Long before Key Bridge collapse, Baltimore mariners warned of ‘ship strikes’
I wish news outlets would quit with this stuff. Every time a disaster of some kind takes place they manage to dredge up someone who warned about it. You know why? Because someone, somewhere has warned about every conceivable disaster known to the imagination of man.
In this case, it appears that a guy named Joe Smith repeatedly brought up the risk of a large ship hitting the Key Bridge at meetings of the Baltimore Harbor Safety and Coordination Committee. Then Smith retired in 2014 and no one else took up the cause. This is apparently because the committee mostly agreed that adding protection would cost nearly $100 million and the benefit was very hard to quantify.
In retrospect, you can always find something like this. But did the Post ever notice it before the bridge collapsed? That's the only time it counts.
"In retrospect, you can always find something like this ..."
Disasters should be investigated to reduce the chances of them happening again. Part of this process is considering whether warnings should have been heeded.
in Kevin’s head, the world is already as good as it could possibly be.
True. But I don't think Kevin is arguing against that. It's just that for every disaster, someone will have "predicted" it. Sometimes it's someone making a reasonable argument, which seems to be the case here. Sometimes it's a psychic.
For something like the Key bridge, the devil would be in the details. How much would the upgrade in protections cost? How long would it take? How much longer would the Key bridge operate before needing to be replaced? Would the upgrade in protections work for the next generation of ships? And what are the odds of a major ship strike?
One key assumption is that expensive ships with lots of cargo will be well maintained, so odds of them losing power and running into a bridge is very remote. Indeed, there are few major incidents with modern container ships. That does need to be revisited.
"One key assumption is that expensive ships with lots of cargo will be well maintained…"
A competent captain would have dropped anchor and called for a tug the first time the ship lost power/steering. That was the backup plan. In fact, if there was a secondary power plant, a competent captain would have that running in a rather complex area like a busy harbor.
You should probably look up the history of this incident.
Anchors don't stop ships, first of all; second of all, such a failure in the power distribution system is pretty unheard of (and not bypassable by just adding another generator to the system).
https://youtu.be/CWGaLFhoRDM
For something like the Key bridge, the devil would be in the details. How much would the upgrade in protections cost? How long would it take? How much longer would the Key bridge operate before needing to be replaced?
It's a step farther than that. The question isn't how much it would have cost to upgrade the Key Bridge. It's how much would it cost to upgrade all similar bridges. Unless you're clairvoyant enough to have divined which harbor is going to experience the collision, you can't just protect one and call it a day.
"Joe Smith"? As in "Joseph Smith", the founder of the Church of Latter Day Saints?? Clearly, it was a visitation from Heaven, or wherever martyred Mormons go!
I suppose the benefits are a little easier to "quantify" now, aye?
Plenty of gag orders and no comments in the story. Larry H said Maryland was open for business during his tenure. He did not say it would be safe. The other ports Baltimore was competing with installed safety upgrades. $100 million to insure against $90 billion? I'll take that insurance.
The cost is probably wrong, as hardening bridges is notoriously difficult.
I think this is just a little too flippant. 100 million looks cheap now compared with the costs of the whole accident now. It was an obviously risky situation that was tolerated because the accident did not materialize. Until it did.
Airline travel is as safe as it is exactly because those sort of risks are taken seriously.
There is also the alternative to hardening the bridge: Making sure only fully operable ships are allowed to move around. The ship in question had serious problems with its electrical system before it started out. It should not have been allowed to move until it was fixed and inspected.
Unfortunately, aviation safety is almost always paid for in blood, and in this case, blood and a whole lot of treasure.
Requiring ships of certain size (big enough to catastrophically damage bridges in the area), to always be lead in by tug boats may have helped, but would of course increase the cost of accessing a harbor.
Low taxes aren't free. The US has lower taxes than virtually all of its peers. And one of the costs of low taxes is that there is no money for retrofitting infrastructure to meet today's needs. The day before the bridge collapsed, nobody would have voted to raise taxes to retrofit the bridge for a collision with a ship bigger than those that existed in the 1970s when the bridge was built. You get what you (don't) pay for, which in the US's case is lots of infrastructure built a half century or more ago - back when the top tax rates were in the 90% range. And that old infrastructure might fail any day now, but there is no money to upgrade any of it until and unless a crisis happens.
Because ships collide with bridges almost every day!
Pingback: Nukleartechnologie wird neue deutsche Staatsräson, weil der Matheunterricht die deutschen Gerichte in Sylt beschäftigt - Vermischtes 30.05.2024 - Deliberation Daily