What we know about the Baltimore bridge collapse | DW News

An investigation is underway in the United States after a cargo ship crashed into a

bridge

in Baltimore, Maryland, causing it to

collapse

. Several vehicles were on the

bridge

at the time Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said the ship reported losing power just before the accident and that he made an mayday call that allowed authorities to limit traffic across the bridge. . He added that a preliminary investigation suggested the crash was an accident and there was no evidence or credible evidence of a terrorist attack, so just to give you an idea of ​​the scale of the Francis Scott Key Bridge.

It was 2.6 kilometers long, with four lanes, on average more than 31,000 vehicles crossed it each day and it is a major part of the highway network on the US East Coast, so here's a look at How today's events unfolded: The Francis Scott Key Bridge after the one in Singapore. A flagged container ship crashed into one of its pillars. The bridge

collapse

was captured live on a webcast. The ship crashed at 1:30 a.m. m. Within minutes, a major search and rescue operation was underway. The Coast Guard's primary mission right now is search and rescue. Looking for survivors in the water, we're basically looking for everyone that was potentially on the bridge, as you can imagine, it's the middle of the night, you

know

what

kind of traffic there was, how many workers were there?

This video was uploaded. by a ship tracking service shows the ship's path as it veered off course and on the bridge issued a distress call minutes before the collision authorities said workers prevented cars from crossing the bridge and then saved lives. Experts say that the size of the ship simply overwhelmed the supporting structure. A heavy ship like that will impart a very large load of many thousands of tons when it hits something solid and the ship has obviously hit the bridge support. It is not surprising that the bridge then collapses because the support is very relatively weak. structure US President Joe Biden said the disaster was an accident and promised federal funds for reconstruction.

My intention is to have the federal government pay the full cost of rebuilding that bridge and I hope Congress will support my effort. This will take some time. However, the people of Baltimore can count on us to be with them every step of the way until the port is reopened and the bridge is rebuilt, while the people of the region prepare for the consequences. The Port of Baltimore is key to shipping in the eastern US. The coastline and collapsed bridge will likely create traffic jams for months or even years. Professor Helen Samson of Cardiff University has studied the shipping industry since 1999.

Welcome to DW. Teacher. Can we do a thought experiment? I would like you to do it. help us understand

what

probably happened on the bridge a car so we have a cargo ship like the Del it's night everything seems fine the port The pilots have joined the captain on board to guide this huge ship out of the port and then turning it on it seems to turn off and you seem to be heading towards a bridge support, so what happens next? Oh, the bridge team would have worked very hard to try to very quickly assess the situation and obviously try to avoid the collision with the ship, adrenaline. the levels would have been very high um and um uh the pilot, the captain and the bridge team would have all acted together um to try to follow well first of all to try to understand the situation and then try to follow all the fusion procedures to Try to avoid the collision, which unfortunately seems to have been unsuccessful.

It appears that there was very little time between the time they lost propulsion and the time they hit the bridge structure and, obviously, that loss of power. propulsion is a key thing, how do you try to avoid a collision when you have no power? Well, obviously it is an absolutely critical situation, the situation is very, very dangerous, there are currents and wind forces that move the boat when you don't have any control over it yourself. The boat, I think from what I've read, I think was going about 8 knots, which is slower than the maximum speed of the boat, but you still

know

that. provides the boat with a good amount of inertia makes it very slow to stop or change direction even when you have some control, then you are in emergency procedures, such as dropping anchor.

I think the ship had time to drop anchor twice. um from what I've read, but unfortunately it was too late to prevent it from entering the bridge, so the sailors would have found themselves in a situation where they were immediately obviously very aware of the catastrophic damage. that has been done, they would want to assess the integrity of the hull to verify who on board was safe to verify that everyone on board was safe. I think that was the case on this occasion to think about the stability of the boat. load stability and, you know, start worrying about problems related to pollution control, so all kinds of short-term problems that require very immediate attention and action, would have taken place, okay, thank you.

Thank you very much for that professor, Professor Helen Samson from Cardiff University, straight to Baltimore and then where we found DW correspondent Janelle Duman. Welcome back, Janelle, um, catch us up, well, Phil, just to describe the scene we're in up north. of the bridge and if you look closely you might be able to see behind me that it's a little blocked by the trucks but behind those trucks you see the start of the bridge and it stops abruptly in the air where obviously parts of the bridge have already collapsed into the river , you can see a part of the freighter that is now trapped against the remains of that bridge.

Obviously there will be a long discussion here about repair and reconstruction, but what is really taking center stage today is that search and rescue operation. They are still searching for those six missing construction workers who were repairing potholes on the bridge at the time of the accident. Not much is still known about these six construction workers. There have been reports that they are employees of a company called Browner. builders who are workers from Honduras from Guatemala Guatemala and from El Salvador and Mexico Now, of course, we cannot immediately verify those reports, but suffice it to say that the search is ongoing, we have also seen some lights transported to the scene, which which tells us that crews are expected to work late into the night, although officials did not tell us how long they expect these efforts to last and what is being said about the cause of the accident now.

Well, by now we have all seen those reports that say that that boat lost propulsion, lost power and that they had sent a distress signal to the Maryland authorities to warn them that an accident was possible, but first we heard from the president of the board national transportation safety official, Jennifer Homendy, and she said that that was also a report that they were watching very closely, but she didn't want to say with 100% absolute certainty that that's what happened, of course, they're waiting for a year long investigation into this with many more details to emerge, many open questions still here, Phil. but it definitely already has a big impact on the community okay thank you Janelle Janelle Duman in Baltimore.

Let's now turn to Dr Muhammad Kashani, Associate Professor of Structural Mechanics Design in Earthquake Engineering at the University of Southampton in the UK, so tell us exactly why he did it. Much of the bridge collapse, the reason why that bridge collapsed, the first reason is that there was no ship impact barrier in front of the companions, and the reason why they did not have it, probably The bridge was relatively old. I don't know the details of the bridge. I'm alone. My observation is based on the videos I have seen and the loading bridge was quite heavy and when you have it. that heavy ship impacted and had the collision with this companion, so obviously we resulted in the failure, but the progressive collapse was that here there was a single point of failure and that when the dock went, then the platform part sank and that unbalanced force was distributed across the entire deck and essentially resulted in the complete collapse of the entire bridge, so you talked about a single point of failure, does that mean the bridge had some kind of design defect? no, no, it's not a design flaw, it is, it's the way the bridge works, but the problem was that the docks were not designed for this impact and did not have any ship impact barriers, so that's it The problem, then, if the bridge was for those pairs, if they wanted to take such a large load coming from the impact, they would survive, but they were not designed and did not have any form of impact. slash, that was the problem, but if you remove a column from a bridge, it will obviously fall.

You mentioned that the bridge was quite old and we know it opened in 1977. Do you think the age of the structure played a role? In this collapse, not necessarily, I don't think it had any reduction due to the aging problem. The main problem, as I said, all comes down to protecting the bridge pier or against this collision and the impact of the ship. that was the main main reason, so now we're looking at some photos of the bridge, um, right there, and we know that the record of the collapse has blocked a major port. Do you know if Baltimore is the only place where a bridge could collapse? blocking such an important travel route, no, I mean this is quite common, I mean in the UK we have tamed rivers that have multiple bridges on them or other structures, I mean where I live in Southampton, you have the River Ean arriving at the port. which actually you see a very similar type of cargo ships coming in and out of the port of Southampton and there are a couple of major bridges and they all have this protection, another example that we have that we can see clearly in uh In London, the one that was actually involved in the design was the London cable car for the Olympics so they are not bridges but the London C car has such big L towers on TS and the boats are crossing those towers but they have a boat impact barrier and they are designed just to avoid isolating the ENTs, these foundations and the towers, away from the sheep, and if the sheep get across they will hit the barriers before they even get close to their mates, I'm afraid. we're going to have to leave it there that was Dr.

Muhammad Kashani from the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom thank you very much for joining us, thank you