That is literally how they are set up. One pump will be on the main bus, one pump will be on the emergency bus. When you black out there should only be a brief 30 seconds or so for either the EDG to be back up and running or the main bus to be energized by the standby gen. Either pump should restart automatically upon restoration of power, regardless of which bus is energized first.
The only ship I’ve worked on that wasn’t set up like this had a hydraulic pump connected to an inline 6 Yanmar diesel engine that would automatically start on loss of power.
I suppose you could do this with a battery backup, but we’d be talking a EV car sized batteries and the associated costs.
One lesson to come out of this is that the local police should have access to a phone number for work teams working on bridges.
If any work parties are going onto a bridge the local police department should have the phone number of the foreman immediately available.
If the police had that phone number available in this instance, they would have been able to phone the foreman and tell them to drive off the bridge immediately. The same time as they closed the bridge.
Even if they had been able to phone them straight away, perhaps it would have already been to late, but we will never know.
Excellent!! Thank you, that’s what we needed here… the collapse is at about 2:40 …
This could have been 1,000 times worse if it happened at rush hour.
Aye!! A million people are feeling that today… the thought of a couple hundred cars in the water, is just horrifying…
Apparently, he somehow survived! Unbelievable.
Do you have a time stamp for where those things were said? I don’t feel like watching an hour long discussion.
That would never work. There are tons of crews and contractors and subcontractors working on bridges all the time. They come and go, and come back. People change phone numbers all the time. People are very inconsistent about answering the phone, especially from phone numbers they don’t recognize and/or are blocked, which is typical from police numbers. Roads and construction sites are loud, loud enough to drown out calls
Look. Police dispatcher centers have the number to DOT dispatchers, which could eventually get to the crew. But even a direct line to the crew wouldn’t be quick enough. In this case, the time the port police got the call to the time of impact was 30 seconds. By the time a call went through and somebody picked up they would have been already falling.
An evacuation siren on the bridge would be more practical. But preventing all casualties on a bridge strike from a ship is going to prohibitively expensive/perhaps impossible.
Anyway, in regards to Bayrunners’s question, I don’t know why the wouldn’t clear the bridge as soon as possible. It is not a mystery why the bridge collapsed. The mystery is why the ship lost power. They don’t need the bridge remains to solve that mystery.
Typically in an investigation the goal is to learn everything possible that might prevent or limit future incidents, even things not directly related to the specific incident that happened. So the way the bridge fell or the way things broke or where things broke may have useful information that can be used in future bridges or bridge protections.
I think particularly when there’s been a loss of life there’s often a drive on the part of the investigators to learn as much as they possibly can in all areas of the incident also, to give the lives lost a sort of “meaning”?
Look at KPChief link
Listen to first 6 minutes of Q&A clip I have not heard the rest as I have lost interest after 6 minutes . Alias 520 has eloquently explained why in his comment above.
Engine crew going to sleep after switching to “unattended” in conditions as described in the videos would on my watch go home-next port airport and if office blokes opposed such solution I would request my immediate relief .
Dirty fuel in the news here in Singapore
Was it that fracked crap that caused several dead ships here in Asia a year or so ago, fuel came from the USA.
Was this an own goal?
Full accident liability back to fuel supplier?
Just a reminder of how it went wrong before, the chemicals in the fuel that caused the problem are not tested for as they dont exist in the process.
They were traced to chemicals only used for fracking
Would the deck lights be on the emergency bus?
Does the deck lights coming back on (and then off again) indicate the EDG (Emergency Diesel Generator) or the standby SSG (Ship’s Service Generator) coming on-line and then failing?
Last night we saw NTSB give a run down on what the VDR said but answer to your questions above and more will be when they download the contents of the plant automation data logger / alarm history. This will have or should have time stamped events like EDG start, bus tie open/closed etc etc including possibly some hints about the SSDG problem to begin with. A dying engine due to fuel Should see low volts, freq. over speed? High temp? So it seems patience is still required. Or some can speculate the engineers were tired so put it “on auto” and went to bed or the fuel was bad. Or many other things some more plausible than others.
A small amount of them should be. The question is whether the E buss was even activated. From the footage, it looks like auxiliary power was quickly back online since all of the lighting seems to have come back on when the large plume of stack gas was readily apparent.
Seems likely the stand-by SSDG came on-line and then failed.
For now however the attention is likely going to shift to the reported electrical issues the ship was having while alongside. If that’s legit than depending on how serious the problems were that might put the focus on the decision to sail.
I am assuming that a SBDG is not maintained as a spinning reserve able to be automatically connected to the buss within seconds but that the generator must be started, brought up to speed and then connected? It would seem to me in pilotage waters generators required to keep propulsion and steering have a backup already running and ready to take over.
In my experience just one SSDG is required for the load.
The practice where I worked was to have two SSDG on-line when maneuvering and to have a third SSDG on automatic stand-by. Putting the stand-by SSDG on-line was managed automatically by the PMS (Power Management System).
We did leave all three on-line till we passed under the Key bridge in case the bow thruster was required. Also not to put hands-on anything until pass the bridge.
Agreed. At a minimum, knowing there were ongoing generator issues, keeping the tugs attached for a longer period just to be safe.
I get the feeling there are going to be some major red flags in the error chain that are going to come out in the investigation.