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

Featured on Mar 26, 2024 by Null: The Francis Scott Key bridge, an important part of the Baltimore-D.C. I-695 Beltway, has collapsed after being impacted by a Singaporean cargo ship manned by a crew of 22 Indians.
No article yet as this just happened, but could be big. One of the largest bridges in the world according to Wikipedia.


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Stan said:
Fwiw I don't think the "third worlders" have a poor safety culture because they're being lazy and negligent, I think their planes and boats are in crappy condition because it's the best they can get their hands on, and transportation is a necessity.
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Explain why the same people have shitty safety culture when given the resources required.

Third-worlders have zero concept of safety. Maybe it's lack of training. Maybe it's a lack of awareness. Whatever it is, third-worlders aren't as safe as first-worlders. Fact,
 
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Otterly said:
wonder how they will go about clearing it so they can reopen the channel fully? Presumably they will have to chop up the spans and move them, and parts are above and parts below the water. It’ll be interesting seeing how they approach it. Just chop it up and haul it out the way then chop it up smaller and take it out? What kind of kit is needed to do that kind of metalwork under water? Presumably a big payday for the commercial divers.
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Thermal lances will cut steel under water. One of the larger A-frame barges will do the heavy lifts. Despite, the name, Left Coast Lifter is sitting(for sale) somewhere on the East Coast currently. There will be several smaller crane barges for utility lifts. For the really unstable sections they may cripple members with torches or lances and complete the cut with explosively formed cutting charges.
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Left Coast Lifter and friends
RodgerDodger said:
No Data Recorders stop when power goes out. It's the same in planes.
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I thought FDRs still record control inputs after power loss.
BulletSpongeRTR said:
That would be completely safe if it was diesel.
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Only if you are 1000% sure no one has ever been dumb and put gasoline or kerosene in the tank.
RodgerDodger said:
They've really allowed lithium batteries in airplanes permanently in the recorders? Why not soak them in gasoline while they're at it?
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The FAA gave Boeing a waiver to use LiPos for the system batteries in the 787 until the expected thing happened repeatedly.
 
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My local news (that is on the other side of the country from Baltimore and there are no major bridges in the area) tried to run a story on how they could “relate” to the bridge collapse, so they decided to talk to some state department of transportation engineers for an answer on how we could make our bridges safer.

And to sum up a short article, they said, “give us more money and we can build better infrastructure.”

Which if you’ve ever talked to a civil engineer about work, is basically their answer to any complaint. I personally laughed out loud at it.
 
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In two weeks from now, people will have forgotten about this and move onto the next big news story of the day. It's all stretched out and exaggerated. It's not the first time this happened and it's not even the worse bridge collapse incident in the US. The 1980's Sunshine Skyway Bridge south span collapse in Florida which killed 35 people (same incident; a cargo ship rammed a support column) was far deadlier. Same goes for the Silver Bridge in West Virginia/Ohio in 1967 that killed 46 people or the 2007 i35 bridge collapse in Mississippi. The only major blow is that it served as an economic artery for both maritime trade and a logistical bypass of Baltimore City for truckers and ordinary travelers to the NE corridor coming in from the South, thus its a major priority
But unlike those two incidents, where knowledge of the event would've been from a newspaper or Walter Cronkite on CBS Evening News and then shared with a coworker, at the bar, with a relative or friend, we now live in the era of social media where every single midwit from all four corners of the world gets to give their own say in the matter. Whether its a schizophrenic on /x/ or /pol/ who believe there's no such thing as human error and it was some overly complex domino effect by an internal cabal, a Chicken Little with a folder of apples and oranges to pursue their hellbent agenda, a NEET with zero life experiences giving hindsight engineering advice, a panic driven mother on facebook indulging how she lectures her grown children not to take bridges anymore, the ever so insightful youtuber/instagramer saying "wow, I was brought from *current topic* to this video/picture, really makes me think :(" or the historical illiterate buffoon making false equivalences of a bridge of 8,636ft that was used by 12,000,000 vehicles per year (34000 vehicles per day which can range between average car weight of 4,000lbs to a loaded semi-truck of 80,000lbs) to random unspecified 100-3000ft Roman Bridge designed specifically for foot soldiers and horses.
The internet truly is a magnificent curse upon humanity.

Edit: And I suppose 6 immigrant hispanic workers being killed is unfortunate, if not for the fact that each year 700+ die from worker related accidents in the US.
Deaths among foreign-born Hispanic or Latino workers increased 42.0 percent from 512 in 2011 to 727 in 2021, the highest level on record. This group’s working population increased 16.7 percent over the same period. The second largest increase in foreign-born worker fatalities from 2011 to 2021 was among non-Hispanic Asians, who had a 40.2-percent increase in deaths but a 30.8-percent increase in the employed population.
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I'm sure everyone in the US has seen your typical hispanic laborer on top of a roof without a safety harness doing repairs on the verge of falling off and snapping their neck once in their life
 
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Salvage deets: Resolve Marine handling ship salvage. Donjon Marine for the bridge in navigable waters. It sounds like Skanska is doing bridge work outside the scope of Army Corps of Engineers work through Donjon.
No Smit Salvage kino I guess :(
 
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I think the people harping on about muh 6 are missing the point. If you’re miles away maybe it seems exaggerated, but I’m already exhausted thinking about how this is going to impact the area economically, to say nothing of the traffic. The competency crisis has arrived at our doorstep in a severe way, in the form of a twisted hunk of steel at the bottom of the bay that I can see out the window as we speak. It’s going to affect us for a while.
 
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Just realized that this was the Frances Scott Key bridge so...

Jose can you see, that bridge pylon there?
What so hardly we did poo on, at the twilight's last gleaming!
Whose cheap beams and poor craft through the perilous city!
O're the Mc Donalds we did watch, were so gallantly falling!
And the Spanish loud screams, curry shit in the water!
Gave proof through the night, that our bridge was not there!

O say does that spic yet fall?
O're the land of the niggers, and the home of the gay!
 
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