Cargo ship loses power minutes before Baltimore Bridge disaster

A cargo ship hit a 1.6-mile-long bridge before plunging into the Baltimore River, losing power minutes before impact.

Rescuers desperately searched for six construction workers who fell into the Patapsco River after an accident. Dali Hit the Francis Scott Key Bridge.

It was revealed Tuesday afternoon that crews sent a distress call from the ship while the power was out, allowing authorities to stop more cars from driving onto the bridge minutes before it collapsed.

“These people are heroes and they saved lives,” Maryland Governor Wes Moore said.

The Singapore-flagged freighter, carrying more than 4,600 containers, crashed into the bridge at about 1:30 a.m., causing the bridge to buckle immediately.

Rescuers have rescued two survivors, one of whom was seriously injured, and at least six others are still missing.

Video footage showed the 948-foot-long vessel going dark seconds before impact as the vessel, bound for Colombo, Sri Lanka, lost power. Before the accident, thick smoke could be seen billowing from the ship.

The container ship “lost propulsion” as it left port, and the ship’s crew notified Maryland officials that they had lost control of the vessel, ABC News reported, citing an unclassified U.S. intelligence report.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore told a news conference that a preliminary investigation indicated it was an accident and said the bridge was fully in compliance with code and that there were no reported structural issues.

this Dali He said the speed at the time was 8 knots (10 mph), but within a limited time the ship sent a distress signal, allowing crews to prevent vehicles from reaching the bridge.

“These people are heroes, they saved lives,” he said.

All 22 Indian crew members on board the Dali, including the two pilots, are missing and there have been no reports of injuries or water contamination.

The ship had previously been involved in an accident in Antwerp while leaving Belgium in 2016. According to the Vessel Finder website, the accident was caused by errors by the ship’s captain and pilot.

Ian Firth, a structural engineering consultant with more than 40 years’ experience, said he was not surprised the bridge collapsed after the collision.

He added that the support provided to prevent disasters was not strong enough to prevent the impact.

He said I: “This is a relatively light bridge support and is clearly not designed for any significant impact.

“The forces exerted by these vessels were enormous, amounting to thousands of tonnes, and these supports were clearly unable to withstand them.

“The strategy had to prevent that effect from happening, so by using some kind of protection around the bridge supports to stop the ship, deflect it, slow it down enough, but obviously, that didn’t work.”

The bridge supports are “pretty small,” he said.

“In order for them to be really effective as ship deflectors or arresters, they need to be large enough that there’s no trajectory, there’s no course, there’s no angle of attack that the ship can take that it can actually hit the bridge,” he added.

Mr Firth said that after the Sunshine Viaduct collapsed in Florida in 1980, bridge designers around the world became more “wary” of the risk of oversized ships hitting bridges.

Six cars, a truck and a bus plunged 150 feet into Tampa Bay after a freighter collided with a support column, killing 35 people.

this New York Times The Francis Scott Key Bridge reportedly underwent a $14 million project in 1986 to repair damage, improve safety and restore the bridge’s appearance.

Structural and civil engineering expert Julian Carter said the bridge, known as a continuous structure with “every little part connected to each other”, was “very fragile” at certain points.

“If you look at today’s container ships, they are behemoths. If this design had been suitable and adequate at the time, I would certainly imagine that today’s container ships might be twice the size,” he told Sky News.

“I would expect that many ports, many bridge piers will now need to have some form of assessment of collisions caused by this type of traffic.”

Francis Scott Key Bridge. It opened in 1977 after five years of construction at an estimated cost of $110 million.

Baltimore authorities originally planned to build a tunnel, but the bridge would be cheaper to operate and maintain.

The bridge leads to Baltimore Harbor, the deepest port in Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay. It is the busiest automobile shipping port in the United States and will handle more than 750,000 vehicles in 2023.

According to a 2018 report by the World Water Transport Infrastructure Association, between 1960 and 2015, there were 35 major bridge collapses caused by ship or barge collisions around the world, resulting in 342 deaths.

Eighteen of the collapses occurred in the United States.

Limited impact on global routes

The Baltimore Bridge disaster is expected to cause significant disruption to U.S. importers and exporters, but the impact on global shipping routes should be minimal, experts say.

The accident left some merchant ships stranded in the Port of Baltimore while other cargo was diverted to other shipping routes in the region.

However, while the issue is expected to cause delays and increased costs for companies on the U.S. East Coast, from a global perspective the impact on the route will not be significant enough to have an impact further afield.

“This is a major disaster that will cause major problems for importers and exporters on the U.S. East Coast,” said Lars Janssen, a container shipping expert.

About 800,000 vehicles are expected to pass through the port in 2023, according to the Maryland government website. The port also handles agricultural and construction machinery, sugar and coal.

Emily Stausbøll, a market analyst at shipping price platform Xeneta, said the impact will be felt across the United States.

“While Baltimore is not one of the largest ports on the U.S. East Coast, it still imports and exports over a million containers per year, so this has the potential to cause significant disruption to the supply chain,” she said.