Assessing the Bridge Collapse
NOT the end of the world
Greetings fellow Plebs & Peasants,
So now that its been close to a week since the bridge incident, I am sticking with my initial opinion that this was just an unfortunate accident. There just is nothing peculiar IMHO. Nothing at all. But in line with ‘never let a crisis go to waste’, the doom peddlers still seem to be at it. All I can say is that if this was a terror attack of some sort, it was a pretty fucking lame one. Makes exactly zero sense to do something when the body count would be so low, and to do so at the 9th busiest port in the US.. Whoa, cars are gonna be re-routed to another port. End of the world. If you recall, a couple years ago, a large container ship went sideways in the Suez and immediately the end of humanity was predicted, then when nothing happened, it was never spoken of again. Well, I predict this is going to be the same. People will figure it out, and likely have already. The screen shot that follows (taken from a recent No Agenda newsletter). As one who is somewhat familiar with the area that this occurred, I can say the assessment of having little to no effect on traffic to be accurate.
There are multiple ways to get anywhere from anywhere in the greater area from Philly to DC.
Does it look like one port down will truly be a problem? Keep in mind, the vast majority of our imports comes from China, so this will have no effect on that. And while I have no idea how long it takes ships this size to get from port to port, from Baltimore, it is no more than a half hour drive to Philly, less to Wilmington, maybe an hour to Norfolk, and maybe two hours to NY/Newark. In other words, they are all close enough, and ships often hit more than one port on their journey. The main thing seems to be re-outing things once off the ships, which, again, people will figure out if they haven’t already.
I have also included a few notes that were submitted to No Agenda for Sunday’s show (link to show notes). They also are what I consider to be accurate (and reasoned) assessments. So, basically, I see the supply chain being very minimally affected. So, if you are freaking out, take a breath. This isn’t the one. Sometimes an accident is just an accident.
- jw
#donotcomply #nocompromise #nosurrender
Hi Adam,
I have not written to you for a long time - but we listen to NA every Thursday and Sunday. I don't think I have missed an episode since 2009...
Just wanted to vent out a little bit on the bridge collapse - thank you so much for taking the time to read this.
I am a professional structural engineer. I am working primarily on buildings these days, but I took my Professional Engineering exam as a bridge engineer and have work on quite a few bridge projects. Most importantly for the sake of the recent bridge collapse in Maryland, I have worked on some bridge projects at major waterways where the structures had to be protected from "vessel impact".
Overall - it is not practical to design a bridge for direct impact from a large container ship. The cost becomes prohibitive. However, this does not mean that bridges are left unprotected. The most annoying thing in this episode is that it is relatively well-understood what needs to be done.
I don't watch news, (that's what you do, so I don't have to) so I might have missed it, but there was a similar disaster in 1980 in Florida - the Sunshine Skyway bridge. A large container-carrying ship collided with a long-span truss bridge and the bridge fell down. If you look at the pictures - the similarity is striking.
So when they built the new bridge they protected it with so-called "dolphins". These are large, relatively cheap structures with the purpose to take the impacts of a stray ship and protect the bridge - something like the fender of a car. Usually built with sheepiles in a bid circle and filled with crushed stone - so big and relatively cheap. These are the big "circles" you see - the picture below is from the rebuilt bridge in Florida.
So - well known issue, there is a well known solution, just not implemented. All new bridges built over navigable waters use some of a system like that. For the old bridges, even though it is well known they are vulnerable - more or less nothing is done. My interpretation is - there is always, oh - do we really need those, who is going pay - the Federal Government, the Port Authority, the State ... Oh and by the way we have 33 agencies who need to issue a permit, so only the permitting takes 15 years ...
Thanks for bearing with me.
Looking forward to the show tomorrow.
All the best,
Nikola
1) GPS Spoofing is not a cyber attack, it is GPS spoofing. 2) I don't buy it - I have never met a harbor pilot who looks at the GPS, for this very reason (not spoofing, just the lag and unreliability of electronic navigation). On a clear night, they are highly reliant on lights, bouys, bridge, etc. It is true that the channel range marker lights for the Ft McHenry Channel are aft, when heading outbound. But from a bridge wing you'd know that you were on or off centerline of the channel (and thankfully they had the channel pretty much to themselves).
I actually think if anything this may inspire a cyber copy-cat attack in the coming years. It won't be spoofing (I don't consider that a cyber attack, ever!), it will be a ship motor controller taken down via some cell-phone trigger (we should say 5G enabled attack to scare people!). Did anyone really think you could do this much damage before? You would have to be either really good or really lucky though, because almost anywhere else, or the wind or tide a little different and this would be like the last containership that blocked the port of Baltimore for a month ([https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61141420](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61141420)).
Coworkers had asked me if I thought this was possible from chance - and I absolutely do. The wind was off the port bow (NE), the tide was inbound - this makes the ship basically an inverted pendulum (imagine balancing a bat upright on your hand) - and the wind would've started the bow to starboard (the right) a little bit, and then it would just be pushed off course gradually to starboard/the south. The 2 'engineering' issues that I see are:
1) what little barriers/bollards were there to protect the bridge pier were either too far away (a concrete caisson closer to the power lines), or too small for the bow flaring out at the front (there's a small fence to stop ships and barges from hitting the bridge and taking it down - but they're too small by like 45 ft for a large, modern containership like this, probably good for a barge, bulk carrier, or tanker).
2) In the Navy we are obsessed in narrow channels like this (or next to an oiler/carrier) to have the emergency generators started and running offline ready to connect to the electrical system! (and emergency steering is manned, ready to instantly try and move the rudders via manual pump control)! Is it actually commercial practice to not be in some high/maximum reliability configuration? Maybe. At the extreme limit of controlling forces/failures, you now see in places like Valdez/Prince William Sound, a requirement to have escort tugs (for steering) connected and ready to respond until like an hour offshore - because your response times vs your major accident times are not sufficient unless they're already made-up (i.e. attached).
What I cannot believe is that from a marine-radio mayday-to the USCG-to call/radio the MD State Police- that anyone could've actually started stopping traffic in 2 minutes! Maybe there were troopers hanging out near the bridge because it's a good stepping off point to rest at?
Now, on the claim that the bridge is irreplaceable. I believe you can bypass the bridge 3-4 different ways, but it is just going to shift congestion. It is the major Hazmat route, because the main I-95 route is a harbor tunnel. I suspect you'll see HAZMAT either take the outer-beltway (695?) to the West, traffic from Philadelphia/North will head down through Delaware and across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge (near Annapolis), adding to congestion there. Even I-81 and rail will probably see hazmat increase from cargoes that can afford the detour/delay. Less than a tenth of the impact of the Houston power issue 2 years ago in Feb! Don't touch the oilfields and we can figure everything else out. Shutdown a refinery (or 3) and that will ripple for 1+ years ([https://www.dallasfed.org/research/swe/2021/swe2102/swe2102c](https://www.dallasfed.org/research/swe/2021/swe2102/swe2102c)).
I still don't understand why these small but significant supply chain issues (Suez canal block, Baltimore port block, Panama canal issue, LA Port strike, etc, etc) don't inspire a higher cost to be assigned to the risk of just in time inventory systems - if you have a 3-7 week inventory at least on a train in the country, this is a very non-event. The way MBAs have poorly accounted for risk to get themselves a bonus is probably closer to the real problem.
As information comes out about the recent cargo ship bridge disaster in Baltimore, one area of concern relates to the cargo ship company’s track record of silencing whistleblowers who raised concerns about safety issues. In fact, the company illegally required employees to first come to the company with safety concerns before informing federal authorities.
Dali cargo ship suffered 'severe electrical problem' while docked in Baltimore days prior to bridge collapse crash that saw it suffer 'total power failure, loss of engine failure', port worker says
NTSB Releases "Black Box" Timeline of Baltimore Bridge Strike
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