destination today. So upsetting

What was the condition of the bridge prior to the collapse? When was it last inspected?

This is why you dont look at your phone while driving 😅

I am no engineer....but if you build a bridge made to have ships...big heavy ships....navigate underneath, make sure the supports columns or pylons can withstand a "bump" from these kind of boats. Hope with my heart no one died...