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Video: Baltimore bridge struck by boat and collapses (streamable.com)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by to c/news@lemmy.world
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[–] 15 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Given how "easily" the bridge fell... Why aren't ships that size required to 100% be escorted by tugs???

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  • [–] 21 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    At the risk of sounding too Clarke and Dawe, it is very rare that a ship loses power and control, and somewhere it could hit something important, and hits that thing, and the thing is apparently so fragile that it just falls to pieces. It's been there for 46 years, and the Port of Baltimore currently sees an average of 53 ships in and out per month, so about 3.5 big ships under the bridge per day. That's a lot of passages over the years without incident.

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  • [–] 22 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    and the thing is apparently so fragile that it just falls to pieces.

    I mean, it just got hit with a hundred thousand ton hammer. That'll do a pretty good number on most structures, I imagine.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    no, this is you speaking my language. we do 'risk assessments' and yeah I guess it's a case of severity*likelihood, where risk is never zero.

    but, no matter what, when the risks 'line up' into a failure mode, holy shit is that failure catastrophic. crazy terrible regardless.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    I don't know what the likelihood of this would be, but it's definitely miniscule. I suspect you'd still need safeguards to reduce the risk to an acceptable level, but I'm not sure what exactly you can do once a boat has failed and is going to make imminent impact.

    At that point all you can do is mitigate the fatalities and evacuate.

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Cause then we would have to hire more people to tug all those ships in and it would be less efficient.

    Not very profit margin of you to suggest that.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    What's the profit margin of the port with the river blocked? And of the city with a major road cut?

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Politics.

    "More tug jobs? Not on my watch!"

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    And money.

    "Why do I need to pay for your safety"

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    Why aren't ships that size required to 100% be escorted by tugs???

    They likely were, but there are limits on how fast even a group of tugs can influence a ship many times their size/weight/mass.

    The laws of physics still apply.

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