This happened at 1:30 this morning, and there are now many videos of the event from a number of different angles. The following article is the most informative I can find, but there are still many unanswered questions. The first one might be, was this an accident?
I think not. It certainly took the headlines away from P Diddy and his sex trafficking troubles. It certainly highlights the potential vulnerabilities of our infrastructure. The name of the bridge seems significant, too. Francis Scott Key wrote The Star Spangled Banner…and there are some decidedly unpatriotic persons perpetrating what seems like their last desperate attempts at maintaining their grip.
If you can remote control a car, who can say the same can’t be done with a marine vessel? OR…was there a greater destruction planned that was averted by crashing the ship into the bridge support?
We’re at war…
Guidance received many years ago will serve most appropriately at this time ~
- Be in the moment.
- Don’t think too much.
- Trust your ass off.
My favorite part of the following article ~
During a press conference, officials confirmed the vessel had issued a mayday call before the collision, which allowed authorities to stop traffic onto the bridge.
According to CBS, Maryland Governor Moore said that he could “confirm that the crew notified authorities of a power issue,” and said that the decision to stop traffic from crossing the bridge “saved lives last night.”
‘Developing mass casualty event’ as ship strike collapses bridge in US
by Riviera News, March 26, 2024
https://tinyurl.com/yc3k999s
Emergency services from Baltimore, Maryland, are undertaking search and rescue efforts after a container ship destroyed much of a major highway bridge in the US
A multi-agency response is reportedly underway to find several people, including construction maintenance workers, who had fallen into the cold waters of the Patapsco River around the 3-km Francis Scott Key bridge.
Baltimore City fire and police departments and the US Coast Guard (USCG) have sent emergency boats and ambulances to the site of the incident.
“Coast Guard watchstanders received a report into the Coast Guard Sector Maryland – National Capital Region command centre at 01:27 am reporting a 289-m Singapore-flagged container ship collided with the Francis Scott Key Bridge. Additionally, it was reported that the bridge collapsed and there were reports of persons in the water,” the USCG said.
Response boat crews from Coast Guard Stations Curtis Bay and Annapolis have deployed crews to the incident for active search and rescue operations. And a Coast Guard Air Station Atlantic City MH-65 Dolphin helicopter crew and Coast Guard investigators and pollution responders were also responding to the incident.
“An Urgent Marine Information Broadcast is issued regarding the incident and there has been a 2,000-yard [1,828-m] safety zone issued for the surrounding waters. Mariners are urged to avoid the area,” the USCG said.
Baltimore City Fire Department communications director Chief Kevin Cartwright was quoted in media reports as saying teams were searching for at least seven missing people.
Chief Cartwright said it was too early to know how many people had been lost or harmed but he described the bridge collapse as a “mass casualty event.”
Maryland Governor Wes Moore has declared a state of emergency and confirmed in a press conference that shipping in and out of the Port of Baltimore had been halted, saying that it was too soon to determine how long it would take to clear the waterway and for shipping to resume.
BREAKING: Ship collides with Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, causing it to collapse pic.twitter.com/OcOrSjOCRn
— BNO News (@BNONews) March 26, 2024
According to the USCG, 2015-built container ship Dali struck a support pillar on the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore sending people and vehicles into the river at 01:30, 26 March 2024.
A statement on behalf of the owners and managers of the Singapore-flagged container ship Dali posted on the Synergy Marine Group website said there were no injuries to the 22 crew on board the vessel and no pollution linked to the ship.
“The vessel collided with one of the pillars of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, Baltimore whilst under pilotage with two pilots on board, at approximately 01:30 local time on 26 March. All crew members, including the two pilots, have been accounted for and there are no reports of any injuries. There has also been no pollution. While the exact cause of the incident is yet to be determined, [Dali] has now mobilised its Qualified Individual Incident Response service. The US Coast Guard and local officials have been notified, and the owners and managers are fully co-operating with Federal and State government agencies under an approved plan,” Synergy Marine Group said.
UK national news organisation BBC has reported that Synergy Marine is sending two representatives to Baltimore to investigate the incident and the vessel’s charterer is Maersk.
Maersk has posted a statement confirming that Dali is owned by Mitsui & Co subsidiary Grace Ocean of Singapore and that Maersk was chartering with no Maersk crew or personnel on board the vessel.
A satellite image provided by VesselsValue shows the AIS-tracked course of container vessel Dali as it appears to deviate from its intended path twice before striking the bridge.
Some reports suggest as many as 20 people were in the river, with dive and rescue teams on site attempting to locate them. Baltimore Mayor Brandon M Scott and Baltimore County executive Johnny Olszewski confirmed teams were responding. Sky News reported the first vessel on the scene had been McAllister Towing’s tug Eric McAllister, which was joined shortly after by Bridget McAllister and a search and rescue vessel.
McAllister Towing said it has responded to requests for “support response operations associated with this morning‘s Frances Scott Key bridge incident.” The company said that currently, Eric McAllister, Bridget McAllister and a third tugboat, Timothy McAllister are assisting search and rescue efforts.
The four-lane Francis Scott Key bridge serves as the outermost crossing over Baltimore Harbor and is an important link of Interstate-695 (I-695), known as the Baltimore Beltway.
🚨#BREAKING: Morning Daylight reveals the aftermath of the mass casualty event of the Scott Key Bridge collapse
Watch As morning daylight approaches, it reveals the devastating aftermath of an early morning incident after a large cargo ship from… pic.twitter.com/zzXBuUB5m0
— R A W S A L E R T S (@rawsalerts) March 26, 2024
Singapore-flagged Dali is a 9,962-TEU, 300-m container ship that was listed as leaving a Baltimore terminal laden with containers and heading to Colombo, Sri Lanka before the incident, according to automatic identification system data.
Social media video shows the 48-m wide ship crashed bow-first into one of the supports beneath the main span of the steel, continuous through truss bridge. The support and span of the bridge appeared to collapse on to the fore of the ship and into the water, with another support and span collapsing immediately afterwards.
Expert view on Baltimore bridge collapse
UK-based structural engineering professor at Aston University Dr Marina Bock said the bridge was not designed to withstand collapse of one of its main support structures.
“The Francis Scott Key Bridge is a metal truss bridge with a suspended deck, and from videos shown by the media it seems that the vessel has hit a main pier of the bridge. The main piers rest on soil underwater and they are part of the foundations of the bridge. This type of bridge is not designed to redistribute loads in the event of a main pier collapsing,” she said.
Noting that video footage of the incident shows a “progressive collapse” of the bridge, with multiple bridge elements failing successively, Dr Bock said “Maybe if the vessel had hit a small section of the suspended deck the bridge would have been able to survive the collision but not a main pier.
“I am assuming the first line of investigation will be to understand why the vessel could not avoid the pier when there were no other vessels around.”
Shipboard power loss
The cause of the incident is not yet known, but video of Dali on its approach to the bridge appears to show the ship losing power twice.
American broadcast news company CBS said it had reviewed an unclassified memo from the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in which the agency said the ship lost power before the collision and had the information confirmed as accurate by an unspecified US law enforcement official.
During a press conference, officials confirmed the vessel had issued a mayday call before the collision, which allowed authorities to stop traffic onto the bridge.
According to CBS, Maryland Governor Moore said that he could “confirm that the crew notified authorities of a power issue,” and said that the decision to stop traffic from crossing the bridge “saved lives last night.”
It remains unknown how many vehicles were on the bridge at the time of its collapse.
Theories about the cause of Dali striking the Francis Scott Key bridge quickly began to surface on social media, with at least one post showing the vessel had appeared to lose power twice as it approached the bridge. BBC news editors have looked at the vessel’s transit path and noted a sudden turn and slowing at the same time the vessel’s lights dimmed on the video, indicating power loss could have played a role in the vessel striking the bridge. The AIS tracking and satellite imagery provided by VesselsValue above offers a view of the vessel’s course. However, satellite data and video footage can not indicate or confirm any particular cause for the incident.
The US National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates transport-related incidents, said it will be investigating this incident.
“NTSB is launching a go-team to investigate the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore.”
The ship strike and bridge collapse in Baltimore comes two years after an Evergreen container ship grounded outside Baltimore and remained stuck on a mud bank for a month following errors by a Baltimore maritime pilot and three years after sister ship Ever Given disrupted global trade by grounding in and blocking traffic through the Suez Canal.
*Editor’s note: Martyn Wingrove and Jamey Bergman have contributed to this story, with additional reporting by John Snyder and Keshav Hrishikesh.