Breaking News Francis Scott Key Bridge Collapses
- Thread starter Robovski
- Start date
49ersfootball
Well-known member
Not shocking that the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore faded from the headlines very quickly.
Lord Sovereign
The resident Britbong
I am surprised it is hard for a lot of people to believe “weird things happen.”
Planning for freak accidents is difficult because they are freak accidents. So so many things had to go wrong in a particular order for it to happen that the likelihood of it happening is practically improbable…but not impossible unfortunately.
Case in point: The Titanic Disaster.
Planning for freak accidents is difficult because they are freak accidents. So so many things had to go wrong in a particular order for it to happen that the likelihood of it happening is practically improbable…but not impossible unfortunately.
Case in point: The Titanic Disaster.
Agent23
Ни шагу назад!
The titanic happened because of incompetence, excessive hubris and idiot cost and corners cutting.
Lord Sovereign
The resident Britbong
The worst error made that day was the ship went too fast with ice in the vicinity. Even then, with the theory of a Cold Water mirage being in play, that makes the matter more difficult.
Everything else? Everything that could go wrong indeed went wrong. Just enough water-tight compartments were punctured for her to sink, and no other ship in the area could get to her in time. It was astonishingly bad luck, although some sailors would rumble that Titanic was doomed the moment she was deemed “unsinkable.”
Sailors are a superstitious lot. Sometimes I wonder, given how temperamental the sea is, if that isn’t warranted…
Agent23
Ни шагу назад!
The worst error?
Bruh, there were all sorts of design and construction problems, ranging from the quality of the steel and rivets used to the bulkhead doors not stopping water inflow.
And the lack of enough life boats...
Buba
A total creep
Meh.
Have the ship make 0,1% different speed and it will miss the iceberg by miles. Nothing happens ...
Same thing in Baltimore - as already stated by some Sage Member, have the engines stop a minute or two later or sooner = bridge intact.
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The workers that died make this a criminal matter, and there are going to be overlapping NTSB, FBI, and possibly Coast Guard investigations into this clusterfuck.
FBI opens criminal investigation into the ship crash that collapsed the Francis Scott Key Bridge
Multiple outlets are reporting that the FBI has opened a criminal investigation into the events surrounding the boat wreck that caused the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore a few weeks ago.notthebee.com
So the FBI is investigating.
Are we still under that retarded ass ruling that we aren't allowed to talk about how maybe there might have been foul play involved?
I expect negligence in the repairs or upkeep, is going to be the culprit. When power loss happens, it's usually cause something failed before it was expected to, or someone did something dumb. Story I heard was too many refridgerated containers for the power system to handle all the time in their current state, and they'd had power failures in port trying to stabilize the system.
I've watched enough Air Disasters to understand how the NTSB has to deal with issues where criminal liability may be involved.
Only reason it isn't worse is because the harbor pilot acted so fast to warn the harbor master to close the bridge.
Captain X
Well-known member
And I'm just appalled that the power line that ran parallel to the bridge had better protection from ship collision than the bridge did.
People get less upset about losing a bridge then they do about losing power in their own homes. The former is a inconvenience the later is very much your present problem.
49ersfootball
Well-known member
Guessing the investigation still ongoing
Good news that some of the mid-sized cargo vessels are now able to enter and exit Balitmore Harbor once again.
IIRC, they have a safe channel now that can handle 30 foot draft vessels, which opens up a lot more ability to move ships in and out.
The MV Dali has been refloated and moved from the main shipping channel this morning. Certain pundits whining that the Chinese could clear the channel in weeks but the U.S. will take months can eat their words now.
Timelapse: Key Bridge Response Unified Command Moves M/V DALI
Timelapse: Key Bridge Response Unified Command Moves M/V DALI
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Though it has been almost 2 months now. Though I wasn't expecting much more myself.
It was also done safely and not in a way causing MORE damage
It's seven weeks, which while *technically* almost months, clearly goes against what these pundits (and the Sietchers citing them) were claiming.
I'm not really arguing the time with you, just stating what they'll say is, "It took longer than a month, so it was months to fix."
To me, what matters is how long it takes to get that bridge up again and operational along with the waterway.
In addition, the preliminary NTSB report was released one week ago. The short version:
1. There were actually two pilots on board, an apprentice and a master. The apprentice pilot had control at the time the emergency started, but was quickly relieved by the master once the emergency began.
2. The fatalities were six out of eight workers who were on the bridge at the time of the collision. One survivor was an inspector who was on foot and was able to run to the next truss section of the bridge prior to the collision. The other survivor was a worker who was able to free himself from his vehicle after it fell with the bridge and was picked up by the responding police boat.
3. The initial power failure was caused by two of the ship's four main electrical breakers unexpectedly tripping. The ship has four diesel generators that are configured as port and starboard pairs cross-linked by a high-voltage bus bar and then stepped down to a low voltage circuit by dual step-down transfomers, also cross-linked by a low-voltage bus bar. In normal operation, both the HV and LV bus bars are closed and only one generator pair and one transformer are active, leaving the other set as a redundant backup. At the time of the incident, the #3 and #4 generators were active, as was the starboard transformer.
4. The breakers which tripped were on *both* sides of the active transformer, one on the high voltage side and one on the low voltage side. This meant that the two active generators were still feeding the high voltage circuit via the HV bus bar crossover, but the low voltage circuit went offline. This cut electrical power to most of the ship's systems, including the main engine cooling pumps and all three steering pumps. This froze the rudder and forced the automatic safety systems to trigger a shutdown of the main engine.
5. Within no more than one minute, the emergency generator (which is a fifth independent generator) had automatically started, restoring power to critical ship systems, including one steering pump. This restored partial rudder authority, but the emergency generator does not produce sufficient power for a main engine restart. Per the NTSB it is not clear exactly how long it took the e-generator to fire up and connect itself, but it was at most one minute as this is when the bridge logging instruments turned back on.
6. The apprentice pilot, having been relieved of piloting duty, used his cell phone to call the pilot dispatcher. The dispatcher in turn called the port police emergency line, who activated the Coast Guard response and also called the police already in position on the bridge due to the ongoing maintenance.
7. The master pilot ordered 20 degrees port rudder as soon as rudder authority was restored, radioed for emergency tugs thirty seconds later as it became clear that the limited rudder available was not sufficient, and then ordered a manual anchor drop thirty seconds after that.
8. The crew subsequently restored full power by closing the two tripped breakers, bringing the LV circuit back online. However, a *second* blackout then occurred as the #3 and #4 generator breakers now tripped, dropping both the HV and LV circuits offline. The emergency generator remained active, and the #2 main generator was automatically switched from standby to active, restoring power on the HV circuit. Approximately thirty seconds later, the crew manually closed the breakers to the *other* transformer, bringing the LV circuit back online. However, the ship did not regain propulsion and hit the bridge.
9. Preliminary post-accident investigation results are that there had been a previous electrical issue while the ship was in port, but it was a generator issue rather than a breaker issue. Also, fuel testing shows that there was no issue with the ship's fuel.
1. There were actually two pilots on board, an apprentice and a master. The apprentice pilot had control at the time the emergency started, but was quickly relieved by the master once the emergency began.
2. The fatalities were six out of eight workers who were on the bridge at the time of the collision. One survivor was an inspector who was on foot and was able to run to the next truss section of the bridge prior to the collision. The other survivor was a worker who was able to free himself from his vehicle after it fell with the bridge and was picked up by the responding police boat.
3. The initial power failure was caused by two of the ship's four main electrical breakers unexpectedly tripping. The ship has four diesel generators that are configured as port and starboard pairs cross-linked by a high-voltage bus bar and then stepped down to a low voltage circuit by dual step-down transfomers, also cross-linked by a low-voltage bus bar. In normal operation, both the HV and LV bus bars are closed and only one generator pair and one transformer are active, leaving the other set as a redundant backup. At the time of the incident, the #3 and #4 generators were active, as was the starboard transformer.
4. The breakers which tripped were on *both* sides of the active transformer, one on the high voltage side and one on the low voltage side. This meant that the two active generators were still feeding the high voltage circuit via the HV bus bar crossover, but the low voltage circuit went offline. This cut electrical power to most of the ship's systems, including the main engine cooling pumps and all three steering pumps. This froze the rudder and forced the automatic safety systems to trigger a shutdown of the main engine.
5. Within no more than one minute, the emergency generator (which is a fifth independent generator) had automatically started, restoring power to critical ship systems, including one steering pump. This restored partial rudder authority, but the emergency generator does not produce sufficient power for a main engine restart. Per the NTSB it is not clear exactly how long it took the e-generator to fire up and connect itself, but it was at most one minute as this is when the bridge logging instruments turned back on.
6. The apprentice pilot, having been relieved of piloting duty, used his cell phone to call the pilot dispatcher. The dispatcher in turn called the port police emergency line, who activated the Coast Guard response and also called the police already in position on the bridge due to the ongoing maintenance.
7. The master pilot ordered 20 degrees port rudder as soon as rudder authority was restored, radioed for emergency tugs thirty seconds later as it became clear that the limited rudder available was not sufficient, and then ordered a manual anchor drop thirty seconds after that.
8. The crew subsequently restored full power by closing the two tripped breakers, bringing the LV circuit back online. However, a *second* blackout then occurred as the #3 and #4 generator breakers now tripped, dropping both the HV and LV circuits offline. The emergency generator remained active, and the #2 main generator was automatically switched from standby to active, restoring power on the HV circuit. Approximately thirty seconds later, the crew manually closed the breakers to the *other* transformer, bringing the LV circuit back online. However, the ship did not regain propulsion and hit the bridge.
9. Preliminary post-accident investigation results are that there had been a previous electrical issue while the ship was in port, but it was a generator issue rather than a breaker issue. Also, fuel testing shows that there was no issue with the ship's fuel.
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It doesn't sound like the crew did anything wrong here, nor was the ship badly designed. It *does* have substantial redundancies (quite a bit more robust than a sodding cruise ship!) and backup systems appear to have worked as intended. The ship only needs one of its four generators running to support the cooling and lubrication pumps for the main engine, but the main engine requires compressed-air injection to start up and that is not a fast process.
If the ship's entire electrical system was online at the time of the incident (all four generators and both HV-to-LV transformers), neither set of breaker trips would have caused any issue. However, this was not standard operating procedure; the standard operating procedure is that two generators and one transformer are active at a time (generally switching off periodically to even out wear), with a third generator on standby plus the automatic emergency generator.
If the ship's entire electrical system was online at the time of the incident (all four generators and both HV-to-LV transformers), neither set of breaker trips would have caused any issue. However, this was not standard operating procedure; the standard operating procedure is that two generators and one transformer are active at a time (generally switching off periodically to even out wear), with a third generator on standby plus the automatic emergency generator.
Lord Sovereign
The resident Britbong
As I somewhat expected.
A freak accident through and through. These things happen unfortunately.
A freak accident through and through. These things happen unfortunately.