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Francis Scott Key Bridge (I-695) complete collapse after large ship hits it

Started by rickmastfan67, March 26, 2024, 04:09:30 AM

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J N Winkler

There has been discussion in the Facebook road-related groups about the possibility of replacing the bridge with a tunnel (which was the original plan back in 1972) and simply having the northern part of I-695 be the permanent hazmat detour.  I do not expect to see that happen because of all the constructability issues that would involve, which recently led to the Spanish abandoning a similar plan to carry the SE-40 beltway under the Guadalquivir just south of Seville.  However, Scott Kozel (who is no longer active on this forum) mentioned that draft in the Chesapeake Bay estuary is already constrained to 45 feet by other tunnels that have to be traversed to reach open ocean.  Therefore, one of the key arguments against carrying I-695 under the Patapsco--that it would preclude dredging to deepen the navigational channel--would seem not to apply.

Quote from: cl94 on March 27, 2024, 02:10:27 AMIn 2024, a bridge of that size over a navigable waterway would require a collision prevention system per federal requirements. No idea when it went in, but it is required now. Some existing crossings have been retrofitted, but holy crap that's expensive. They're retrofitting the Delaware Memorial Bridge right now, and that's costing close to $100 million for 8 "dolphins". I have no idea how deep the Patapsco is in this area, but if it's sufficiently deep and soil conditions are garbage, that makes cost increase astronomically.

Will there be a new push to retrofit existing structures? Probably. Though again, cost. If each bridge is going to run 7, 8, or even 9 figures to protect, that is a crazy amount of money for bridges that may be nearing the end of their useful lives in some cases.

I expect that the NTSB investigation will surface some recommendations for achieving a higher standard of layered defense against vessel collisions in a cost-effective manner.  The fact that the Dali lost power multiple times as it approached the bridge suggests that it was not seaworthy and should not have been allowed to sail even with a qualified harbor pilot in charge.  Shipping is an international business, which complicates imposition of more stringent safety standards, but maritime insurers can bring pressure to bear.
"It is necessary to spend a hundred lire now to save a thousand lire later."--Piero Puricelli, explaining the need for a first-class road system to Benito Mussolini


WillWeaverRVA

Quote from: J N Winkler on March 27, 2024, 03:16:56 PMI expect that the NTSB investigation will surface some recommendations for achieving a higher standard of layered defense against vessel collisions in a cost-effective manner.  The fact that the Dali lost power multiple times as it approached the bridge suggests that it was not seaworthy and should not have been allowed to sail even with a qualified harbor pilot in charge.  Shipping is an international business, which complicates imposition of more stringent safety standards, but maritime insurers can bring pressure to bear.

Apparently the Dali lost power several times while it was docked in port at the Virginia International Gateway in Portsmouth. It should never have been allowed to set sail, but apparently sea traffic is not as thoroughly regulated as air traffic is.

Of course, the ship itself is stuck in place because the weight of the bridge has pushed it into the seafloor.
Will Weaver
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bwana39

We have to wonder how many (few) vessels the actual owner of the ship has. It would not surprise me if the owner just abandons the ship and the (shell) company that owns it. My bet is that Maersk has very limited liability for the OPERATION of the vessel and the freight is not attachable.

Most if not all of this is probably going to land on the people who own the bridge (the State of Maryland and the US taxpayers). Hopefully not!
Let's build what we need as economically as possible.

roadman65

The ship now is actually considered evidence in an investigation. It may not even soon be released after it's removed but get impounded by the NTSB until the investigation is over. The bridge itself will be removed to another makeshift site as well until they look at all the pieces to see how it fell apart to determine that structural failure wasn't a factor even though highly unlikely.
Every day is a winding road, you just got to get used to it.

Sheryl Crowe

JayhawkCO

From the video, it sure looks like it lost power and then they dropped the anchor with the diesel engine backups. The anchor took hold, but that's what swung it into the bridge.

roadman65

Quote from: JayhawkCO on March 27, 2024, 04:57:20 PMFrom the video, it sure looks like it lost power and then they dropped the anchor with the diesel engine backups. The anchor took hold, but that's what swung it into the bridge.

That maybe why it appears to have changed course at the end. If you look at the vid it appears that the hit was deliberate. Dropping the anchor does make sense in turning a ships facing. With the angle of photography it gets distorted some.


That's why I'm not jumping the gun to point a finger like some social media buffs are.
Every day is a winding road, you just got to get used to it.

Sheryl Crowe

JayhawkCO

Quote from: roadman65 on March 27, 2024, 05:03:14 PM
Quote from: JayhawkCO on March 27, 2024, 04:57:20 PMFrom the video, it sure looks like it lost power and then they dropped the anchor with the diesel engine backups. The anchor took hold, but that's what swung it into the bridge.

That maybe why it appears to have changed course at the end. If you look at the vid it appears that the hit was deliberate. Dropping the anchor does make sense in turning a ships facing. With the angle of photography it gets distorted some.


That's why I'm not jumping the gun to point a finger like some social media buffs are.

Tough to call it deliberate when you can clearly see it losing power and it had its siren ringing too.

wdcrft63

Two thoughts on replacing the bridge.

1- The FSKey Bridge had a vertical clearance of 185 ft. Recently built bridges over international channels have clearances over 200 ft. Turkey's bridges over the Bosporus have a 210 ft clearance and the Gordie Howe Bridge at Detroit will have a 220 ft clearance. However it wouldn't help to have a higher clearance if ships have to pass under the 186 ft clearance of the Bay Bridge.

2- As a truss bridge the FSKey Bridge had a rather short main span of 1200 ft. A cable stayed bridge could easily have a longer span. It could then have its piers in shallower water where huge ships could not hit them; they would run aground first.

bing101

Road Guy Rob does a segment on the Francis  Scott Key Bridge and the aftermath of the ship crash. 


Lyon Wonder

I assume the replacement bridge will be cable-stayed since it'll allow for a longer main span that's wider than that of the old bridge's main span.

The new bridge will probably look a lot like Florida's Skyway bridge and the US 17 Arthur Ravenel Jr Bridge at Charleston, SC.

jmacswimmer

Catching up on Gov. Moore's 5:30 press conference:

-2 bodies were found in a submerged pickup truck earlier today.
-Divers have searched everywhere safe to do so and have not located the remaining 4, so they are almost certainly somewhere within the mess of submerged twisted steel that is unsafe to search within. This means the mission is shifting from recovery to salvage moving forward.
-Once debris clearing begins, it sounds like the first priority will be removing the steel resting on the ship's bow, which is currently pressing it into the river bottom (as was noted upthread). Then the ship can be refloated and moved out of the way, presumably back to the port or somewhere else nearby as the investigation progresses.
-The construction company noted they had 7 employees on the bridge rather than the 8 initially reported, with the 8th person (the one who was rescued and refused treatment) being an inspector contracted by MDTA.
-I haven't seen this nugget included in any official reporting, but did see a rumor somewhere that the 1 construction employee who survived had apparently told officials that his remaining colleagues were in their vehicles on break at the time of collapse.

https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/baltimore-key-bridge-collapse-03-27-24/index.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/baltimore-francis-scott-key-bridge-collapse-live-updates-b2519665.html
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The Ghostbuster

This ship crashing into the Francis Scott Key Bridge reminds me of the freight barge that crashed into a bridge on the Interstate 40 bridge over the Arkansas River in Webber Falls, Oklahoma in 2002: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-40_bridge_disaster. It also reminds me of the Interstate 35W bridge collapse over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis in 2007, although that bridge collapsed under different circumstances: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge. There are plenty of other bridge collapses one can point to as parallels to what just happened in Baltimore.

MikieTimT

Quote from: The Ghostbuster on March 27, 2024, 06:52:54 PMThis ship crashing into the Francis Scott Key Bridge reminds me of the freight barge that crashed into a bridge on the Interstate 40 bridge over the Arkansas River in Webber Falls, Oklahoma in 2002: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-40_bridge_disaster. It also reminds me of the Interstate 35W bridge collapse over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis in 2007, although that bridge collapsed under different circumstances: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge. There are plenty of other bridge collapses one can point to as parallels to what just happened in Baltimore.

The I-40 bridge strike back in '02 was a worse tragedy.  More casualties and severed a major transcontinental interstate with a much worse detour through a 2 lane US-64 through tiny towns until the bridge was rebuilt, which happened in record time due to the urgency of the situation.  Really did a number on US-64 with all that truck traffic compressing it.  Stopped shipping on the MKARNS as well until they got the bridge deck fished out of the channel.  Smaller bridge, but oh so critical to the IHS.

R.I.P. Jimmy, Misty, and Shea Johnson.  Jimmy used to be my fishing buddy back in high school when he was dating Misty.  Good folks taken far too early.

The Key bridge will take a while longer to demolish and reconstruct(?), though, due to it's size and the body of water it traverses.

MASTERNC

Quote from: jmacswimmer on March 27, 2024, 02:02:52 PMMy thought on the replacement is that you might as well go ahead and redo the whole thing now so that you can future-proof for the new generation of massive cargo & cruise ships - primarily higher vertical clearance, maybe the 2 center piers spaced further apart to allow for a wider shipping channel and/or added horizontal clearance, and of course pier dolphins. With bridge clearance concerns popping up at other ports (the Bayonne Bridge & Talmadge Bridge are the first 2 to come to mind), I think it makes sense to just demolish the remainder of the old bridge & fully rebuild to modern standards.

The other thing that came to mind today is the impact this could have on the I-895 toll plaza removal project - this is the last remaining toll plaza in Maryland (currently operating "AET-in-place" similar to the PA Turnpike) and, compared to the other toll plaza removals, will be a larger design-build project due to the need to reconfigure exits 8 & 9 immediately on either side of the plaza. It just secured some federal funding in January and was scheduled to be advertised later this year, but now I wonder if MDTA would want to hold off so as not to begin construction while I-895 is carrying excess traffic from the Key Bridge. We shall see.

MDTA's landing page for anyone interested in that project: https://mdta.maryland.gov/I895TollPlaza

Maryland is lucky they finished the Canton Viaduct and the FMT AET/toll plaza removal before this happened.  Can you imagine how much worse things would be if both were still in place?  I imagine if cash collection hadn't gone away that it would be suspended temporarily again to keep traffic moving.

J N Winkler

Quote from: wdcrft63 on March 27, 2024, 06:32:46 PMTwo thoughts on replacing the bridge.

1- The FSKey Bridge had a vertical clearance of 185 ft. Recently built bridges over international channels have clearances over 200 ft. Turkey's bridges over the Bosporus have a 210 ft clearance and the Gordie Howe Bridge at Detroit will have a 220 ft clearance. However it wouldn't help to have a higher clearance if ships have to pass under the 186 ft clearance of the Bay Bridge.

2- As a truss bridge the FSKey Bridge had a rather short main span of 1200 ft. A cable stayed bridge could easily have a longer span. It could then have its piers in shallower water where huge ships could not hit them; they would run aground first.

There are certainly opportunities for expanding the navigational envelope with a cable-stayed bridge.  I wouldn't necessarily rule out a vertical clearance of 200 ft or more for ships, since the Bay Bridge may well be replaced at some point.

The new Key Bridge will need to span approximately 5200 ft of water.  Per Wikipedia's list of longest cable-stayed bridges, the current record-holder for main span length is the Russky Bridge near Vladivostok at 1104 m (3622 ft).

One engineering question that needs to be answered is the depth of water at which a vessel with the tonnage of the Dali can be expected to run aground instead of carving its own channel, possibly inflicting structural damage on a pier before it stops.

According to the latest nautical chart from NOAA, Baltimore Harbor has a navigational channel with a nominal depth of 50 ft that runs essentially from one main pier of the Key Bridge to the other.  If a hypothetical cable-stayed replacement had a main span of 3600 ft centered on that of the former bridge, the ends would be in water 23 ft deep at the north and 19 ft at the south.  I don't know if this would afford sufficient margin to intercept an errant container ship.  Given that the Chesapeake Bay has a deep muddy floor, it may also be an awkward location for pushing the envelope in terms of span length.  It may well be more cost-effective to trade space between the main piers for enhanced protection with structural dolphins, artificial islands, and so on.

As it happens, the Sunshine Skyway has a main span length of about 1200 ft--approximately the same as the old Key Bridge--but, as it is now over 35 years old, its defenses may not offer all that much protection from today's container ships.  The Mullet Point navigational channel, which runs underneath the main span, also has a nominal depth of only 43 ft.
"It is necessary to spend a hundred lire now to save a thousand lire later."--Piero Puricelli, explaining the need for a first-class road system to Benito Mussolini

bwana39

Let's build what we need as economically as possible.

Henry

Protective barriers around bridges were a stroke of genius, and the new Sunshine Skyway is proof of that. As for the ship that struck the bridge, whoever let it out into the harbor really is a dick, and should be fired. Even the drivers of the ship knew that it was not going to make it very far, and they made the right call with their mayday call. And it truly was a miracle that no traffic was crossing the bridge this time, thanks to the swift actions of the authorities.
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Sonic99

I would have to suspect that they will lean heavily towards the replacement being larger and taller to accommodate the growth of the port. If you have to build a new one, might as well future-proof by going taller and wider. You'd have to suspect that once the new one is up (lets assume 200-220 ft clearance) the push to replace the Annapolis Bay Bridges will escalate. Given that those two are 72 and 51 years old respectively, their replacement would be coming within the next decade or so you would think. And at that point, it would be silly to build a new 50-75 year replacement of the Key and not have it be prepared for future freight needs.
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rickmastfan67


jmacswimmer

Quote from: jmacswimmer on March 27, 2024, 06:52:13 PM-Once debris clearing begins, it sounds like the first priority will be removing the steel resting on the ship's bow, which is currently pressing it into the river bottom (as was noted upthread). Then the ship can be refloated and moved out of the way, presumably back to the port or somewhere else nearby as the investigation progresses.

Update from USACE this morning on the debris clearing priorities, which differs from my previous understanding:

QuoteMore than 1,000 US Army Corps of Engineers personnel were activated to help clear the critical shipping channel where Baltimore's Key Bridge collapsed.

Lt. Gen. Scott Spellmon, commander and chief of engineers, explained the team will approach the mission in three steps. Here's what they are:

Step 1: Get the steel truss out of a 700-foot-wide by 50-foot-deep channel, and examine what parts of the concrete are still at the bottom. "Any piece of concrete, any piece of steel on the bottom is just as much as of a hazard as that in the channel," Spellmon said. This step will allow "one-way traffic going in and out of the Port of Baltimore again," he said.

Step 2: Work closely with the Coast Guard to stabilize containers on top of the ship. Then the truss of the bridge that is still on top of the ship needs to be taken off "so it can be tugged to a safe part of the port," Spellmon said. "By removing the vessel, that will allow us to reopen two-way traffic."

Step 3: Take out the remaining 2,900 feet of steel and all the associated concrete and roadway that's at the river bottom.

"We're up to this task. We have what we need," Spellmon said.


(From CNN's continuous coverage page: https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/baltimore-key-bridge-collapse-03-28-24/index.html)
"Now, what if da Bearss were to enter the Indianapolis 5-hunnert?"
"How would they compete?"
"Let's say they rode together in a big buss."
"Is Ditka driving?"
"Of course!"
"Then I like da Bear buss."
"DA BEARSSS BUSSSS"

kernals12

So, how much is this going to cost to fix? Hundreds of millions or billions?

1995hoo

Quote from: kernals12 on Today at 09:35:17 AMSo, how much is this going to cost to fix? Hundreds of millions or billions?

Whatever the initial estimate is, the final cost will almost certainly be higher. I have to assume close to a billion. The Woodrow Wilson Bridge project—a much smaller and lower bridge overall—came in at $2.36 billion, although I suppose I should acknowledge that included substantial interchange work for a couple of miles to either side that the Key Bridge project won't need. I also don't know whether the Wilson Bridge figure includes Fifth Amendment compensation for the apartment building that was demolished.
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