Who Pays For The Baltimore Bridge Collapse?

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Sorry, occupational hazard: This is not legal advice, nor can I give you legal advice. I AM NOT YOUR LAWYER. Sorry! Everything here is for informational purposes only and not for the purpose of providing legal advice. You should contact your attorney to obtain advice with respect to any particular issue or problem. Nothing here should be construed to form an attorney-client relationship. Also, some of the links in this post may be affiliate links, meaning, at no cost to you, I will earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase. But if you click, it really helps me make more of these videos! All non-licensed clips used for fair use commentary, criticism, and educational purposes. See Hosseinzadeh v. Klein, 276 F.Supp.3d 34 (S.D.N.Y. 2017); Equals Three, LLC v. Jukin Media, Inc., 139 F. Supp. 3d 1094 (C.D. Cal. 2015).

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[timmccarthy]

It's insane to me that if one niche hobbyist shipwatcher hadn't set up a 24/7 livestream of the Port of Baltimore, we'd have no footage of the collapse, let alone high-def.

[kaijab]

As someone who works in civil engineering with state DOTs, the “over one third of bridges need repair” is not an overstatement at all, in fact probably a vast understatement.

[dadab]

Baltimore resident here. I cannot remember a time where the key bridge was NOT undergoing some form of repairs. She was an old bridge, but the state did their damnedest to keep her standing. I don't think it's the state or the engineers fault the bridge collapsed when a city block rammed right into a critical weakpoint.

EDIT: Don't know why I typed bay bridge, I meant key bridge

[old_grey_cat]

I think the media should emphasise this:
26 past 1 a.m., a huge ship near a bridge puts out a Mayday call; 28 past 1 a.m. the traffic is stopped. 2 minutes - I think the authorities did their job very well there.

[Direwolf]

My wife is a civil engineer and she’s part of that group that says nothing can withstand an impact like that. Mass is a large part of energy and it was a massive ship.

[voxorox]

To give everyone a sense of scale:
You see all those containers stacked up on top of the ship?
EACH ONE is a semi trailer. When they're not on ships, they can be put on wheels and hauled down the highway. Picture those as thousands of tractor trailers stacked up.
And ships that big are common. Overseas freight is a HUGE business.

[MrMartinSchou]

Objection!

7:04 - Mærsk is a Danish shipping company, not Dutch.

[GrinerB]

They said the largest container ship in the world at the time the key bridge was built was less than 25% the size of the one that caused this accident. It’s funny how this was one of the plotlines (which was based in reality) in season 2 of The Wire, fighting to modernize Baltimore’s port to accommodate these bigger ships.

[SAOS]

As an engineer I think people don't understand just how big the forces at work are in this accident. It's the weight of a skyscraper traveling at 8 knots and it's pointy. This is enough momentum to punch through the Hoover Dam or partially collapse one of the pyramids at Giza. The NTSB is usually very thorough and they'll figure out what happened to make every backup and precaution fail. Doubtless in the future the tugs will be required to escort ships past the bridge.

[TheAssassin]

i talked to a couple of our State Bridge Design people at the lunch table. they had some issues with the design of the pylons, but generally agreed that there isn't a bridge in the world that's designed to handle a hit from a ship that big.

[jhardman]

I live maybe 20 minutes away from the bridge, just outside of Baltimore. It's a horrible tragedy that we all felt (and continue to feel) but I'm just glad that they were able to stop traffic. God only knows how many more lives could have been lost

[JonSteitzer]

Hi Devin, longtime fan. Here are a couple of notes from a retired merchant mariner Capt -

- they were Chesapeake bay pilots, not harbor (docking) pilots
- the lights on the ship don't show the safest place to pass... those are nav lights that all ships display. Bridges typically have lights to indicate such things.
- it doesn't take 4 pilots to pass under a bridge.

I think maybe that article cited led to some misinformation in your video

[MrMartinSchou]

Should the bridge have been able to survive that impact?

Well, the ship weighs in at 95, 000 metric ton when empty. It was drifting at around 9 miles/hour. The kinetic energy of that is ½ * mass * velocity^2 . That's 0.5 * 95, 000.000 kg * (4.17 m/s)^2 . That's ~825 megajoule of kinetic energy. For reference, 1 kg of TNT is ~4.2 MJ of energy equivalent.

So, if the ship was empty (it wasn't) and at 15 km/, it would need to dump around 196 kg worth of TNT in energy.

While I'm sure we could build bridges that could withstand that kind of impact, I don't think anyone wants to actually PAY for a bridge that could.

[RookieTiger]

I do wanna shout out the editor for making still images look so dynamic. The edit at 0:34 is super smooth, and the moving water under the Domino sugar building is a really nice touch.

[shelbybabcock]

“The supply chain has been disrupted”
I worked as inventory control in a massive warehouse for a few years. That statement sent a chill down my spine.

[Monotof]

I don't get why the bridges construction is a topic at all? NO bridge is built to withstand that sort of impact, otherwise it would be a solid block of concrete which defeats the purpose of being a bridge.
It is always understood by everyone that such an impact is a critical failure mode of any bridge, those risks are taken into account when constructing and using the bridge. That's similar to building anything near the sea, everyone knows that this poses a risk of tsunami damage, this is taken into account in the risk/reward calculation.

[edwardmeade]

What's critical here is that when the channel was widened 10 or so years ago, it removed the buffer area around the bridge supports. Prior to that, the 10--15 feet river depth would have caused a ship this large to go aground before it impacted the bridge piers.

[Khalith]

Even if you want to argue the bridge had a deficiency, I don’t think they were necessarily designed to withstand an impact from something that big.

[alikartal]

Thank you legal eagle. By the way I am a Lawyer in Turkey and my family name is "KARTAL" which means eagle! Having worked as a maritime lawyer for almost 25 years, your analysis is great. If there was no limitation of liability, there would not be maritime trade, and there would be no global economy as we take for granted today. Same goes for limitation of liability of airlines for aviation accidents. These activities have the potential to damage property in the billions or cause death in the hundreds. If liability was not limited, no one would ever attempt to put money into an enterprise which can be devastated with a single accident. Compromise is what makes it possible for goods and people to travel around the world and make everyone at least a little bit more wealthier. Insurance must be added to this wonderful scheme, because insurers will pay most of not all of the damage, without destroying the entrepreneurs and investors who put money into moving goods and people around the world. No pain no gain. Sad but true.

[NashaWriter]

Thank you for this. I'm born/raised in Baltimore and I know I've spent 1/3rd of my life either coming or going on that bridge. We're getting A LOT of information from everywhere and a lot of it is going in circles...

Nice to get some clear answers to some of the questions.