Baltimore Bridge collapse after ship collision 125

[Tomfh]

https://amp.9news.com.au/article/b73620ea-64ab-4253-8cb0-37102418fcab

 

[SWComposites]

Anyone have any info on the tidal currents in that harbor at the time of the accident? They can significantly affect navigation.

 

[FacEngrPE]

Noaa T

 

[enginesrus]

The real question is who pays for it?
Insurance or the company that owns the ship? Or yeah the other option.

 

[FacEngrPE]

NOAA tides and currents shows winds < 10mph
The display of space under the bridge indicates the tide had just turned and at the time of the last data recorded - same time as the collision. Nothing unusual about the weather.

 

[NOLAscience]

The fenders around the San Francisco Bay Bridge protected the piers from the Cosco Busan, in 2007. A fully loaded container ship, as I recall. One could even think that they were NOT a defective design.

The protection for the piers is more like a concrete island: Link

Right, and the SF protection is much, much more than fenders.

 

[NOLAscience]

despite the size of these ships...the crew is really small. 20-30 people.

And, I was thinking, half of them were probably asleep!

 

[NOLAscience]

The real question is who pays for it?
Insurance or the company that owns the ship? Or yeah the other option.

For some reason (election, anyone?), Biden decided to say that the TAXPAYERS were going to foot the bill for the new bridge. (He said "Federal government", but he meant "taxpayers".) I would hope that he means the cost after the owners of the Dali and their insurers pay to their limits.

 

[hokie66]

No, he means the Feds will pay, and then try to recover from insurance.

 

[Just Some Nerd]

For the sake of the city it seems more prudent to prioritise building the replacement bridge/tunnel immediately and chase the money from insurance. I can't imagine the local community or economy is going to enjoy not having this bridge.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Why yes, I do in fact have no idea what I'm talking about

 

[Brian Malone]

Are you guys really going to discuss who pays? Regardless of the administration, this critical infrastructure will be rebuilt because:
1. The port function of the city and state depend on the waterway being passable.
2. The details of fault / who, what, and where are going to take years to figure out.
3. The cost of a municipality building a bridge means the society and economy grow dependent on the infrastructure. The only entity able to fund this on short notice is a government. That is what governments do.

 

[NovaEngr]

Admiralty Law (aka, maritime law) has a hard limit on the liability of a ship owner for an accident like this. The limit is the value of the vessel and the cargo. While this vessel and cargo were likely pretty valuable by vessel and cargo standards, it will be a very, very small percentage of the restoration cost for this crossing. It may sound crazy, but I know from painful, personal experience, that how it works.

 

[TugboatEng]

Why would an engine smoke like that? In the past it could be due to overloading. Current engines have smoke limits and would not smoke like that without a failure. This ship is new enough that its engines will be under emissions controls but I don't know the international rules.

This level of smoking is usually the result of a turbocharger failure. If it's a Himsen engine I believe they have a defect in the assembly procedure of their cylinder head that could cause water to enter cylinders and cause the engine to operate as if overloaded.

 

[Murph 9000]

That's what I'm wondering. At the time of the power failure, was it already to late to avoid the collision? ... even if they were in the right spot at the right time?

She didn't seem to really turn towards the bridge pier until power was restored after she first went dark. Unless the current was carrying her towards the pier, I don't think the allision was inevitable before she turned. My skills are for vastly smaller craft, but I think what I'm seeing is her going full astern when the power is restored, and the turn being the result of prop walk from a right-handed prop. Prop walk can really kick the stern of a vessel out if you lean hard on the power astern (for a single conventional shaft arrangement). The dense black smoke could maybe (I'm guessing here) be from reversing the main engine and pouring on the power to get the shaft spinning again to do a crash stop.

 

[Murph 9000]

If it's a Himsen engine …

According to

https://ships.jobmarineman.com/dali-9697428/,

the main engine is a MAN B&W 9S90ME-C9.

 

[TugboatEng]

One of the most expensive maritime losses was the MOL Comfort. It broke in half and sank in deep water in the Indian Ocean, all cargo lost. The insurance payout was $300-400 million. The hill and machinery was $66 million of that. The MOL Comfort was 8000 TEU, the ship in this incident may be double. The Dali is 10,000 TEU so it is somewhat larger. Then again, the ship was likely full of empty containers so that may reduce the value of the insurance claim.

 

[dik]

Thanks Murph... my skills are limited to an 18' outboard motorboat, or a canoe...

-----*****-----
So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik

 

[TugboatEng]

Murph, I was referring to the generators.

 

[JohnRBaker]

The owner of the ship involved in the Baltimore bridge disaster may be protected from a higher liability by an 1851 maritime law:

Titanic law could help ship owner limit liability in Baltimore bridge collapse

https://www.straitstimes.com/world/...ship-owner-limit-liability-in-bridge-collapse

An excerpt from the above item:

The owner of the Singapore-flagged ship that rammed into a Baltimore bridge could face hundreds of millions of dollars in damage claims after the accident sent vehicles plunging into the water and threw the eastern US transportation network into chaos.

But legal experts said there is a path for reducing liability under an obscure 19th-century law once invoked by the owner of the Titanic to limit its payout for the 1912 sinking.

At the centre of the legal fallout will be Singapore-based Grace Ocean, owner of the container ship Dali that crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge on March 26 at the start of a voyage chartered by the shipping giant Maersk.

The company could face a bevy of lawsuits from multiple directions, including from the bridge’s owner and anyone who sues for personal injury or emotional distress. Damages claims are likely to fall on the ship owner and not the agency that operates the bridge, since stationary objects are not typically at fault if a moving vessel hits them, said Professor Michael Sturley, a maritime law expert at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Law.

But, according to Tulane University’s Maritime Law Centre director Martin Davies, an 1851 law could lower the exposure to tens of millions of dollars by capping the ship owner’s liability at how much the vessel is worth after the crash, plus any earnings it collected from carrying the freight on board.

The law was passed initially to prevent shipping giants from suffering steep and insurmountable losses from disasters at sea. An eight-figure sum, while still hefty, would amount to “considerably less” than the full claims total, he said.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[hokie66]

They are looking at contaminated fuel as the culprit. Whether or not dirty fuel or water contamination as Tug suggested is just a maybe.

 

[FacEngrPE]

NTSB Investigation site; Contact of Cargo Vessel Dali with Francis Scott Key Bridge and Subsequent Bridge Collapse

NTSB Media Briefing - Francis Scott Key Bridge struck by Cargo Ship Dali

NTSB B-Roll - Aerial Imagery of Francis Scott Key Bridge and Cargo Ship Dali

Army Corps of Engineers is supporting recovery operations following Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse