I'm hearing there were at least 20 cars and a truck on the bridge, plus construction workers, at the time; my heart goes out to those families
According to current reports, the Maryland Transportation Authority Police responded to the ship’s “mayday” and stopped traffic in the minutes before the catastrophe, but 6 construction workers are still unaccounted for.
https://www.baltimoresun.com/2024/03/26/key-bridge-collapses...
I haven't timed how frequently cars are coming, but it seems to be about every 30 seconds or so, which--combined with the time it takes to cross the bridge--is evidence that a bridge closure was effected just before the bridge collapse.
The Washington Post has police audio at the time of the closure (https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/03/26/baltimore...). A quick summary of the timeline from that audio:
* There was a request to close the bridge when the ship lost power, which went over police dispatch about a minute before the bridge collapse (the bridge collapse is reported at timestamp 1:09 in the audio).
* Someone was able to hold the outer loop traffic at ~0:20 in the audio, as they reported they were already driving along at the time.
* Inner loop traffic is reported stopped at ~0:56 in the audio. I suspect there may already have been a police car there because of the construction on the bridge.
* Between 0:20 and 0:56, the conversation is about pulling the workcrew off the bridge. The police officer blocking inner loop traffic, after reporting stopping traffic, is indicating that he's waiting for a second unit to arrive before going onto the bridge to collect them.
* At 1:09, the bridge is reported collapsed, and multiple officers confirm. There is a question as to which traffic is stopped--the people blocking inner loop traffic are unable to confirm outer loop stoppage, but the person holding outer loop informs them of the stoppage at the end of the recording.
So traffic seems to have been stopped for about 10-50 seconds before the bridge collapse, depending on the exact length of time between someone stopping traffic and radioing in that they did so. From what I can tell, it sounds like outer loop traffic was stopped in time solely by sheer coincidence, while the inner loop traffic may have been existing police presence (for the construction zone) changing posture to a full closure.
And it is tragic how close the police were to evacuating the work crews. I interpret that the officer blocking one entry intended to go on to the bridge but was waiting for another cruiser to block the bridge before he left. A few more minutes and the bridge might have collapsed with no casualties. Though at least an officer attempting a rescue wasn't hurt.
I lived <1 mile from it at the time it went down, and had crossed it earlier in the day on my commute.
Edit: Maybe I'm just tired and need more sleep.
I think that's called "having feelings". Nothing wrong with it.
I worked next door to the church that was shot up in Charleston and felt similarly moved despite not knowing them, never having been inside the building, and not having even been a Christian at the time.
It is a bit strange at some level - not having any true connection beyond proximity but you should probably worry if you _don’t_ at least feel a little something.
I would be much more concerned if you didn't feel devastated by this and you didn't want to cry.
What you're describing is a normal human reaction to a tragedy.
I'm wondering if that's how they stopped almost all of the traffic. Flip a switch, most people stop, a couple of assholes blow through the caution and FAFO.
The 295 bridge collapse a decade ago was similarly shocking
U.S. infrastructure is beyond crisis level.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosco_Busan_oil_spill
Though the Maryland accident looks like it struck it dead on - just a massive amount of energy to absorb.
It's assumed that everyone comes from California unless proven otherwise.
In a Bridge of Theseus sort of way. The entire Eastern span is very new, a lot of the approaches have been rearranged, and major components of the Western span has been replaced over the years. But I guess none of this affects the age of the bridge, at least in Wikipedia’s estimation :)
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No bridge survives being struck by a container ship. That's why barriers are erected around critical points. There already were barriers, they just weren't complete coverage for some reason. (EDIT: Maybe the older 1970s era design of this particular bridge wouldn't allow more protection to be placed. Obviously this situation calls for a full investigation / lessons learned kind of thing, as part of the new bridge building process)
Edit to add: Check out Fort Carroll, precisely such an artificial island just a few hundred yards away in the very same harbor. It was built in the 1840's as a military position to defend the harbor, and has fallen into disuse. Now just imagine if the bridge sat on a couple of those, instead of the foundations it had. Ship would've barely dented the wall.
There is an expectation that a disaster happening in the west in a result of unforeseeable act of god, but in China it will be a result of corruption or shoddy workmanship.
Whereas in reality maintenance standard in the west have fallen but in the east they improved.
So now this bias protects responsible decision makers from legal consequences - no one went to prison for grenfell disaster, postmaster scandal or the Boeing debacle.
In the context of this incident, are you saying that we _previously_ used to go around retrofitting our 50-year-old bridges with more modern defenses, and then at some point since then we stopped doing this? Obviously if we're talking about new construction, it stands to reason that standards have only _increased_, but this was an old bridge built to old standards. So which standards have "fallen" to result in this disaster specifically?
> 46,154, or 7.5% of the nation’s bridges, are considered structurally deficient, meaning they are in “poor” condition. Unfortunately, 178 million trips are taken across these structurally deficient bridges every day
For example, it's possible maintenance standards never changed and the old bridges simply got older and more exposed to risk as the years went on.
Not a container ship, but an abandoned bulk carrier ship: https://g1.globo.com/rj/rio-de-janeiro/noticia/2022/11/14/po...
That bridge survived with little damage, and was reopened the following day after small repairs (https://g1.globo.com/rj/rio-de-janeiro/noticia/2022/11/15/te...).
I think this is most harmful for commuters.
Blocking the Baltimore harbor is brutal although I suspect the passage will be cleared as quickly as possible.
EDIT: That number seemed fishy; I think the reporter is referring to the traffic along the entire I-95 corridor.
Per another comment it's much closer to correct for the annual number of vehicle crossings.
11.5 million cars/day is equivalent to :
~48,000 cars/hour
~8,000 cars/minute
~130 cars/second
11.5 million cars per year however works out to:
31,000 cars/day
1,300 cars/hour
21 cars/minute
Peak capacity for a highway lane is just shy 2,000 vehicles/hour:
<https://www.mikeontraffic.com/numbers-every-traffic-engineer...>
Which would put the Key Bridge's maximum capacity at about 192,000 vehicles/day.
For comparison, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge saw about 42.7 million paid toll crossings. As these are metered only in the westbound direction, actual crossings are likely double that, or 85.4 million/year, or about 230,000/day.
(The bridge sees 1/3 the total traffic of all California state-owned bridges.)
<https://mtc.ca.gov/operations/programs-projects/bridges/san-...>