Disaster "Mass casualty incident" declared after Key Bridge in Baltimore collapses

No article yet as this just happened, but could be big. One of the largest bridges in the world according to Wikipedia.

https://foxbaltimore.com/news/local/breaking-news-key-bridge-collapsed

 

[Montalbane]

Alleged photo of the captain who allegedly radioed "Pasta la vista" to harbor control before starting a fire on board.

 

[Dick Mason]

I can't decide which direction to go with the jokes. There's just so much there.

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-us-canada-68663071

The Baltimore fire chief says: "I can tell you our sonar has detected the presence of vehicles submerged in the water", but adds that he can't confirm a number yet.

He says the crew are still onboard the ship. "We are in communication with the Coast Guard", he adds.

Police have been told that some workers are still on the bridge, but that they are yet to confirm this.

The press officer handling communications for Synergy Marine Group, which operated the vessel that crashed into the bridge, tells the BBC it was an all-Indian crew with 22 people on board.

This is going to be a bad week to be an Indian on the internet. /pol/ is going to rip into them heavy. They're going to be memed into the being at fault even if not (who knows the reality yet).'

A Singapore-based shipping expert who has sailed cargo ships through Baltimore’s port many times has been speaking with the BBC.
“The vessel had just departed from berth and made a turn before hitting the bridge”.
Having seen the footage, he has said there were a few possible causes:

1. Main engine failure
2. Steering failure
3. Generator blackout
4. Possibility of pilot/human error

“It’s an unusual turn. Before a ship departs, we are supposed to carry out all the checks on all elements of the vessel before it departs. It’s part of the departure checklist. So, if everything was done, something was obviously overlooked,” he says, speaking on the basis of anonymity.
“These ships are so huge that even if the speed is slow, the momentum would be huge,” he adds.
He questions when the last structural check of the bridge was carried out. “Having a port right next to the bridge with ships going underneath it all the time – it should have been checked often,” he says.

View attachment 5850355

Some aerial footage going around.

And some people were boggling how a ship could take down a large bridge - conspiracy, it must be! Look at that fat bastard! That could take down the twin towers, that could take down Andre the Giant, that could take down my ex-wife after a day at Old Country Buffet. That bridge is balsawood plank compared to that hefty bugger.

 

[Dracula's Spirit Animal]

Does it legally matter if there's a pilot on board. When that ship blocked the Suez canal a couple of years ago, the captain copped all the blame even though he had a very expensive pilot on board. Egyptian law said that the captain was responsible and that the pilot is there merely to advise.

Why is everyone saying it sank. It's clearly still there in the middle of picture on the live stream.

The captain is fucked no matter what if it wasn't some mechanical/electrical issue (even then, he might be). But depending on jurisdiction and the behaviour of the harbour pilot, he may only get something minimal like 10 years. I'm assuming there was a harbour pilot aboard, but if there wasn't, he will get life... They are both fucked in this situation, and neither one of them will ever be in charge of so much as a rubber ducky in the future.

There's some Greek (iirc) captain who followed an official TTS and ended up grounding on a silt build up that was on no charts. Nobody was even injured. He's got life imprisonment in Turkey over it.

 

[Dicksmash Turbofist]

Business’s were already fleeing Baltimore the past few years, nobodies going to want to deal with the traffic nightmare this will create and just accelerate flight even more. Baltimore is even more doomed.

Don't shed a tear for Baltimore. The city government has been deeply corrupt for decades and entire sections of the city are an abandoned industrial wasteland. The only "nice" parts of the city are the Jewish communities and inner harbor, the latter is often visited by local neighbors that shit up the place.

The inner harbor tunnel is going to be even more unbearable to drive through, so we might see more people commuting into the city via the light rail.

 

[CHARizard]

Some aerial footage going around.

 

[CowPox]

I bet Biden is going to ignore this like he ignored the train derailment in East Palestine.

How tragic and utterly depressing and worst, I have to watch the BBC because American morning news is full of the usual bullshit feel good entertainment. Unreal, and totally dystopian.


Imagine assuming those "white nationalists" can actually follow a plan without devolving into a purity spiral. Good plan, tho. A religious org can do what you suggested.

I support cults forming in ghettos.

 

[The Gene Genie]

The captain is fucked no matter what if it wasn't some mechanical/electrical issue (even then, he might be). But depending on jurisdiction and the behaviour of the harbour pilot, he may only get something minimal like 10 years. I'm assuming there was a harbour pilot aboard, but if there wasn't, he will get life... They are both fucked in this situation, and neither one of them will ever be in charge of so much as a rubber ducky in the future.

There's some Greek (iirc) captain who followed an official TTS and ended up grounding on a silt build up that was on no charts. Nobody was even injured. He's got life imprisonment in Turkey over it.

When it comes out, I imagine the main responsibility the captain and the company will face is whatever mechanical issue led to the power failure. To put it really simply, these things don't "just happen." If there's a power failure on the ship, there's a long chain of material deficiencies and ignored warning signs of the ship's ability. For what's good for him, the captain ought to have made a big fucking deal about all of this and the company was the one who told him to stuff it and get on with it and he got that response in writing. Else, the company will toss him and the First Mate and the Chief Engineer under the bus.

 

[IKOL]

Fucking terrifying sight.
Also, I know it's not the time for memetics, BUT

Obligatory "X must go" meme.

 

[Pierre D'Olnique]

Kikepedia kicks off the death toll with 10 casualties. No sources provided. Some news sites claim 7+ people were reported missing and two were pulled out of the water in serious condition.

edit: reverted already.

 

[AN/ALR56]

Ah america, where it funds top dollar infrastructure, free education,security, and healthcare everywhere else but it in its own soil because reasons, and both democrats and republicans seriously believe it can't be done.

I need not to remind, that whoever was at the helm isn't responsible, yes he is a fucking moron, but bridges shouldn't collapse entirely specially ones in a harbor against a ship slowly moving.

Bridges are supposed to collapse in stages, not all sections at basically the same time, there are bridges in Vietnam who got bombed for 7 years straight and remained operational, the Crimean bridge had a truck full of explosives blow off a section of it, but it was quickly rebuilt.


I'm a engineering student, this shit screams either poor upkeep or poor design who doesn't account for redundancies, which is a e key aspect of civil engineering.

 

[Dracula's Spirit Animal]

No. He will get less time than Derek Chauvin did, if anything.

Having spent years working on those ships, the video footage immediately suggested that the ship had lost power - from that huge smoke cloud, I speculate that it was a fuelling issue and they were trying to run on bunker fuel as a backup.

Maybe. If it's a mechanical/electrical failure of some kind he might not be completely fucked, but even then, he's likely going to be half fucked. I can buy the bunker fuel theory, though. The smoke plume shows there was definitely a fuel issue going on.

 

[Dog-O-Tron 5000v5.0]

https://governor.maryland.gov/news/press/pages/governor-moore-statement-on-the-collapse-of-the-francis-scott-key-bridge.aspx

https://archive.ph/r04dC

Oh good Mayor Bootyjuice is on the case.

 

[dustbuster]

Maybe. If it's a mechanical/electrical failure of some kind he might not be completely fucked

Captains are responsible for the condition of their vessels.

Oh good Mayor Bootyjuice is on the case.

The liar claims he's in communication with Buttplug, but Buttplug has never been reachable for anything but buying babies.

 

[Corn Syrup Connoisseur]

Vessel tracking of the incident.
You can see harbor tug boats helping it turn and then leaving.

Edit: Might also be a harbor pilot doing the turn and then leaving on one of those 2 boats.

 

[TJT]

Little ignorance here when it comes to maritime piloting.

The ship crew are Indians or whatever but when you pilot into a harbor like this a local pilot is brought onboard to do it. So it may well be a diversity hire.

 

[CHARizard]

Another picture I havnt seen yet, also this guy brings up Amazon, totally forgot theres a major distribution center in Baltimore. Will be interesting to see if that affects east coast deliveries at all.

https://archive.ph/VpfI0

We've just been hearing from Baltimore officials, following news that a major bridge in the Maryland city has collapsed. Here's a round-up of what they said:

• Baltimore City Fire Department Chief Wallace said that at around 01:50 local time, the first emergency units arrived to a completely collapsed bridge
• Wallace said it became clear that there were people in the water and two have been rescued so far, one is in a very serious condition
• Mayor of Baltimore Brandon Scott described the incident as an "unthinkable tragedy" and that his office was working with every part of government to "get through this tragedy"
• He added that officials were investigating whether there was a possible oil spill in the river
• The fire chief said "there is absolutely no indication this is terrorism"

 

[Cybertonia]

I'm a engineering student, this shit screams either poor upkeep or poor design who doesn't account for redundancies, which is a e key aspect of civil engineering.

If you're an engineering student and you can't understand the mechanics of this bridge collapse, then maybe you should probably stay in school for a few more years, or consider a switch to b school.

 

[Dracula's Spirit Animal]

Captains are responsible for the condition of their vessels.

Yes. However, that might affect any sentencing. Hence me saying "half fucked".

Who knows for sure at this point, though. There could have been some completely unforeseeable issue which arose, with everything being properly maintained and managed. I doubt it, but maybe.

 

[Safir]

The communists have regulated things so badly.

Get ultra raped, capitalist pedophile. Capitalist solzhenitsyns can't help but lie, it's in the name.

My dad was serving in the army at the time of the USSR's biggest similar disaster and had to collect the corpses. The catastrophe wasn't caused by regulation, it was caused by the first mate being a faggot and reading books on the job.

The bridge shaved the top deck off the ship and smeared the people on it (there was a party) into paste.

There was a train on the bridge at the time. The bridge held. The train didn't fall off (although it got derailed).

This is because Soviet bridges were built according to Soviet regulations, to withstand a nuclear war, and capitalist bridges are built to capitalist regulations to save money for yachts and child prostitutes.

Capitalist deregulation started with Gorby (and immediately caused another maritime disaster).

 

[The Gene Genie]

Vessel tracking of the incident.
You can see harbor tug boats helping it turn and then leaving.
View attachment 5850381
Edit: Might also be a harbor pilot doing the turn and then leaving on one of those 2 boats.

The harbor tugs are helping it spin around from wherever it was moored up at. It probably has no thrusters and it can't make the turn itself. That's normal.

The course at the end looks like how I'd expect a catastrophic failure of power to go. They made a course correction to go through the middle at at that last moment suffered whatever failure they did, and it was too late to do anything except hope no one was on that bridge.