Watched a really interesting episode of Nova today in which they detailed the Key Bridge disaster from last year where the container ship hit and collapsed it with seven construction workers on it at the time, six of whom died. Intense stuff. And fascinating.
They’re pretty sure the container ship lost power because of a loose cable—a circuit the ship hadn’t actually used in months, but their primary circuit had been having issues as well—and the system being set to manual so it never switched over to the other circuit like it was supposed to, in addition to an inadequate backup system for the fuel pumps that feed the power generators…though by the time those tried to come back online, the ship was likely already going to crash. So…yeah. A cascade of failures.
On the bridge side of things, the piers holding up that long stretch of bridge had utterly inadequate protection. Newer bridges have far superior protection requirements these days, but the process of adding those same protections to older bridges (as ship sizes have exponentially increased) has been far behind the curve. If the Key bridge had been a newer one, it would have had robust protections that would have run this ship aground or knocked off course far before it ever hit that pier.
The salvage operation was probably the most interesting part of the episode, though. What a spectacular feat of engineering ingenuity. All that tangled steel, concrete from the road, the need to be slow and careful so as to make sure remains recovery is possible, the need to open the port back up again as soon as possible, all the twisted steel smashed and snarled over the ship itself, and all the mud at the bottom that it all has to be pulled out from—that shit makes suction, you know? It’s not just the weight of those massive steel beams, it’s how sucked into the mud they are as well.
Crazy stuff. Super interesting. I recommend it. Support your local PBS station!