Breaking News Francis Scott Key Bridge Collapses

Bacle said:

Yeah, and that is something the Coasties and NTSB are likely to cite them for; the pilot having to use his cell phone to do this is not how things are supposed to operate.

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The Whispering Monk said:

My bet is that this will come down to the owner not wanting to stop earning money by hauling cargo for the time and money it would take to bring the vessels power systems up to spec.

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Lord Sovereign said:

Having read into it a little more…I’m not sure if a more well supported bridge would have had any luck either.

The vessel that hit it was a fifty thousand tonner. She’s ten thousand tons heavier than a Bismarck class battleship, so enormous damage was going to be done either way.

And by the sounds of it, the crew didn’t even fuck up. The Captain responded to the situation in a heartbeat and probably saved lives, but the power had gone out in basically the worst possible place and time; there was nothing they could do.

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The Whispering Monk said:

There may have been other means of communication. Pilot's cell could have been the surest way of talking to the port master.

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Bacle said:

Yeah, and that is something the Coasties and NTSB are likely to cite them for; the pilot having to use his cell phone to do this is not how things are supposed to operate

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ShadowArxxy said:

I'd venture a guess that the pilot was thinking fast and whipped out his cell phone for an emergency call while the emergency generators were firing up and he didn't have the ship radios back yet.



It's a bizarre jerk move to try to blame him for doing something that was directly responsible for saving dozens to hundreds of lives.

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Bacle said:

It's not that I 'blame' the pilot for anything, not at all.

It's more about the ship not having a battery power handleheld radio in the bridge for him to use instead of his cell phone.

The pilot did everything right, with what tools he had on hand; it's just the ship probably should have had a handheld battery-powered radio for him to use instead.

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ShadowArxxy said:

Battery operated handheld marine radios are too short range to be relied on even for just in-harbor communications. There's a reason even small powerboats and sailboats have a full size mounted marine radio unit.

The ship already has multiple levels of useful redundancy in the form of actual backup generators for its on-board electrical systems. Adding a dubious extra layer that's more likely to *waste precious time* than accomplish anything is not a step forward.

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The Whispering Monk said:

My bet is that this will come down to the owner not wanting to stop earning money by hauling cargo for the time and money it would take to bring the vessels power systems up to spec.

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Zachowon said:

Depends on the radio, thw size of the antenna, frequency.
You can have battery powered radio that reach easy from ship to shore, and from ship for miles.
Battery isn't small, and wouldn't necessarily be handheld.
SINCGARS radios for instance are battery operated.

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Bacle said:

...wait, the handleheld's are too weak to even reach from ship to shore in the harbor reliably?

That's not what I thought the situation was.

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Scottty said:

For receiving radio signals, I think it's antenna size that's the big deal.
Transmission on the other hand? Power becomes much more important.

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ShadowArxxy said:

On paper, a handheld 5-watt marine radio can reach up to 15-20 miles. In practice, it’s reliable for a mile or so, but in a big high traffic harbor it’s at serious risk of being drowned out by the numerous big ship radios transmitting on the same frequency bands.

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ShadowArxxy said:

I'd venture a guess that the pilot was thinking fast and whipped out his cell phone for an emergency call

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Bacle said:

Ah shit, this is going to make salvage way more complicated, if there is actually a gas pipeline underneath everything.

All the salvage efforts are paused till the evaluate how to safely remove the ship and debris without damaging the pipeline, which has been depressurized for obvious reasons.

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S'task said:

So... to me this is like when people from the northern US blame Virginia, Maryland, and DC for shutting down when they get more than six inches of snow.

What do I mean? Yes, the Mid-Atlantic states totally COULD put more money into building and maintaining supplies, employees, and vehicle fleet required to keep the DC Metro region open when we get greater amounts of snowfall. The region ain't poor after all, and when we have a snowy winter and the government and schools end up spending weeks shut down over a few months it seems really silly that they don't.

But then, the average amount of annual snowfall is around 15 inches spread over six months (November, December, January, February, March, and April)... that averages to less than 3 inches per month, and while yes, you'd be right that most snowfall is concentrated in Winter proper (late December to early March) and grant only 3 inches to the months outside of that three month period... that leads to an average of... 4 inches per month. Well below six inches of snowfall. Thus why maintain the resources needed for more than that?*

In other words, what I'm saying is yes, in hindsight it's likely they COULD have done more to secure the bridge; however, the how likely they would NEEDING such expensive engineering reinforcement was likely deemed too low of a chance based on the past history of the bridge and Maritime use of Baltimore (which, bear in mind, has been a port since the COLONIAL PERIOD). Thus based on the history and experience of things they had no expectation that such a black swan event was likely to happen and so the expense of such upgrades was likely discarded. Yes, technically, they took a gamble, but they were gambling against a boat rolling a series of Nat 1s that most folks would dismiss as probable.

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* Another factor to consider for this is snowfall in the region, based on the over 30 years I've lived there is that snowfall tends to either be light and under six inches, or be end of days blizzards that dump feet of snow and ice in such a rapid period that even more northern cities would shut down due to them... with little in between.

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Zachowon said:

Emergency bands and Morse code on the carrier wave are often good alternatives. Most ports should have a line receiving then just in case.

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ShadowArxxy said:

That is unfortunately out of date. No one monitors for Morse code emergency transmissions any more, not even on the 500 MHz long range international distress band. It's been entirely replaced by GMDSS: the SOLAS rules were amended in 1988 to require all vessels under SOLAS to carry GMDSS equipment from then on, and U.S. laws were amended in 1996 to allow all U.S. flagged vessels to forego carrying Morse Code equipment entirely as long as they had GMDSS instead.

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Zachowon said:

But a Carrier wave is so much easier to transmit no matter what, and can go so far.

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ShadowArxxy said:

Sure, that's why they were used back in the day. But technology has moved on, and GMDSS has major advantages.

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