Salvage crews to begin removing first piece of collapsed Baltimore bridge

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: USA Today/Reuters

Published 6:09 p.m. ET March 30, 2024 | Updated 6:09 p.m. ET March 30, 2024


Salvage crews were set to lift the first piece of Baltimore's collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge from the water on Saturday to allow barges and tugboats to access the disaster site, Maryland and U.S. officials said, the first step in a complex effort to reopen the city's blocked port.

The steel truss bridge collapsed early on Tuesday morning, killing six road workers, when a massive container ship lost power and crashed into a support pylon, sending much of the span crashing into the Patapsco River, blocking the Port of Baltimore's shipping channel.

Maryland Governor Wes Moore told a news conference that a section of the bridge's steel superstructure north of the crash site would be cut into a piece that could be lifted by crane onto a barge and brought to the nearby Tradepoint Atlantic site at Sparrows Point. "This will eventually allow us to open up a temporary restricted channel that will help us to get more vessels in the water around the site of the collapse," Moore said.

He declined to provide a timeline for this portion of the clearance work. "It's not going to take hours," he said. "It's not going to take days, but once we complete this phase of the work, we can move more tugs and more barges and more boats into the area to accelerate our recovery."

Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/03/30/baltimore-bridge-collapse-salvage-crews/73157065007/

[underpants]

1. The Maritime world is quite different. I hope people get that out if this.

The economy that runs off the water is heavy and there’s a lot money there.

[Warpy]

2. I wonder how long it will be before a new bridge is designed

funded and built. I supose a lot of the cost will depend on the soundness of the remaining piers.

Clearing the shipping channel takes priority, of course, since ships are trapped behind the bridge while others are stacked up in the harbor, waiting to get in and unload/reload.

[BumRushDaShow]

4. Those ships waiting to get in

are probably going to need to go to other ports to unload.

If the debris in the channel is not completely cleared before reopening, those heavy ships could scrape any pieces jutting up and breach their hulls. They also have to partially unload and then move that cargo ship out of the way.

There are so many angles of pictures that have been shown but I thought this gave the best perspective of where the shorelines are -



There are other ports nearby, including the Port of Wilmington and the Port of Philadelphia, where Philly's port also has a "roll-on roll-off" car pier -

[Warpy]

6. Thanks, that's interesting

and I agree about the fully loaded container ships taking their lives/hulls in their hands if the wreckage isn't completely cleared from the channel.

(Some women like to watch rom-com movies. I liked to wath rail freight yards and container ports at work.)

[BumRushDaShow]

7. Before I retired

I worked in a building downtown near the Delaware River and had a view of the river from my office where I could watch the cargo ships, barges, sail boats, riverboats, and tugs that went up and down the river to/from the various piers. You could tell when they were loaded because of how low they were in the water and similarly when empty, how high they would float.

[BigmanPigman]

11. I know less than nothing about engineering

but I have seen the landing of troops in WW2 in France on D Day and they made a fake harbor using caissons. They are still there. I wonder if the engineers could make something temporary with caissons. Perhaps they could make a road for traffic once they remove all the damaged bridge sections?

[BumRushDaShow]

14. Before that bridge was built in 1977, that section of I-695 didn't exist as part of what is now Baltimore's "beltway"

So there are already alternates roads in the area although obviously due to population increases over the past 45+ years, there's so much more traffic.

I know all my "too numerous to count" trips to Baltimore were done going down I-95 (about a 90 minute trip from here in Philly). That and I-895 will probably be the predominate "alternate" routes (both have either a bridge or a tunnel that go over/under the harbor/river). The nightmare of I-95 down there though is the Ft. McHenry tunnel which is ALWAYS jammed in normal times and most likely has restrictions for what can go through.



Making anything "temporary" on that waterway would require having it operating like a "gate" with a mechanism that can move a floating road structure out of the way to allow ship traffic (similar to how the drawbridges operate like we have here in Philly).

[Old Crank]

8. I get that

I was in HAmburg receintly watching them load a frieghter and unload another one. Wha a dance,

[DetroitLegalBeagle]

10. Estimate I saw was 5-8 years

And at least 500 million. Probably won't have an accurate estimate for a few weeks or months at least.

[Aussie105]

3. The remaining piers won't be reused.

Clearing the water will take a while.
The process will be slow - cutting up the bridge into parts that can be handled. And there are possibly more bodies down there.

The new bridge will take months to design and years to build.

The original design was a marvel of engineering. For its time.

But no redundancy - damage to one part brings the whole lot down.

No defence against out of control ships.
It was strong on downward forces and the weather, but sideways forces made it collapse.

May I humbly suggest the new design should include:

Massive concrete guides to guide errant ships into the correct path.
The use of tugs to take ships out and into the harbour. No exceptions beyond a certain loaded tonnage.

[BumRushDaShow]

5. "The use of tugs to take ships out and into the harbour. No exceptions"

The tugs will shoot the cost of shipping up enormously. Like here in Philly, the tugs were used to help the ship dock and un-dock from the pier and then they were done.

I saw an article yesterday where they noted the cost was something like US$15,000 per dock/un-dock. Escorting would be even more and because those tugs are so powerful, they use a huge amount of fuel to operate.

[Old Crank]

9. Tugs adding cost.

True but how much added cost is the new bridge? Should we tack a surcharge on every cargo ship going through the bridge to cover the cost like a road toll?

[BumRushDaShow]

12. What might happen

just due to the different configurations of coastal ports, is that you will have companies "port shopping" (they already do this for certain, often "suspect" cargo), looking for the "cheapest" solution.

I did find the article I read (AP) - https://apnews.com/article/maryland-bridge-collapse-shipping-tugboats-baltimore-cargo-33e1b42c7e0cd9a558d3732ffdaa6220

Could tugboats have helped avert the bridge collapse tragedy in Baltimore?


By JOSHUA GOODMAN and RICHARD LARDNER
Updated 5:39 PM EDT, March 29, 2024

(snip)

“Tugs are a big upfront cost and a lot of companies don’t want to pay for that,” said Sal Mercogliano, who writes a widely followed shipping blog. “And if Baltimore starts mandating it, you’re going to see ships go to Norfolk, Philadelphia, New York — wherever is cheapest.”

McAllister Towing, which operates the tugboats that guided the Dali, can charge $15,000 or more for one or more of its ships to lead a large cargo vessel out of its berth, according to a recent rate sheet, with more charges for extended escorts. That may be small change for a big shipping company but the costs can add up.

John Konrad, a licensed captain, said there’s an “unspoken tension” between shipping companies and pilots over how many tugboats should be used and how long they remain with a seagoing vessel.

“The pilots would like, in an ideal world, to have extra tugs with them all the time until the ship gets out to the ocean,” said Konrad, founder and CEO of gCaptain, a website for maritime professionals. “But the shipping companies don’t want to pay for those tugs,” he said. “So there’s always this push and pull.”

(snip)

McAllister seems to have a corner on the tug market. They are here in Philly and recently guided the battleship USS New Jersey down the Delaware River to eventually go to a dry dock berth in South Philly at the old Navy Yard for renovation.







From 2 years ago (ship is now back there today) -

(I blame you for sending me down the rabbit hole for this )

[Old Crank]

13. You are welcome.

For certain cargoes it might add other costs to shop for a port. Other ports would need to ramp up their facilities for coal export or cars. There might not be a way to have coal trains go to another port for political reasons.
It is complex. Could have been solved with a tunnel as originally planned. But you cannot transport hazardous materials through a tunnel.

[BumRushDaShow]

15. We have both here in Philly

https://www.philaport.com/new-norfolk-southern-rail-service-for-autos/



And we have freight tracks that run parallel to the river piers including down the middle and side of Delaware Ave. / Columbus Blvd. -



We just don't have the massive P.R. machine that other ports have.

[azureblue]

16. hopefully

the original design is basically a row of dominoes - if one span goes, the whole bridge comes down. Maybe borrow the design of the New Orleans MS river bridge?

[twodogsbarking]

17. I-95 will pick up more traffic. Anyone who has traveled 95 will understand what this means.

Road signs will need changed as soon as possible to re-route people. The scope is immense.