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

 

[FrancineCansMcGee]

Sped up the footage of the collision.

View attachment 5850191

Looks like there was less traffic at the moment of collapse than in the preceding minutes. Lots of travelers may have been lucky enough to just miss it.

 

[Dick Mason]

https://x.com/andersen7474/status/1772530001209930229

In the face of this tragedy Ukraine stands in solidarity with its most cherished Pindostani allies.

 

[AssignedEva]

Sped up the footage of the collision.

It's a miracle there was a lull in the traffic like that. Terrible for the construction workers though

 

[make_it_so]

Sped up the footage of the collision.

View attachment 5850191

Big rig driver who makes it across the bridge at the 52 second mark is officially the luckiest man in Baltimore right now.

 

[CHARizard]

I'm in the Bay Area and I feel this so hard. I do not like crossing those things.

And I've often thought that one would be fairly easy to totally block (in Railroad Tycoon). But cutting off port access never occurred to me.

Seems like it would be fairly easy for a sand rowdy to hijack one in port in the middle of the night.

My noggin is joggin here.

The bay bridge could have been worse. It’s THE way to get from the western shore to the eastern shore, all other routes take 3+hours, this cuts that down to 15 minutes.

This bridge is south in the Chesapeake bay, so the ship would have crossed under it before reaching the key bridge. I think this incident was an accident because of that.

The bay bridge is probably the better target. You can cut off huge amounts of infrastructure. Hell it fucking closes and shuts down eastern Maryland multiple times a month because of a car accident.

 

[KiwiFuzz2]

Question: was it entering the port or leaving the port?

Looks to me like it was leaving but other people might know the geography better.

 

[HTTP Error 404]

They're either going to try and get it rebuilt within five years so they can get some pictures of black people and women (and probably even black women) at the groundbreaking ceremony and brag about "how strong we are when we come together as Americans" or just never rebuild it so when someone asks "where does that road go?" you have to say "oh there used to be a bridge there but now it's gone and you have to drive through the city because fuck you."

If it's Trump they will ABSOLUTELY slow walk it, hoping that they'll get someone in 2028 that they can instead give "credit" to fixing it. If it's Biden they'll do whatever they fucking can to have SOMETHING to photograph before the 2028 elections.

And yeah, expect this to cost a billion or two to replace and take an ungodly amount of time, mostly wasted time. Any fish in that water? That's $100,000,000 Fish Sensitivity Study right off the top, for example.

 

[Second Sun]

Question: was it entering the port or leaving the port?

Looks to me like it was leaving but other people might know the geography better.

Leaving, headed to Sri Lanka.

I still haven't seen any confirmation one way or another if it should have had tugs or a local pilot on board while heading out.

 

[CHARizard]

I’m surprised the mayor announced he was going to visit the accident site. Asshole didn’t do shit for the 30 person mass casualty shooting last year besides deploying his “peace mobile”.

 

[ddlloo]

I’m surprised the mayor announced he was going to visit the accident site. Asshole didn’t do shit for the 30 person mass casualty shooting last year besides deploying his “peace mobile”.

Yeah but this will affect business interests, which are far more important that lives.

 

[CHARizard]

And yeah, expect this to cost a billion or two to replace and take an ungodly amount of time, mostly wasted time. Any fish in that water? That's $100,000,000 Fish Sensitivity Study right off the top, for example.

I get the trepidation on the environmental studies but the Chesapeake bay is extremely valuable to the state.

Maryland is known as a blue collar state to most but they actually have a huge fishing industry. Blue crabs are sacred here, many people rely on them. Pollution is a huge concern for anyone that works with oysters and crabs, because it affects the years harvest.

Hopefully the ship wasn’t carrying fish poison and the cleanup is minimal.

 

[glass_houses]

Looks like there was less traffic at the moment of collapse than in the preceding minutes. Lots of travelers may have been lucky enough to just miss it.

The timing of it is either amazing or disastrous, depending on your point of view. Fortunate that it happened late at night when the bridge was relatively unpopulated. Unfortunate, because during daylight, people would have been able to see the whopping great chunk of metal that the harbour master couldn't pick up on all their multiple electronic monitoring systems.

 

[ZipDisk]

There was at least one tractor trailer on the bridge that went in.

I hate that the BBC is the source with the best updates on this story, everyone else is literally copying their homework and screenshots.
Like, I get that everyone was asleep when this went down, but you'd think every newsroom on the eastern seaboard would be waking up their desk jockeys to get into the studio nowish.

 

[Gravityqueen4life]

 

[dustbuster]

The bay bridge could have been worse. It’s THE way to get from the western shore to the eastern shore, all other routes take 3+hours, this cuts that down to 15 minutes.

Getting across the bay bridge in 15 minutes is a child's fantasy unless you're high at 3 am.

You can route around via the San Mateo bridge for the east bay and Golden Gate for the north bay.
The difference is roughly 1 hour to detour because everything is a parking lot anyway.

I hate that the BBC is the source with the best updates on this story

This happened as the UK was waking up, and everyone is still a fucking sleep on the east coast except the garbage men.

Took 5 years to build this bridge in the 70s. How long will it take to rebuild it?
View attachment 5850155
It also cost $60.3 million dollars to build it ($308,789,732.67 when adjusted for inflation)
How much will it cost to rebuild it?

Source for everything: Some guys highway history website

The source of cost for these major city bridges is communism and corruption.
The latest bridge project of this type was a rebuild of the bay bridge at 6.5 BILLION. ($6,500,000,000)
They had to bring in a Chinese firm because the USA didn't produce enough steel.
After it was done, there was a multi-billion-dollar retrofit because every bolt was substandard.

The bridges were much cheaper in the mid-century even adjusted for inflation because we had fucking domestic industry and no EPA.

 

[ZipDisk]

The Beeb woke up a US Civil Engineer and asked him how this happened, he says the supports may as well have been cardboard up against the mass of that fukken ship.

Dustbuster, multiple locations call themselves "the bay"

 

[Iron Jaguar]

Big rig driver who makes it across the bridge at the 52 second mark is officially the luckiest man in Baltimore right now.

Yeah but he's still in Baltimore.

 

[Pierre D'Olnique]

Sped up the footage of the collision.

View attachment 5850191

I don't see any cars on the bridge shortly before it collapses. The last two manage to escape by the skin of their teeth. I really hope this means someone was on the ball and issued a warning to prevent new vehicles from entering.

 

[Dick Mason]

Question: was it entering the port or leaving the port?

Looks to me like it was leaving but other people might know the geography better.

Supposedly one of those ship tracking sites has its route active even after the ship hit. The site for that I tried required payment, and I didn't look further.

 

[CHARizard]