PsihoKekec
Swashbuckling Accountant
Most likely culprit is poor maintenance and lack of training for the crew, which is very much a common thing these days.
Breaking News Francis Scott Key Bridge Collapses
- Thread starter Robovski
- Start date
There's already two Army Corps of Engineers ships on site: the hydrographic survey vessel Catlett and the debris clearing ship Reynolds. Both are normally assigned to the Baltimore region.
Duplicate thread merged
Carrot of Truth
War is Peace
So apparently a freighter crashed into the Francis Scott Key bridge and some are now saying this may be a cyberattack or possibly a result of DEI hiring practices.
DEI Hiring Practices on a Singapore-flagged container ship?
I mean, chances are most of the crew is brown people by default already...
EDIT: The two Harbor Pilots are from Maryland. Both graduated from maritime schools. That's probably the only chance of "DEI" infesting things.
I mean, chances are most of the crew is brown people by default already...
EDIT: The two Harbor Pilots are from Maryland. Both graduated from maritime schools. That's probably the only chance of "DEI" infesting things.
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Anyways the one channel I watch on rare occassion for commercial shipping news in the YouTube channel 'Whats Going On With Shipping' by Sal Mercogliano.
He did a time lapse of the collision and offered his commentary on it.
Recently he did a livestream with another Commercial Ship Captain and Maritime Journalist named John Konrad.
There they discuss things and answer questions like why weren't tugboats there, how come the ship didn't sound its horn, and discussed things like the potential of cyberwarfare being involved etc as well as how vulnerable bridges actually are to ship impacts and the lack of capability of domestic naval salvage.
He did a time lapse of the collision and offered his commentary on it.
Recently he did a livestream with another Commercial Ship Captain and Maritime Journalist named John Konrad.
There they discuss things and answer questions like why weren't tugboats there, how come the ship didn't sound its horn, and discussed things like the potential of cyberwarfare being involved etc as well as how vulnerable bridges actually are to ship impacts and the lack of capability of domestic naval salvage.
Scooby Doo
Well-known member
If it was a cyber attack could it have been Russia? 😦
Kinda weird how two massive tragedies happened between each other so soon, are the Alphabet gangs of other countries waging some weird retaliation stuff or is this just the universe having a cruel screwing humanity over spree?
Kinda weird how two massive tragedies happened between each other so soon, are the Alphabet gangs of other countries waging some weird retaliation stuff or is this just the universe having a cruel screwing humanity over spree?
The issue with that Q&A is that the people talking are industry experts who have internalized the standard/normal processes for doing things.
Business as usual? You are looking at months to years to get things back up and running.
But then you have the actual realities. This is a Presidential election year, Maryland is a Democrat heavy state whose residents make up a lot of the rank and file of the upper-middle level of the federal government and is where a lot of relatively quiet and unofficial influence lives.
This incident is also cutting off US Navy facilities which is all the justification that the DoD needs to intervene and Biden already has the statutory authority to waive essentially every bit of red tape on national security grounds.
Those factors mean that the budget to get the problem resolved is basically unlimited. Bluntly, it doesn't matter what the normal scheduling issues are for any given resource or salvage operation. The US government will just throw money and influence at whomever they have to to get jumped to the very front of the line.
This is an incident that will have a noticeable impact on headline US GDP in an election year. It is an incident that is going to threaten the livelihoods of a hundred thousand plus blue collar workers less than an hour from the White House.
Biden and the Democrats are desperate for a win, to be seen to do something effective and news worthy and that distracts the populace from their myriad failures. Butt Boy also has hopes for a long term political career and this is his opportunity to get national prominence and position himself with success - or to crash and burn hard. The Republicans also aren't going to oppose funding for this or waiving all the normal processes because doing so is political suicide in an election year if nothing else.
If you look at the AIS tracks alone, the moment the Dali makes a mayday call on the radio is absolutely clearcut, because there's a moment where *every* tugboat in the harbor suddenly turns and heads for her. In particular, the Eric McAllister was steaming in the opposite direction (back towards the inner harbor), but is seen to abruptly turn hard 180 degrees and chase after the Dali at easily twice the speed she was moving before, with sister ships Bridget McAllister and Timothy McAllister following in rapid succession from further up in the harbor.
All three of those tugs were racing to the Dali's assistance before she even hit, reached her within five-ten minutes of the collision, and are still there right now. They've been standing off a small distance from Dali's stern all day; AIS doesn't show anything but their transponder reads, but I'm pretty sure what they're doing is they have tow lines rigged and are holding her steady so she doesn't tear free of the bridge and cause even more damage. There's now also a fourth tug -- the Northside Challenger -- on her bow side presumably also holding her steady, and a pair of Coast Guard ships standing guard a little further away, one on each side.
Wargamer08
Well-known member
That's a lot of reasons for why the scorpion shouldn't kill the frog as they are both crossing the river. But that's how the story goes.
I think that the Democrats at this point cannot help themselves. They don't have a strong enough leader at the top to prevent all the graft and theft related delays. They are ideologically unable to get something done well and quickly. I think that this is the Democrats worst possible challenge, a task with measurable and well defined criteria that cannot be solved by mass patronage and changing the definition of success.
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Martenzo
Active member
Seems that there's a deluge of copy-paste and AI generated tweets pushing the conspiracy theory that the ship took an intentional turn toward the bridge. Which is obviously BS to anyone that knows anything about ships: if a ship doesn't have power for their lights, they definitely don't have any for propulsion and deliberate maneuvering, and the ship lost power well before the supposed "turn" happened.
Simonbob
Well-known member
Lights aren't power.
However, black smoke from the engine compartment? That's something else. And, at this point? We don't know what.
Was it just the engine burning out, killing the power? Was it the power going out, and an attempt to manually start the engines? A fire in the engine room? Manual reverse burning oil? Don't know.
Note, it could be a cyber attack, but being that accurate with the tragectory of a ship like that needs some pretty serious understanding of the hows and whys of that sort of ship, and very careful timeing. If you're ever switched from driving a car to a large bus, you'll understand there's pretty big differences. A deliberate attack, well, it's not just ransomware. It's a remote control of a very unusual craft, like a drone of a 100 thousand tons. Filled with experts fighting back. Not easy. Not too likely, I think.
We'll have to see what comes out.
Buba
A total creep
I take that in the speedy rebuilding of the bridge all and any protests by the cankerous greeny fuckwits (or some other "minority" agenda pushers) will be brushed aside and go unreported by the MSM?
Light comes from small diesel generators dedicated to this purpose, with built in redundancy (?), while power comes from the main power plant.
Right?
Good catch.
Light comes from small diesel generators dedicated to this purpose, with built in redundancy (?), while power comes from the main power plant.
Right?
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DarthOne
☦️
It’s here:
TLDR: the people who are taking over the complex system and tech that make modern life aren’t capable of running it.
Yup. It lost power at exactly the wrong time and in exactly the wrong place. It theoretically could have been deliberate but almost certainly wasn't.
The most likely explanation is that the fuel was bad as that has been a known problem in shipping for a while as the switch to low sulfur fuels prevented the chemical breakdowns of the waste plastics that (relatively) often end up tossed into the bunker fuel for disposal by the refiners.
Other likely causes are a lack of maintenance causing the conditions of a failure and it eventually occurring. Or what is essentially a freak mechanical failure that was basically unforeseeable and not reasonably preventable.
If this had happened ten minutes sooner the tugs would have gotten to the vessel in time (they responded immediately after the mayday) and been able to prevent the accident. If it had happened ten minutes later then the ship would have been passed the bridge and the worst case would be the ship grounded when it drifted out of the shipping channel.
DarthOne
☦️
I’m not so sure. It sounds a bit too convenient- like someone is covering their ass.
Robovski
Well-known member
I expect every effort will be made to quickly clear the passage and reopen the port/naval base. After that will be when the whole thing slows down and the pure graft starts setting in as the MD Dems start filling pockets, boots, hats and anything else they can from the state and federal coffers. A couple years before there is a new bridge minimum, likely longer, but I don't think that there will not be a new bridge. They also will not name it after Francis Scott Key but instead you can expect a minority that is not the likes of Dr. King. Sucks for people who lived/worked on opposite sides of that bridge.
They literally said it could take months to years to clear the channel and that the maritime industry doesn't adapt well to situations like this since they're tunnelled into their own world. They pointed out the multi-year salvage operations that occurred before and how vulnerable other older bridges are to collisions with 100,000 ton ships.
I didn't get your perception of them stating it's business as usual, let's ignore reality at all.
I'm sure they didn't talk about political issues because they aren't political commentator and it's not even a day since the incident occurred. Literally everyone else is commenting on the politics. Not needed here.
You're underestimating the importance of that bridge. It wasn't just a commuter bridge, but rather it was on of the main bridges for heavy road freight along the I95 corridor*. For those unaware of the US Highway system, I95 is the primary interstate highway that runs north-south along the East Coast and connects most of the major cities from Maine to Florida. Further, it can be considered one of the main arteries for what's called the "Northeast Megalopolis" that is the region of fairly ubiquitous urban and suburban development that stretches from Richmond Virginia up to Boston MA.
In other words, rebuilding that bridge is nearly as important as reopening that channel as so it's likely to be accelerated as well with a lot of eyes on it.
That said, I do expect there to be considerable graft about it, and you're probably right about it not being named the same thing, but rather the corruption and graft is going to be around keeping the project accelerated, not delaying it.
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* Yes, the bridge specifically carried I695... I695 is the Baltimore Interstate Beltway associated with I95. Basically it provided a route AROUND the city of Baltimore for heavy trucks to take to avoid going through the city proper, where the Interstate is less suited to the heavy truck traffic.