One reason why huge container ships like Dali are so economical to operate is that they are powered by a single, massive engine. Lose that engine and the ship loses the ability to navigate. New bridges are expensive. Perhaps it is time to mandate that similar ships must be escorted by two tugs when passing under vulnerable infrastructure.
I know nothing about the Dali, but I cannot image that it doesnt have any redundant systems like backup generators that are just in place, to power hydraulic systems or rudders, to make the ship at least manouverable, if the main engine fails. But that would drive costs... maybe you are right.
Perhaps, like commercial airplanes, it's time to insist that big ships have at least 2 engines (and 2 propellers)? RIP to all those who lost their lives in this tragedy and condolences to those they have left behind
Many US ports do mandate a tug escort in and out of critical areas. This one does not. Baltimore is known for it's ineffective and unscrupulous government.
@@readmorebooksidiots I don't think anyone will have a video out within the next 1-2 years. NTSB has to undergo all the investigation stuff, a lot of documents, voice recordings, videos etc. have to be examined etc. That stuff takes time. This is gonna be a long wait :-( as always. Look at Mentour Pilot. He just made a video about MH 370, which crashed exactly 10 years ago. Over the last 10 years, new stuff and information is coming out to this day. In his video he refers to two investigations that were published like just a year ago.
As a Floridian, this is a stark reminder of the 1980 disaster in Tampa Bay, though the casualties were much more severe. A Greyhound bus and its passengers were among the casualties in that tragic and avoidable incident.
Yes,it was big news calgary alberta greyhound was big on that time.the father of stevie nick fleetwood mack work greyhound HO he was piss when people died on bus just sad.this wreck why was no tugs or caisson protect base bridge is insane but sad again.😮
Avoidable. You said it there. There is no accountability anymore and people are dead while the rich people who run this world are now seeing how it effects their pocket books. Human life means nothing compared to commerce and capitalism.
@jbutcher1983 you say this as if it's a new concept. Capitalism was built on the bloodshed of serfs and plebians and still is today. Corporate greed has a figure written on sticky notes calculating the value of their human casualties. If the profit margin exceeds the cost of human casualties then they are just the cost of doing business. And it's been that way forever.
This footage shows the Port hook (anchor) was dropped, but at 8 knots, it would be like trying to stop your car with your foot on the freeway. Blessings to the families of the lost.
Plus it's not the actual anchor itself digging into the sand that holds a ship in place anyway. It's the weight of the huge length of chain dragging on the seafloor. So if there's not enough distance between when they drop the anchor and when they hit the bridge, not enough chain is going to play out to have an effect anyway.
Even in this excellent footage, the scale is difficult to grasp. From a 33 foot sailboat a container ship is so big you can just barely wrap your head around the size. Mostly you know your boat wouldn't even be noticed from the perspective of the ship. Basically a mosquito.
... Thankfully the authorities had a couple of minutes to alert the right people to stop traffic in both directions before they reached the bridge, or this would have been a lot worse. It's going to make the already notoriously terrible traffic in the Baltimore area, a complete nightmare for a long time. It's a real shame and it goes to show, you just never know when a total catastrophe will strike... R.I.P. to those who lost their lives. 😢
i can tell you the traffic today was insane. it took almost 45 minutes to travel about 6 miles on my way home. i live about 10 minutes from the bridge and ive been across it it several thousand times over the years. its a sad day for us here in Baltimore
these tragedies are always a stark reminder that even though we think we build tough things that seem like a fortress of invicibility and protection, things that seem like they'll always just "be there" - those things are really quite fragile in the grand scheme of things.
@@vindiesel5466 don`t think so. Look at the history of this ship and you will find out that their where several similar incidents with this ship, engine failure, no electricity etc. . My personal thinking is, that greed for more money and less safety and less costs of handling this ship are the main reason for this disaster.
Greed for Dollar profits by MAERSK is root cause of such disasters. They use cheap labour from India where poverty and unemployment make life hard for the youth. Big companies like Maersk exploit the poor Indians. Maersk overloads the ships and pays less attention to seaworthibess of their chartered ships. The companies in si gapore and Mumbai are mostly owned or operated by corrupt greedy opportunistic Indians.
A big part of the problem is that these old bridge abutments were never designed with the thought of ships the size of small cities hitting them. That just wasn't a thing back then. And they're only getting bigger.
There are concrete dolphins up and down stream of the bridge designed to stop this exact thing. The ship was turning at the perfect rate to dodge them and still hit the pillar. This is a whole lot of bad luck happening all at once.
@@zyeborm Design is supposed to stop a whole lot of bad luck, if it doesn't then it is bad design. Pier protection would have stopped it but then that costs money, and there are an awful lot of bridges etc in the USA all perhaps needing some money at the moment. Difficult. Having said that, this is a big case of "For want of a nail, the kingdom was lost.
@@zakelwe again they had protection. Presumably designed for a worst case runaway collision with enough distance to absorb the energy. Seatbelts don't help all the time, still much better off with them than without even if they aren't perfect.
bruh that lone safety cone 😂😂😂 Incredible footage honestly. My brain can't really process the scale of this; it looks more like my 3yr old nephew just played with his toys than it does reality. Thanks for capturing and sharing this!
I wonder if more dolphins or pier protection would’ve made a difference. The size of ships has grown so exponentially in the last few decades. I wonder if the protections recommended in the Skyway report would have been able to stop such a massive vessel with so much kinetic energy.
Build the dolphins at least as strong as the pier for the tower that was struck. It definitely stopped the ship. But the tower was on it, so it was hit and the bridge was damaged.
@@JacktheSmackYour fraction is likely about 8/10 as ALL the main span superstructure is gone leaving only the relatively simple approach ramps. In addition before new bridge, in this location anyway, you need to clear the wreckage of the old so even an "emergency build" is going to be considerable in time and resources.
the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel between the Eastern shore and Norfolk VA has 2 tunnels for this very reason. And that was built 15 years before this one. Of course the Navy insisted on it because an accident like this would have bottled up 1/3 of the US Naval fleet for months.
The Sunshine Skyway bridge collapsed because of a bridge strike by a ship. The Big Bayou Canot Bridge collapsed because of a bridge strike, an Amtrak train plunged into the water and 47 people died. The Queen Isabella Causeway collapsed due to runaway barges and 8 people died. Hindsight is clearly NOT 20/20 as we have not learned our lesson. I cannot for the life of me understand why there are no concrete dolphins near every major bridge that has large boats/ships/barges that travel near them.
Simple: probability of such a incident happening vs. cost to add them to every potential bridge that might get hit. Somebody decided it wasn't cost effective.
Because they cost millions to place and maintain, and normally you don't have major vessels suffering double power loss next to the bridge. This was a freak accident at best, and you can never prepare enough for those.
They are there, but they are too far away from the bridge's piers to work in this case. The ship passed by the dolphin on its starboard and then turned into the pier. This video solves the reason for failure. Look at the dolphins, those round concrete things on both sides of the bridge. They were too far from the pier to work.
This was no accident, this was planned and done on purpose in order to further damage supply lines therefore causing inflation and consumer good's prices to increase even more, we're witnessing the systematic collapse of our country unfortunately. But don't worry about it and just go ahead and stick your head back in the sand and enjoy your day.
Somewhere, there are a bunch of people looking at video like this going "Oh fuq, where do we start..." Cutting that bridge up and fishing the remains of out of the 50ft+ deep channel is going to be a monumental challenge.
This reminds me of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge near St. Petersburg, Florida being struck in 1980. I am from St. Pete, but at the time of that incident I was actually on a road trip to Maryland with a buddy of mine.
F=(M*A) if im not mistaken. when i plug in the the mass( 97,000 metric tons) and the acceleration(8.4 MPH) i get 3,486,327 LB/F of force. Am I missing something or did i figure that wrong. I mean no disrespect, im genuinely asking
@@markfranz536The acceleration is not 8.4mph, thats the velocity, and your units don't workout. The number @phil20_20 gave is a total amount of energy. 1 ft*lb of energy is equal to roughly 1.35 joules. So the ship has about 1.7 Gigajoules of energy. The energy of a moving object is given by Energy=1/2*Mass*Velocity^2
I predict that this will lead to greatly expanded bridge impact standards for major waterway bridges in the future. They will be built to withstand the sort of impact that brought this bridge down. Eventually this will be the new standard, for new construction bridges at least.
We know how to protect these bridges, we just don't spend the money to do it. Incidentally you don't build the bridge to take it, you build a sacrificial obstacle to stop it before the bridge is hit.
It's a compound, double overlapping, lefthanded, cluster f_ck, alright. But now those engineering type people get to build a fancy dancy new fangled modern gorgeous suspension bridge to replace it. More good paying jobs! And lots more car lanes!
Excellent footage, thank you! On a positive note it "appears" (at this time) as though the bridge design and build worked correctly and came down as expected for this exact scenario. Perhaps the rigid structures and roadway still standing can be used again, thus saving constable time and cost. 💁 ... Many prayers for those lost and for their families. 🙏🙏🙏
Being that close, he would be trying to catch them, not watching to see if they fall. If the containers fell, that boat would be crushed. Bahaha 🤣😂😅 It is likely the boat that brought the assessment crew to board the cargo ship. Possible to transport people back to land from the ship. But it's definitely not sitting there waiting for those containers to fall on it.
yes but why track the side of the vessel that close? Why not head 100 yards away first? This is the same stupid complacency that allows a bridge pylon to go unprotected from foreseeable ship collisions. @@northernsnow6982
What are you talking about? A ROAD and STEEL fell on it, obviously it's going to cave in. The damage where it's caved in is from vertical, not horizontal.
@polarbeezy412 the caved portion I am referring is below the deck. The whole left bow side of the ship is caved where it grounded on the pylon base. Yea, there is damage to the top from the bridge falling, but nothing compared to how much it is pushed in.
The part that was supposed to protect the piers from damage was not damaged. It was designed wrong as far as high ships are concerned and served no purpose except for protecting from relatively small vessels that would not have brought the whole bridge down anyway. There is a reason why bumpers on cars protrude and are a certain distance off the ground
exactly...and to top it off in a miracle attempt to avoid loss of control they navigate directly into the main bridge support structure? Sell me that bow thrusters aren't the only thing that could turn a ship of this size going 8 knots left in 3 minutes around a dolphin.@@nohandleleft
@@nohandleleftIf you had watched the video of the ship before it hit the bridge you would know she blacked out. It takes time to restart the ship's systems.
@@nohandleleftThe ship at the time of the accident was being piloted by someone who works for the port. Nobody on the ship is allowed to pilot a boat in those areas. It's to prevent things like this from happening. If they simply used tugboats, this would have never happened.
@@northernsnow6982 If only there was a well-recognized risk assessment for the passage of the Dali along this channel and established that the bridge posts possess hazard, there could have been established control measures considered such us, as you said, requiring tug boats to assist or at least standby close to these bridge posts. I am a retired Master and experienced almost losing the power of my ship in the Houston Channel but the pilot and I decided outright to anchor and have the USCG board my vessel for investigation. Although the finding was only a trivial result of pushing the wrong button in the engine room, my ship was safe and avoided the consequence of unexpected human error. Only my personal view as former mariner on this subject.
@@diane8937You think this will be rebuilt in less than a year? No, it will be years before anyone drives across a bridge in that location. They still need to take down whatever hasn't fallen before they can think about starting to rebuild. Demolition above water isn't easy, especially with all the environmental issues around it. It may seem odd after this situation, but they can't allow stuff to fall in the water when demolishing things. Plus, they have to recover as much of the old bridge as possible. They can't just leave it there blocking the shipping lane. There is a lot of work to do in that situation, besides just building a new bridge.
Think bigger. It was done on purpose without the crews knowledge, it was done remotely, and the crew tried everything they could to avoid it. Did you know your own car can be started and driven away from your driveway right now? Planes, like jumbo jets could be taken over remotely in the early 80's. Its true
@@Airplanefish So you are saying what I said is incorrect? That Car's and planes cannot be remotely taken over? You do know the Dali's rudder was in full turn postion right, and it was was in a straight position prior to power off event. Even the NTSB is wondering how that happened, and it caused the Dali to go 180 degrees into the support.
Next to the power lines you will see the "concrete dolphins" designed to protect the bridge from a runaway ship. They got very unlucky here with the ship turning at exactly the rate needed for them to miss the protections.
Good day, Reference Scott Bridge disaster: I have crossed under the bridge many a times, even as master of these size container vessel. if someone puts the incident in simulation, they would find; that the vessel's propulsion came back with 3 ship's length space from bridge but she was put on full astern. This made the vsl lose further steerageway also cant to stbd and hit the bridge. On the other hand a bold decision of short burst of half ahead movement could have corrected the course brought the bow towards channel center line and steered the vessel from this disaster. This is my opinion after checking raw marine traffic data.
Isn't that what did in the Titanic? She might have been able to steer around the iceberg if she'd kept forward power on but she went full astern instead and veered into the berg.
Sad situation for the bridge maintenance crew. it hasn't been reported, but I wonder if any ship's crew are under that pile of bridge on the bow of the ship. I'm sure that very few people in the city recognized the potential danger. this is going to be a daunting process of clean up and reconstruction. probably upwards of 5 billion by the time all is done
The dolphins (bumpers) are there, but too far away. The ship passed by the dolphin on its starboard and then turned into the pier. This video solves the reason for failure. Look at the dolphins, those round concrete things on both sides of the bridge.
no steel bridge is strong enough to take a direct hit from a Panamax like that. this isnt in the bridge engineers this is on the shipping company who didn't maintain there powerplant.
And too few in number, with too large a gap between them. The power line towers have better protection (the diamond-shaped walls around each of the ones near the center of the channel).
This is like having guardrails on a highway. We can reduce, but not eliminate accidents. The bridge shouldn't take a hit because it should be protected by proper "dolphins" which indicates a civil engineering failure. Properly configured, massive dolphins in front of the bridge's piers should take a hit. They should be slightly away from the bridge, so not to transmit the energy of the collision to the bridge. Now that ships have substantially increased in mass, the engineers are going to have to revisit protections for bridges.@@shopdog831
They have HUGE barge cranes that can lift those sections onto large barges. Big Hoss is the name of one of them, but I believe it's down in the Gulf of Mexico at the moment
They might use shaped demolition charges to cut the truss sections into manageable chucks that can either be floated out with pontoons or lifted onto barges and hauled away for scrap.
they wont be able to leave anything on the sea bed. a lot of people dont realize how shallow the bay and Patapsco river are. I was just down at the key bridge on my boat a week ago fishing and its only about 55 feet in the channel give or take and those container ships need all of that depth to get in and out. especially at low tide @@nnelg8139
A pretty serious reminder of how gargantuan some container ships truly are. Even mostly hollow to stay floating, that ship will be 1/10 the weight of the bridge or more.
Was this from the drone that was in the area the afternoon of the 26th? There was what I assumed to be a drone working between 100-300' AGL with a really weird ADS-B tag.
I imagine the crew are quite traumatised for it causing the death of several people. They will all most likely still be on board too ensuring the ship remains afloat etc. looking after the containers as I expect some have hazardous or frozen goods
shows our bridges can be brought down in a heartbeat and can cripple our nation. Just remember folks Demorats have allowed chinese companies to run our ports and in some cases bridges too...no problem with that now is there eh Joey
While it wouldn't surprise me if the power lines were a newer construction and updated rules enforced a much sturdier collision barrier, it seems to me like they're more anti-curious-people than anti-big-ships.. it's *very* hard to dissuade that much mass/momentum from doing damage, especially with what seems to be a thin, hollow structure surrounding the power masts.
Those were probably built after the Skyway bridge collapse in Tampa, thats what began much more strict regulations for structures like bridges and powerlines that sit on the water to have massive steel reinforced concrete walls. This bridge predates that incident so it did not have adequate protection.
There was no time to "stop traffic". Maybe to "stop traffic" after the bridge was down, but that's it. The short timeline allowed for nothing else. Shame on government spokesmen for implying otherwise.
If you see when they first lose power (from other footage) to the time they hit the bridge, it was a little less than 3 minutes. It was only about a minute before it started to drift towards the bridge and hit that they made the mayday call- before that you can see the ship attempting to get the power back on to keep them on course. There was no way the crew could have made it off the bridge in time.
@df446 The ship's crew called in a mayday and the police at both ends stopped traffic immediately - VERY fast response. They sent people to try to warn the work crew but didn't get them all off in time. The police radio traffic makes it quite clear.
MAYBE when the bridge is rebuilt it will have ISLANDS around the bases of the towers like the islands around the power line towers. The design and construction of bridge supports NEVER anticipated ships as massive as the MV Dali squeezing past the supports. RETROFITTING barrier islands? WAS it ever even considered?
That bridge may have had a chance against a 70's freighter but a superfat container ship like that, no contest. Prayers to the people who found themselves on the bridge at that moment.
Is there no redundancy in each segment? How did it manage to take the rest of the entire bridge out?? Was the road itself that strong? Or was it hit at a critical segment?
The main span is a continuous structure -- all one welded piece. There are no "segments" other than the viaduct approaches. One load-bearing girder fails, the whole thing falls.
The problem is obvious: There are the dolphins to stop ships, but they are so far in front of the bridge's piers, the ship went around the one on the ship's starboard side and hit the pier. At 5:22, look at the dolphin and then look at the angle of the ship at which the ship hit the piers. See the round concrete things in the water. Those are bumpers called dolphins. They should be close to the piers, but with a gap to prevent the collision entry from being transmitted to the piers.
You'll probably find the distance they are away from the bridge is exactly the gap you have described for a fully laden runaway ship. This was a perfect storm with the rate of turn of the ship.
How is it the power line poles have a protective barrier at the waterline but the bridge piers doesn't have any similar protection or solid concrete dolphins on both sides.
I notice the north section snapped saving part of it but the south section collapsed in five seconds. Were they constructed by different methods or standards.
Almost everywhere in the world they use a sandbank around the bulls of the bridge, to prevent such incidents. If the depth near the bulls was 8-9 meters, then the ship would just run aground and would not have destroyed the bull.
No they don't, most bridges don't have that. Not only because of cost but that such underwater fill would constrict the flow of the water. It is used sometimes yes but it's not a common thing.
5:02 - why was there no hardened crash protection for the towers on this bridge ?? The power lines running alongside the bridge have barriers 0:50 - to deflect a ship (hopefully) I don't see any such protection for the two towers on either side of the main span or ANY of the piers for the causeway ! Wow, what a poor set-up. This sort of disaster was only a matter of time.
I think you are over-reading the protection those electricity pylons have. The little islands are just dry land to mount the pylons on. A large ship hitting one of those would destroy it, too.
I am surprised the falling bridge did not do more damage to the ship, such as capsize it or fracture the hull. RIP to the bridge workers whose lives were lost.
I live near this bridge and would often go to Hawkins point to enjoy the scenery, which was great esp at sunset. I flew my drone here once and thought man I hated the footage, I should go back one of these days and get another shot. Now I never can. We need to start reducing the sizes of these ships, they're becoming insanely untenable and dangerous. Ships need to be escorted past important infrastructure like this on tugs.
You realize it's because of these super-large ships -- many are much bigger -- that you can buy a powerful computer to carry in your hip pocket for a few hundred bucks.
The fact that no buttresses were in place on this bridge, after the Sunshine-Skyway disaster is a damning condemnation of the people who control our infrastructure, from the state departments of transportation, to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to the Federal Department of Transportation and yes, the National Transportation Safety Board. You own this
As usual they wait for something catastrophic to happen before they do something. I've used this bridge a couple times and never thought it was one ship collision away from collapsing... Could not imagine just minding my business and having the road collapse from under me.
@@cybercityoedo808 Because all of us have been led to believe that the "authorities" are on top of all of this and they're always working to "keep us safe". No, they're working to keep their Unions, corporations and special interests safe. If you think there's a dichotomy between "worker" and "employer", just look at the makeup of the current NLRB. No, "Big Business" and "Labor" have gotten together and they run the current government. Fortunately, those of us out here in rural America have plenty of guns and clear fields of fire. Good luck to the rest of you......................
there could be a couple of empty containers on that ship but to say there all empty would be stupid and no company would move a ship that size at is cost across a 7 day journey empty unless it was heading somewhere for major overhauls and to dothat there woud not no containers at all on it
Baltimore is the vehicle export capital of the US. Chances are the ship was going to Sri Lanka as a first stop, then heading on to Saudi Arabia or somewhere similar to unload the big SUV's they like over there.
Interesting... The new High voltage transmission lines installed last year, have some protection, or barrier. I flew the google maps and saw this. Wonder why this was not done for the bridge?
