Very sad breaking news out of Baltimore…..yet another allision. M.V. “Dali”

Maritime News Marine Incidents
715

I have been reluctant to state the obvious but if structural improvements have been ruled out due to cost then they must have had brainstorming meetings with regard to risk assessment and worse case scenario and procedures that could be put into place to mitigate the risk.

I know this was done on a regular basis at my port as a table top exercise and pilots were always involved.

I never took part in these but spoke with others who did. I would have thought that an easy mitigating factor would be tugs at least in attendance until clear of the bridge if it was known to be vulnerable.

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716

My tax money is going to be funding some of this and I sit in traffic jams because of this. I don’t care where the ship came from, the bridge was fine until the ship ran into it. They can very well pay for the damage they caused.

717

Sorry, but the bridge was not fine (read correctly protected) prior to allision nor was the potential allision risk mitigated. Prior to this incident, an inward and unescorted panamax bulk carrier passed under that bridge at 10.5 knots.

718

I could drive over it or sail under it just fine and now I can do neither. “Well you should have known our crappy ship can’t go straight and will run into it” is not a legal defense.
If I fly to Australia, run out of gas, and end up landing on your house instead of the runway my lawyer might try the “You should have known Americans aren’t real good at flying and yet you built a fragile non-airplane proof house near the airport anyway so tough luck” defense, but it won’t work.

719

The bridge in Tampa was blamed for not having proper fendering when it was taken down by a ship.

The same will probably happen here. At least some fault will lie on the bridge.

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720

I question your analogy and assume that you also have limited legal expertise.
The applicable authorities (plural not singular) have been extremely negligent and incompetent in their management of this particular risk. Not an imaginary risk because this is not the first time the bridge has been belted. They knew they had a problem and elected to adopt unmanaged risk. Simple as that.

721

There is proportionate fault in admiralty. See e.g. U.S. v. Reliable Transfer.

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722

The last four posts are like eavesdropping on the phone conversations between Maersk, their insurers, and their lawyers.

Should we settle, or go to court after the papers are served?

No matter what, Maersk’s insurers are going to pay. The question is, do they think they have a chance of convincing a judge/jury the bridge was at fault? Or will the judge/ jury be pissed off enough to fine them more than they would have if they had just settled out of court?

Businessmen don’t like sitting on the wrong side of the table during discovery. The more dirt the plaintiff’s lawyer digs, the bigger the hole for the defense, Whereas the guy on the government side has no skin in the game.

One legal precedent: I-5 Bridge collapse. Same thing, only a truck did the deed. Defendant argued the bridge was old and not compliant with modern codes. State Supreme Court said , Sorry Bub, you broke it, you pay for it. All of it.

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723

Back to risk analysis.

This design was known to be fault critical, ine failure could take down multiple sections. That was known in the selection because a different design was rejected as too expensive.

In 1975, or when the bridge design was selected, were there then ships that could have taken the structure down?

Could a 1977 ship have crossed the 25’ depths and hit an adjacent pylon and collapsed the bridge?

The fault critical piece is not simply the foundations either side of the channel but ALL foundations. Other foundations/supports are some what protected bu being outside the channel. But could a ship have hit them?

In selecting this bridge design they deciders made a bet that there would be no act, accidental or intentional, that would take out a support in rush hour killing hundreds.

A proper risk analysis would have looked at the risks to the entire structure, not simply the main span because taking out an adjacent span take out the main span and other adjacent spans.

724

This was the settlement for the Sunshine Skyway Bridge allision plus a number of wrongful death suits.

“The AP later reported that a federal judge ordered the owners of Summit Venture to pay the state of Florida $19-million as compensation for the damage done to the bridge. The new Sunshine Skyway was opened to traffic on April 30, 1987, at a cost of about $244-million.”

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725

If there is a jury trial is here, good f-n luck getting a jury to even consider the “you should have built a better bridge” defense.

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726

Especially since there are a foreign ship with foreign crew and AFAIK no US interests on the owner or management side involved.
Even better if the evil charterer (Maersk) can be blamed. (Payback time for the high freight charges during Covid shutdown).

PS> I know, US Courts are never biased and always impartial. (Not like foreign courts)

727

The 1980 Skyway Bridge disaster: it may be a different kettle of fish. The weather could be plausibly blamed in that case. And it was pre-Exxon Valdez. Post-Exxon Valdez things got looked at differently.

In the past you could sell a jury on the Man Against the Sea angle, Whereas nowadays, with modern electronics/satellites, the layman assumes the captain is all-knowing, all-powerful, all the time. 50 years ago you could spin the Skyway disaster to make it seem the pilot was valiantly fighting the forces of nature. Nowadays it would be, You got underway in fog with a dodgy radar? No tugs? Did you even look at Windy? Dude…

Here’s are an article from Tampa Bay newspaper about the Skyway case.

“…Capt. John Lerro was the harbor pilot trying to guide the freighter Summit Venture…The freighter was already dealing with fog when it was hit by 60 mph, tropical-storm force winds and blinding rain.

The radar went down, too, when Lerro had to decide when to turn the Summit Venture between two of the Skyway’s main piers as the storm hid the ship’s bow from its pilot.

On the bridge, Lerro considered his options. Visibility was terrible. There was also a ship leaving the bay approaching. Unable to track the approaching ship Pure Oil, the pilot judged it too risky to turn out of the shipping channel — what if he turned into the path of the oncoming ship?

If he tried to bring the Summit Venture to a halt, the winds could cause the freighter to lose control and fling it into the bridge.

The best course, Lerro decided, was to get the Summit Venture safely between the bridge’s pillars. But he misjudged the winds, unaware that a squall had changed the direction of the wind, pushing the freighter out of the channel and off-course. The vessel was also empty, riding high on the waves.

A minute before impact, the skies cleared just enough for Lerro to see the Sunshine Skyway before him. Despite a flurry of last-second maneuvers, it was too late…”

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728

I imagine that with the development of AI a legal firm can have judicial decisions and precedents going back to Jules Caesar in seconds. There will be law firms in Baltimore whose principals will be on the phone to Real Estate and yacht brokers. It will help them over the inconvenience of traffic caused by the bridge failure.

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729

Extract from the April 1981 NTSB Report into the Skyway Bridge collapse.

“ Struetural Pier Protection
The mass and design of bridge piers and pier protection systems and the configuration, weight, and speed of ships has a direct effect on the damage which may result from a collision. The bulwark and the forecastle of the SUMMIT VENTURE struck the pier column before the lower bow struck the pier crashwall. If the pier crashwall had been larger, or if a pier protection system had been installed at that location, the initial impact would have occurred near the waterline. Because the pier crashwall is anchored through the pier footer directly into the bay bottom and is larger and stronger than the columns, it is possible that sufficient energy might have been absorbed to reduce the vessel’s forward motion and perhaps to redirect the vessel before the bulwark and forecastle struck the column. While the pier still could have been damaged, only the vessel’s mast would have struck the bridge span if the vessel had been redirected to starboard, and the vessel could have passed under the bridge span if it had been redirected to port. Then, the damage to the bridge span might have been minimized.
Because the Coast Guard and FHWA have no requirements or standards for structural pier protection, the bridge owner must determine what, if any, protec-
tion will be provided. However, the Government of France requires that all bridges • over navigable waterways be protected against ship impact. For small vessels, this • is done by reinforcing the piers, while in the case of large vessels, steps are taken

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• to ensure that the ships go aground on artificial islands and do not strike the piers. The official French view is that ship collision is so frequent an occurrence that it is absolutely essential to safeguard against it. 20/ Bridge owners should consider protecting existing vulnerable bridges and take particular care in pier placement in future bridge construction. The FHWA should examine this issue carefully in its review process for bridges built with Federal aid funds.
The Safety Board believes that the Coast Guard and the FHWA should coordinate their efforts in providing for the safety of the general pUblic by determining the specific existing and proposed bridges which are in need of additional protection from ship collisions and issue standards for the design, performance, and location of structural bridge pier protection systems.”

The replacement bridge was a different design with much improved pylon protection which explained the high cost. So the NTSB finding was aligned with the new bridge construction.

Now this is one of the recommendations from the same report.
“ In cooperation with the Federal Highway Administration, develop standards for the design, performance, and location of structural bridge pier protection systems which consider that the impact from an off-course vessel can occur significantly above as well as below the water surface. (Class II, Priority Action) (M-81-15)
In cooperation with the Federal Highway Administration, conduct a study to determine which existing bridges over the navigable waterways of U. S. ports and harbors are not equipped with adequate structural pier protection. (Class II, Priority Action) (M-81-16)
Distribute a copy of the results of the Coast Guard’s studies regarding bridge and pier protection systems to each appropriate member of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. (Class II, Priority Action) (M-81-17)”

Now the question needs to be asked……what steps were taken by the MTA regarding the Key Bridge protection following the NTSB report release?

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730

This report mentioned something new on east coast crane resources I hadn’t heard about. You NY harbor guys must have seen this around. Was this used on the new Tappan Zee bridge?

731

I believe it was for some work but the main heavy lifter there was the “Left Coast Lifter” which is still idle at Caddells in SI. Apparently the rig is all sorts of heavy lift capable but has to know the exact weight of what its lifting before it calibrate for the lift. Excellent for newbuild ops, useless for salvage ops.

732

Sorry I should have mentioned left coast lifter was the new info for me. It was at the end of the video.

Video says it’s for sale. May come in handy for the new Key bridge.

733

Stopping a ship weighing 100’000+ tons, at 8 knots, in a few meters of distance, is not easily done. The forces needed are nearly unimaginable.

It may be done by transforming the horizontal energy into heat, by crushing concrete, rocks and the ship’s hull. This may well end with a shipwreck blocking the fairway.

More efficient is transforming the ship’s horizontal energy into a vertical one, by elevating the bow; a sort of beaching.

It can be seen in videos from ship breaking yards, where an empty ship, probably only ballasted aft to have propulsion and steering, runs at speed on a rather flat beach. When the bow goes up the ship rapidly stops.

Another example is the container ship ‘Ever Given’ running into the strongly inclined bank of the Suez Canal. She did not go very far into the bank when the bow was uplifted. Pictures of the stranded ship showed the upper part of the bow bulb intact (one of the hull’s strongest parts).

The pictures in the dry dock looked otherwise: The lower part of the bulb and the adjacent bow were crushed flat by the lifting force.

Pictures are in this thread >>> VLCS Ever Given in Shipyard / Drydock

Indeed, these ‘stranding beaches’ around the pillars, need a lot of place. For new bridges, it comes to just enlarge the span width to have the needed canal width. For old bridges… build a new bridge.

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734

Urs,
Some lateral thinking there. It could be achieved by constructing two lines of dumped rock underwater break walls parallel to the bridge structure using a rock dumping vessel. The first line absorbs a significant quantity of forward momentum and the second stops the vessel in the water well clear of infrastructure. This would represent a cheaper and simpler solution as compared to others. The only issue would be the alteration of localised hydrology.

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