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Chris Baraniuk
Just under 1 a. m. , the MV Dali, a giant container ship, quietly left Baltimore Harbor when something went extraordinarily wrong. Suddenly, the lights on the 300-meter-long ship went out. A moment later, the shipment began to veer to the right, toward one of the massive pylon-like supports of the Francis Scott Key Truss Bridge, a huge mass of metal and concrete that crosses the Patapsco River.
Dalí’s lamps went out for a moment. Then came the effect. The shipment sank into the support, and giant segments of the main segment of the bridge truss immediately broke off and fell into the river. It only took about twenty moments for the design to collapse.
Today, a major U. S. portIt is in disarray and several other people who were running across the bridge at the time of the collapse are missing. A rescue operation is underway. President Biden called the crisis a “terrible accident. “Lately, boat traffic has been blocked on both sides of the accident and a major highway through Baltimore has been cut off.
“It’s a terrible tragedy and nothing you ever expect to see,” says David Knight, a bridge expert and specialist adviser to the UK’s Institution of Civil Engineers. But commenting on the images of the bridge collapse, he said he wasn’t surprised along the way. The bridge collapsed.
Large metal designs may seem invulnerable, but metal, Knight says, is relatively soft for its size. Once it is propelled or pulled in the wrong direction with enough force, it can bend like paper. In this case, the Francis Scott Key Bridge was a “continuous” or seamless bridge that had a 366-meter-long central truss segment. (Truss bridges use metal beams arranged in a triangular shape for loading. )The central lattice was made up of 3 horizontal segments, called spans, with two sets of s supporting them over the water. It was the third largest design of its kind in the world.
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“When you remove a bracket, there’s very little solidity,” Knight says. “This will result, as you can see, in all 3 tranches. ” The separate technical sections remain standing. According to Knight, there is no immediate suggestion that there is a structural challenge with the bridge. An engineering firm, Hardesty
The immense strength of container shipments has an effect that shouldn’t be underestimated, Knight adds. Such shipments require a lot of force and time, perhaps several minutes, to come to a complete stop. The Francis Scott Key Bridge was completed in 1977 In recent decades, bridge engineers have typically incorporated fenders to reduce potential damage caused by shipping movements when bridges are built in similar locations, Knight says. These include, for example, hydraulic barriers and more concrete around the base of the bridge supports. However, even with such fortifications in place, strong movements can still cause devastating damage.
It’s unclear exactly why the lights were turned on and on on the Dali, a Singapore-flagged ship built in 2015. “It’s a sign of a huge problem,” says Salvatore Mercogliano, a maritime historian at Campbell University in North Carolina and a research YouTuber who analyzed the crash.
At the time of the accident, there were two pilots on board (sailors who board a ship to help it navigate rapid bodies of water, in and out of ports) from Baltimore. The Dali publicly relayed its position to the Automatic Identification System (AIS) and sailed at a speed of more than 8. 5 knots. It then slowed to about 6 knots moments before the crash, according to AIS data.
The pilots and all the crew members of the Dali are present. No injuries were reported, the ship’s control company, Synergy Group, said in a statement on March 26.
ABC News reports that the ship’s crew made a desperate plea in an attempt to warn transportation officials that the twist of fate was about to happen. A report by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, seen via ABC, said the Dali “lost propulsion” and that the team knew they had “lost control” of the ship. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore told reporters that thanks to the call for help, the government was able to stop traffic on the bridge, an intervention he said “saved lives. “
Mercogliano says it’s very tricky for shipments of this length to adjust their trajectories quickly. The video shows a sudden emission of smoke from the shipping funnel, indicating some change in engine activity. What’s really concerning is that, in this case, the shipment ends up sinking straight into one of the key deck supports, obviously off course. No details of why this happened have been made public.
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Photographs of what happened show the bow of the ship wedged under the fallen sections of the deck. The anchor chain is visible, meaning that at some point the anchor came loose, it is doubtful whether this happened before or after the impact. The chain seems to be tilted, however, which according to Mercogliano may simply be a sign that it dropped a while before the twist of fate and dragged for a brief moment.
James Turner, a lawyer at Quadrant Chambers in London, specialises, among other things, in maritime collisions. It states that on board such a merchant ship there would be no automated formula capable of avoiding impact. However, the radar data, the crew would have had access to AIS and visual observations.
But knowledge-gathering systems can now reveal exactly what happened. As with airplanes, advertising ships have knowledge and audio recorders on the bridge, which are a key source of data for investigators after the incident. “The captain presses a button, ensuring that the last two hours of audio recording are preserved, as well as all knowledge of other parts of the ship, such as the engine and steering, etc. ,” Turner says. “This can be downloaded and viewed. “
It adds that estimates of the ship’s speed at the time of the incident, recorded through AIS, are likely to be “99. 99% accurate. “
For now, the priority for first responders will be to locate survivors of the fallen bridge. Two other people were rescued, one of whom was hospitalized. Six staff members of the structure are still missing.
The crisis comes at a difficult time for shipping, with a drought plaguing the Panama Canal and Houthi attacks affecting several ships in the Red Sea in recent months. Somali piracy is also on the rise. The grounding of the Ever Given in the Suez Canal is still very recent: it happened just 3 years ago.
The Port of Baltimore insists that it has not been closed (road vehicles still operate at the port), but that all inbound and outbound maritime traffic is suspended until further notice. AIS data shows a dozen advertising vessels anchored outside the port. , whose front is now blocked by the damaged bridge and the Dali. The U. S. Army Corps of EngineersIt will take some time for the U. S. Army to remove metal parts from the river bridge, which pose a significant risk to passing ships.
“All the ships that are in the port are now blocked,” Mercogliano says, noting that Baltimore is a port in terms of car deliveries and coal exports.
Overall, he says, today’s maritime operations are incredibly safe; The volume and speed of the industry mean that when things go wrong, it can be especially serious.
“We’re moving goods much faster than ever before and there’s very little margin for error,” he says. “When there’s a mistake, the mistakes tend to be very big. “
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