My apologies for the Twitter link. Appears to have happened around 1:30 EDT, judging from the timestamp in the video. Seems unsurprising that Amerikkkan infrastructure is in this dire of a state (at the cost of innocent people's lives, as usual), but I'd still love to know what the hell happened here. Hopefully the early hour meant that more people weren't harmed.
Photo of the aftermath:
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It's not uncommon for these huge ships to temporarily lose power when going slowly like this, either from age, poor maintenance, or engines that just don't like being at low RPM for that long
The problem is, a few seconds of power loss at the wrong time gets you this
Oh great, everything working as intended then
That’s crazy. I’m surprised this doesn’t happen more often then.
I'm sorry you mean to tell me a few seconds of power losses is all it takes? I'd get like 10 or 15 minutes or whatever adrift but a few seconds is all that stands between clearing the bridge and just fucking taking it out?
If you watch the video, that's basically what happened
The ship loses power as it's making a turn into the channel to go between the pillars. By the time they get power restored - less than a minute later, I believe - the ship is drifting straight toward the pillar. These things take time to turn and get on a new course even at slow speed, so even if they went full reverse or full turn, it was too late
Oh so this was a "when" question not an "if" question