The way my mind works, those videos of the container ship sailing out-of-control yesterday morning into Baltimore’s now-destroyed Francis Scott Key Bridge immediately reminded me of the scene in “Jurassic Park II: The Lost World” when the cargo ship destroys the pier in San Diego because a Tyrannosaurus had eaten the crew. It does appear that the vessel in Baltimore had a catastrophic mechanical failure and the crew lost control of the ship, but it did get off a distress message soon enough to minimize the fatalities when the wounded bridge collapsed into the river.
Never mind, though: the incident is still rolling, ethics train wreck style, because it is being unethically politicized by both parties, and that’s because everything has to be politicized now.
Exhibit A: During his press conference announcing that the federal government will fund the rebuilding of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, President Biden said he had taken commuter rail on the bridge “many many times commuting from the state of Delaware either by train or by car.” Everything is about Joe, you see. The problem with the statement is that there were no rail lines over that bridge.
This would normally be in the “confused old coot whose mind is hovering on the brink of crippling dementia” category and worthy of Julie Principle status. However, this is also quite likely to be another one of Biden’s many deliberate lies, and as long as the Trump Deranged and the Axis of Unethical Conduct continue to claim that Donald Trump is unfit to be President because he lies all the time, Joe doesn’t get a Julie Principle pass. He lies constantly and always has, during his entire career.
I’ll give him his pass when the Washington Post creates a Biden lie database using the same criteria they used for Trump’s database—every exaggeration, hyperbole, joke, misstatement and opinion the Post Democrats disagree with, broken promise, example of deceit and actual, intentional falsehood is a “lie,” and the paper reports on the “lies” from both individuals using exactly the same news judgement and standards.
Exhibit B: Utah Republican Phil Lyman, candidate for governor, tweeted out that the DEI mania was responsible for the Baltimore disaster:
There was no evidence whatsoever that the cargo ship’s problems were caused by the “Didn’t Earn It” fad. I’m having a hard time figuring out how the bridge collapse could possibly be blamed on DEI. In a subsequent post, Lyman added, “DEI=DIE.”
As Marty McFly might say,
Then, when called on this cheap shot idiocy, Lyman blamed the tweets under his name on the anonymous staffers who handle his social media accounts. “I prefer a dignified approach and sometimes the people who handle the social media are more provocative than what I’m comfortable with,” Lyman said. Oh. And why do you allow irresponsible agents to speak for you on social media?
If there are any Utahns out there, do NOT vote for this guy.
Lyman wasn’t the only conservative to make the absurd leap from DEI to the bridge collapse. Former Florida State Rep. Anthony Sabatini posted a video of the bridge collapsing adding, “DEI did this.”
Exhibits C,D and E:
- Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones suggested said the he suspects the accident was due to a cyber attack , perhaps the beginning of World War III. Who follows that idiot? How does anyone who pays attention to him get through a single day alive, with only a rudimentary brain, like a salamander?
- American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp tweeted “drug-addled” workers and coronavirus lockdowns were to blame.
- Fox Business Host Maria Bartoromo claimed that the bridge disaster was in part caused by the Biden administration’s illegal immigration policies. I would call this the equivalent of the Left blaming the accident on climate change.
Boy, The Great Stupid is strong on Twitter/”X” these days…and Google’s not working! Maybe World War III is starting…
Ethics Alarms 
Does calling it the “bridge collapse” have subtle hints that it “just sort of happened”?
Is it better to call it the “bridge accident” or “bridge crash”?
I think that’s a valid point, MW.
I may be unreasonably sensitive to what is probably a minor quibble –
The internet is abuzz with people screaming about “Spending money on Ukraine when we could be funding infrastructure” or “Focusing too much on this policy I don’t like when we could be funding infrastructure”
As if we are going to spend the kind of money necessary to make a bridge pier 130,000-ton-cargo-ship proof…
Which if anyone is curious – essentially would require building massive islands of rubble and boulders around each pier making the channel unpassable entirely.
Simultaneously, the people complaining are also the ones that probably complain when the government does actually spend money on infrastructure.
Lots of bridges do have this feature. The I-40 bridge over the Arkansas river collapsed because they were only placed on the upstream side, reasoning that the danger was from breakaway barges or something that lost power, not that someone would intentionally steer into the bridge.
You are correct – lots of bridges are designed for some level of impact. Usually some drunken yokel on a speed boat. Or in the Arkansas river case – a loss of control of a barge.
But there’s a significant difference in designing piers or pier barriers to absorb or deflect the kinetic energy of a 1,600 ton barge floating at a slow reservoir speed and a 130,000 ton container ship under steam leaving port…
Even the depths of the bodies of water in question are prohibitive – building in protection on the Arkansas River (in the reservoir where that bridge was built) only contends with a depth of about 10 feet. Whereas the piers for the Key bridge are in 30 feet of water.
The narrowest piers of the Arkansas river bridge are about 130 feet apart – and the jumbo barges are about 200 feet x 35 feet – so the odds of an impact by a loose barge is HIGH.
The piers of the Key bridge are 1,100 feet apart (extremely wide berth for vessels about 160 feet wide – with an assumption of loss of control being LOW – that wide of a berth implies an extremely LOW likelihood of an impact.
Seems to me like the cost balances at Key makes sense – massive body of water – massive spans between piers – depth of the body of water at the piers – should aim more toward preventative protocols and practices to make impact likelihoods of anything short of a drunken yokel on a speedboat round to 0. As opposed to spending the however many multiple or hundreds of millions to 130,000-ton-container-ship-proof each pier at the additional cost of decreasing the navigable surface of the water.
“Collapse” is the most accurate term. “Bridge accident” is too vague (could mean a car accident on the bridge). And the bridge didn’t “crash”, the ship did.
But it collapsed *after* something happened to it. Unlike infrastructure failure where gravity makes something “just collapse”.
In 1993 the American Civil Engineers (or some such group name) presented to Congress, on CSPAN that our infrastructure was under funded and had been for decades. They warned that if Congress didn’t act our future would include regular bridge and structure collapses and tragedies. The Francis Scott Key Bridge was built and opened 47 years ago (this week). The Container ships in use then are tiny by comparison to today. My guess is the bridge was constructed to withstand a collision 47 years ago, however no improvements have been made to protect against what happened, because no one other than an engineer would think it could happen. In the end as is usually the case we have a perfect storm of incompetent “leadership” with misguided priorities. Who’s to blame? I’d say the voters for electing the same incompetents again and again.
One can’t argue with your conclusion. The bridges, roads, airports, railways, waterways and water and sewage pipes were deteriorating unacceptably 40 years ago when I headed up a research report by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The conclusions were scary then, and the heralded infrastructure doesn’t nearly cover what needs repairing.
And when the bridge is rebuilt (no doubt giving the contract to a minority business owner), will they keep the name of that terrible slave owner Francis Scott Key?
There have already been rumblings about that.
https://twitchy.com/brettt/2024/03/26/ap-gives-us-a-biography-of-controversial-figure-francis-scott-key-n2394433
It’ll be designed by a DEI hire and built by DEI contractors. And then it’ll collapse of its own accord instead of by a collision.
This article seem to support the initial reactions:
https://www.conservativereview.com/ship-that-obliterated-baltimore-bridge-was-involved-in-a-previous-collision-managed-by-dei-captive-company-2667607714.html
I’m sure the investigation will clear that issue up, but everything points to a mechanical failure, and such strained connections to DEI really are similar to the climate change fanatics who attribute everything bad that happens anywhere to that. The fact that the company may be “DEI” mad now doesn’t prove anything about the crew or link the hiring policies to the disaster. The captain, maintenance personnel and crew could all be competent regardless of any biases in hiring. This stuff doesn’t help: it undermines legitimate arguments against the discriminatory policy.
I am surprised at the relatively low casualty rate, given the length of the bridge and the amount of traffic it had on a daily basis. I realize this collision occurred at 1:30 a.m. but still, . . . From what I am reading/hearing, the captain or crew made an emergency call to security groups (police, etc.) that they lost power and were in danger of colliding with the bridge. The police/security agencies stopped traffic (admittedly minimal considering that hour of the night) thereby greatly reducing potential loss of life. I say, “Kudos to them!”
As for DEI, well, I have no idea. The container ship is owned by an Indonesian firm – or perhaps it is registered in Indonesia – but that doesn’t mean a whole lot. I suspect hundreds of foreign owned and/or registered big-ass container ships travel that river on a weekly basis with all kinds of crew and captains without incident. If complete power and/or mechanical failure caused the collision then DEI would not have done a lot to prevent the collision.
I am kind of curious that big-ass container ships don’t have fail-safe mechanisms to stop a runaway vessel – a kind of manual override to take control of the ship when all electrical and mechanical systems go “off line” (and for all I know, they do, but it is not like stopping a 2016 Chevy Tahoe with failed breaks. I mean, we are dealing with a big-ass boat weighing in excess of 130,000,000 tons. It’s not like you can drop anchor and the damn thing stops on a dime!).
I saw complaints about the Baltimore mayor and the governor and their respective statements but from what I saw, neither one performed horribly and they put the assets in place to address the incident. Baltimore’s mayor suggested they pray for the victims and their families but I don’t find that offensive or obnoxious It is pretty standard fare for politicians in times of crisis.
jvb
Ed. Note: Many of the observations made here about the ship’s mechanics are really questions answers to which I do not have and do not profess to know, especially about the safety features and protocols used by shipping companies and contingency plans to deal with crises. If the ship lost all controls – both mechanical or power – then the difficulty in stopping a run-away vessel of that size and weight has to be extraordinary. We are dealing with physics (weight, size, length, and maneuverability of a huge vessel), engineering, weather and water current conditions, as well as human reaction to the crisis. We are also dealing with the bridge and its design – which may have been designed to address a glancing blow but not a direct impact at a support structure. I am certain that the shipping company had trained the crew to deal with these situations but there may be little to do to gain control in that river to avoid hitting something.
There was construction work on the bridge, so I suspect police were already on the bridge directing traffic, and were this in perfect position to rapidly close the bridge to traffic.
I don’t know, it’s my understanding that this ship was flagged to Singapore. I think it would be worth inquiring into the backgrounds of the crew, assuming they are from Singapore not from the US, which is admittedly a big assumption, to see if any of them are plugged in with The Religion of Peace.
It has been reported that the crew is mostly Indian and the captain is Ukrainan.
Now, when I watch the video, the ship looks like it is going to drift under the bridge. Luckily, at the last minute, the ship executed a hard right turn or it would have missed the bridge entirely.
could have been intentional or the rudder was hard over due or during the power outages. Recovering from a casualty is usually not as simple as turning the power back on….
the 737max crash’s were design faults with poorly trained crew in combination.
NTSB will figure out how it happened, they have way more itty bitty pieces strewn across Hell’s half acre.
Yes, but to insist that it is accidental at this stage shows a lot of bias and looks suspicious.
Insisting that the collision was intentional doesn’t showa lot of bias and looks suspicious? The actions of the crew and the videos showing the ship before the collision lean more towards an electrical or mechanical failure. Before the ship’s lights died the first time, the Dali was barely moving fast enough for the rudder to affect steering. Once propulsion is lost and speed drops below that minimum, the rudder isn’t going to do much of anything. Disasters are almost never intentional, almost always several small issues that add up in just the wrong way to cause a disaster.
We really need some better government policies that restrict – and maybe outlaw – gravity. It’s the primary driver in many of these crash-type incidents.
“We really need some better government policies that restrict – and maybe outlaw – gravity.”
Ala Claude-Frédéric Bastiat and The Candlemakers Petition…?
PWS
in this case we have to ban inertia
Well, if you can accomplish that, the world lies at your doorstep. Rebuilding a bridge will be trivial.
Maybe we should ask Elon Musk to put one of his companies on the project?
In all seriousness, blaming the bridge collapse on climate change, or “Didn’t Earn It” (boy, it feels good to type that!!), or immigration is just stupid. But also, looking at other angles (intentional destruction, terrorism, etc) could be just as fruitless.
At the end of the day, it could be as simple as 1) there are lots of bridges in the world, 2) there are lots of really big boats in the world, 3) lots of big boats in the world travel under lots of those bridges, 4) inevitably, someone’s going to mess up and a big boat is going to collide with a bridge support and knock the bridge down?
It’s also been pointed out that this was always a terrible place for a bridge, which was only built because the tunnel recommended for transporting hazardous materials was deemed too expensive.
Now that the bridge is down, I wonder if a tunnel – despite its costs – will get greater consideration.
Anyone saying it was this or that without any direct evidence is a fool.
We cannot rule out anything at this point.
Ruling out a cyber attack is as foolish as claiming that it was.
And aliens, as in real, out-of-this solar system? Occam’s Razor has to come into play at some point. Those elephant tracks in the snow, could have been, but almost certainly weren’t, made by mischievous Yetis wearing fake elephant boots. One does not have to pretend that all possibilities are equally likely.
Jack
At this point there is no “truth” as to what happened only speculation. A year ago there was concern in Congress about Chinese technology being deployed in our ports that gave them access to data and potential control of the cranes in 80% of our ports using unnecessary cell technology. It is not a stretch to consider a container ship which is controlled primarily by computers in navigation and propulsion to be manipulated by an adversary. If our ports are compromised we have had our supply lines effectively cut.
Lara Logan has reported that her sources in the intel community say it was an attack. I trust no unnamed source. I do wonder why Biden was quick to say the government would pay to rebuild the bridge without also saying it is doing so because ascertaining fault could take years of litigation and the city, state and nation cannot wait until fault is determined. Then again maybe Biden is just concerned about an interruption in his Amtrak service.
I would think the ethical thing to do is wait for the preliminary findings after which you can question any holes in their analysis that may be appropriate.
A scenario in which a known adversary that has an extensive cyber warfare component and who we know try to infiltrate our systems daily to find weaknesses is not the same as someone saying that Bigfoot caused the allision with the bridge by the Dali. Eliminating the potential of that event without data is a fools errand.
Why is SloJo promising to pay for the bridge? Is that just his knee jerk reaction from a lifetime of throwing other people’s money at things? Shouldn’t the ship’s insurers and or owners be the first ones in line to pay?
In any case, it’s my understanding that the bridge is a toll bridge owned and operated by the state. They’ve been collecting money on it, and should at least be next in line.
Financial responsibility can take years to determine especially when everyone starts pointing fingers. The state could front the costs but if the feds step in there is less impact on the state budget right now. This is a perfectly acceptable rationale.
What worries me is if the reason for covering the costs is to prevent the transparency of an investigation through discovery motions which could lead to an embarrassing intelligence failure. If there was a cyber attack by an adversary the ships insurers would be off the hook for damages.
A cyber attack or any other form of terrorism is pure conjecture and I am only examining reasons why an administration might want to cover the costs out of the gate.