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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  • john_browns_beard [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    3 months ago

    Prior to the ship hitting the support column, you can see it lose power, then regain power, then thick smoke starts billowing out the top, then it loses power again, and regains power again seconds before contact.

    Could the bridge have been engineered to be strong enough to survive an impact by a >100k ton ship? Maybe, but it seems like better backup and emergency systems on these huge ships might be a more practical idea. Obviously we are still very light on information.

    • SoyViking [he/him]
      ·
      3 months ago

      I think they usually build artificial islands around bridge columns so ships will run aground before hitting the column itself.

      • Adkml [he/him]
        ·
        3 months ago

        They do if they're required by law to, otherwise way waste the money on things like preventative safety measures.

      • Egon [they/them]
        ·
        3 months ago

        Yeah, they're called dolphins They can be seen in the video near power pylons. However none were deemed necessary to protect the bridge itself apparently.

    • Elon_Musk [none/use name]
      ·
      3 months ago

      There should be tugs that could at least push it off of a direct collision course

        • Acute_Engles [he/him, any]
          ·
          3 months ago

          Well we have the ships and have taught them multiple slurs but we can't seem to get that other part working

      • Egon [they/them]
        ·
        3 months ago

        Unless you invent a self driving tug, that's not really feasible

          • Egon [they/them]
            ·
            3 months ago

            Yeah, but I thought you were suggesting having tugs on standby 24/7 to guard every bridge from potential runaway cargo ships

            • Elon_Musk [none/use name]
              ·
              3 months ago

              Not exactly, I'm saying I think it's pretty routine to have a tug in the area at all times in case of an emergency.

              https://www.audacy.com/knxnews/news/local/baltimore-ship-crash-has-one-expert-wondering-about-tugboat