The evidence, as noted by Alex Jones and Andrew Tate, overwhelmingly supports a deliberate attack. Baltimore was selected because of its overwhelming amount of DEI hires and underwhelming competence. My prediction: air travel is the next target. Air traffic control facilities and airline cockpits are overwhelmingly crewed by DEI hires.
So less than 48 hours later, these nautical shipping experts have found the conspiracy “evidence” they knew had to be there? What evidence is that?
How’s about let’s first find out why the engines kept failing. I’ve seen it said that a ship that big has to be under power in order to control steering, so isn’t it great that our “deliberate attack[ers]” were able to precisely control where they were going. And the winds were such that any vessel not under control was going to drift out of a narrow channel in that direction.
What I do know is that I am totally ignorant on the subject. So rather than listening to suddenly instant experts like Jones and Tate (Pete Buttigieg is probably a better expert on this matter than those two) to tell me the “truth”, I’d first look to sites that for years have been covering shipping and other nautical matters, like gcaptain.com.
Finally watched a video. It’s pretty clear that container ship was having electrical on-again/off-again issues.
Horrible there were what appeared to be construction vehicles (light pickup trucks) on the bridge during the collapse. But amazingly I could see nothing in transit. Where there had been just minutes previously. Where the construction crews able to seal off both ends in time? If so, that’s truly heroic.
No, apparently it was truly amazing – according to reports, the local police had 90 seconds of notice and managed to get both sides of the bridge closed.
That’s truly amazing. All coastal cities with channel bridges take note! I wonder if the police were able to respond quickly because they were providing traffic assistance for the construction crews? 90 seconds from the call to sealing off the bridge is just miraculous.
If we had a functional federal government to make up for the unmanageable Blue cities, Baltimore and our East Coast distribution system might have had a shot.
One can only hope this drives up prices in November as a reminder to the blue useless idiots. But China Joe will probably be able to cut a deal with the CCP just before the election.
Probably. The CCP funded the election theft in 2020, it’s totally reasonable to expect they’ll do it again. Plus, they’ve substantially weakened the dollar via their inflation design policies so they’re probably getting a better deal than in 2020!
I do think the economic harm from this event is just starting to be noticed. It will be regionally very bad. I’m a bit more optimistic that the port will be open within a quarter, but that’s only because the primary channel needs to be cleared for the port to reopen. It will be years before the motor way is replaced by whatever is the choice.
I less inclined to believe intent, but I wouldn’t rule it out at this time. However, if an intentional act, I don’t think it has anything to do with the actions taken on the bridge during the incident. Mistakes were likely made, such as the latest news that the generators failed 48 hours before departure and obviously failed during the incident. Perhaps more tests of the generator should have been made before departure. And what caused the failure is not public information, but that will tell us a lot.
I stopped after the second paragraph. The ships in the harbor will be trapped until the channel is cleared but that shouldn’t take more than a week. Athat, until construction starts, there’s no reason that the port should be closed and the great probability is that the new bridge will be designed to allow it to be constructed with minimum to no restriction to shipping. Even if that wasn’t the case, the goods and ships would simply go to another port.
Road traffic will be another matter and probably disrupted for a long time.
This will probably be about the same as the Ever Forward grounding as far as the port and shipping in concerned.
If I was going to knock down a bridge on purpose, there are a lot bigger, showier ones to aim for.
Totally agree. Assume nothing happens to the former bridge for a week or two, while they investigate. Not much of an investigation; the bridge fell because a key support was struck by a very heavy ship, so no Agatha Christie or Tom Clancy needed.
Meanwhile, they can be planning – should have already started planning – and as soon as the all clear is given, a large group of men with cutting torches and floating cranes can begin clearing the channel. There is no way a committed force could not have that much cleared in a month.
A ship hit a bridge and it collapsed. The mess will get cleaned. Ships will go to other ports. Prices might go up for some goods. The bridge will be replaced and the process will suffer as other infrastructure projects have.
People need to calm down and stop freaking out. But this freakout has less to do with this incident than a general feeling of impending doom percolating through society because our politicians and government workforce are shit.
Just some things worth noting: the port can reopen as soon as the ship is towed away and the ship channel cleared of large debris (the channel is about 16 meters deep).
Key bridge only carried around 20% of the cross-harbor traffic, the rest went through the two tunnels, so there won’t be much extra congestion. The main purpose of Key Bridge was to carry Hazmat, which can’t go through the tunnels. So those trucks will have to go the long way around the beltway (but probably few extra miles).
This is not a big deal (unless you are among the dead). I always hated the bridge and chose the tunnels when possible.
Interestingly, there are two Algol-class fast freighters (the size of aircraft carriers) in Baltimore harbor, representing about a quarter of the US rapid-reaction sealift capability.
That said, even four ships are not a quarter of the reserve capability.
Keyword “rapid-reaction.” The Algol class freighters can carry the entire equipment of a mechanized Army division and, under ideal conditions, cover a thousand miles a day. Antares and Denebola are two out of eight Algols in inventory. The ROROs and other smaller ships would be bringing up the rear and, if you wanted, you could county any old yacht-club blue-water sailboat as “sealift” (remembering Dunkirk).But you do you.
At the current rate, our federal government spends about 684 million dollars every hour, paying a contractor to clear the debris and rebuild this bridge should take part of one morning’s output. It can be done in about 13 months.(see the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis). No need to interfere with the investigation into how it happened. If it makes anyone feel better, we can put bumpers on the supports so the next boat just bounces off instead of killing people and destroying the whole span.
As to the ship losing power several times en-route to it’s collision, the light switch would convince most spectators that this was just an accident.
I worked in Baltimore about half time from 2008 to 2010. Every so often, a vast mountains of coal slowly rose on the between the rail yard and the waterfront. Then it would suddenly disappear.
That coal undoubtedly came from West Virginia, and was bound for China. AFAIK, that was still going on before the bridge accident. If so, we can rule out a Chinese attack.
It’s probably worth remembering that contra media reports, Baltimore is an inconsequential port at the head of the Chesapeake Bay, handling 35 million tons a year. That’s compared to New York at 150 million tons and Houston at 250 million tons, Even Hampton Roads, at the *mouth* of the Chesapeake is bigger. Boston is currently being dredged to post-Panamax depth, and Boston Harbor is free of inconvenient bridges. I think Baltimore is less than 2% of US port capacity.
The evidence, as noted by Alex Jones and Andrew Tate, overwhelmingly supports a deliberate attack. Baltimore was selected because of its overwhelming amount of DEI hires and underwhelming competence. My prediction: air travel is the next target. Air traffic control facilities and airline cockpits are overwhelmingly crewed by DEI hires.
So less than 48 hours later, these nautical shipping experts have found the conspiracy “evidence” they knew had to be there? What evidence is that?
How’s about let’s first find out why the engines kept failing. I’ve seen it said that a ship that big has to be under power in order to control steering, so isn’t it great that our “deliberate attack[ers]” were able to precisely control where they were going. And the winds were such that any vessel not under control was going to drift out of a narrow channel in that direction.
What I do know is that I am totally ignorant on the subject. So rather than listening to suddenly instant experts like Jones and Tate (Pete Buttigieg is probably a better expert on this matter than those two) to tell me the “truth”, I’d first look to sites that for years have been covering shipping and other nautical matters, like gcaptain.com.
Finally watched a video. It’s pretty clear that container ship was having electrical on-again/off-again issues.
Horrible there were what appeared to be construction vehicles (light pickup trucks) on the bridge during the collapse. But amazingly I could see nothing in transit. Where there had been just minutes previously. Where the construction crews able to seal off both ends in time? If so, that’s truly heroic.
No, apparently it was truly amazing – according to reports, the local police had 90 seconds of notice and managed to get both sides of the bridge closed.
That’s truly amazing. All coastal cities with channel bridges take note! I wonder if the police were able to respond quickly because they were providing traffic assistance for the construction crews? 90 seconds from the call to sealing off the bridge is just miraculous.
If we had a functional federal government to make up for the unmanageable Blue cities, Baltimore and our East Coast distribution system might have had a shot.
One can only hope this drives up prices in November as a reminder to the blue useless idiots. But China Joe will probably be able to cut a deal with the CCP just before the election.
Probably. The CCP funded the election theft in 2020, it’s totally reasonable to expect they’ll do it again. Plus, they’ve substantially weakened the dollar via their inflation design policies so they’re probably getting a better deal than in 2020!
I do think the economic harm from this event is just starting to be noticed. It will be regionally very bad. I’m a bit more optimistic that the port will be open within a quarter, but that’s only because the primary channel needs to be cleared for the port to reopen. It will be years before the motor way is replaced by whatever is the choice.
I less inclined to believe intent, but I wouldn’t rule it out at this time. However, if an intentional act, I don’t think it has anything to do with the actions taken on the bridge during the incident. Mistakes were likely made, such as the latest news that the generators failed 48 hours before departure and obviously failed during the incident. Perhaps more tests of the generator should have been made before departure. And what caused the failure is not public information, but that will tell us a lot.
I stopped after the second paragraph. The ships in the harbor will be trapped until the channel is cleared but that shouldn’t take more than a week. Athat, until construction starts, there’s no reason that the port should be closed and the great probability is that the new bridge will be designed to allow it to be constructed with minimum to no restriction to shipping. Even if that wasn’t the case, the goods and ships would simply go to another port.
Road traffic will be another matter and probably disrupted for a long time.
This will probably be about the same as the Ever Forward grounding as far as the port and shipping in concerned.
If I was going to knock down a bridge on purpose, there are a lot bigger, showier ones to aim for.
Totally agree. Assume nothing happens to the former bridge for a week or two, while they investigate. Not much of an investigation; the bridge fell because a key support was struck by a very heavy ship, so no Agatha Christie or Tom Clancy needed.
Meanwhile, they can be planning – should have already started planning – and as soon as the all clear is given, a large group of men with cutting torches and floating cranes can begin clearing the channel. There is no way a committed force could not have that much cleared in a month.
A ship hit a bridge and it collapsed. The mess will get cleaned. Ships will go to other ports. Prices might go up for some goods. The bridge will be replaced and the process will suffer as other infrastructure projects have.
People need to calm down and stop freaking out. But this freakout has less to do with this incident than a general feeling of impending doom percolating through society because our politicians and government workforce are shit.
Just some things worth noting: the port can reopen as soon as the ship is towed away and the ship channel cleared of large debris (the channel is about 16 meters deep).
Key bridge only carried around 20% of the cross-harbor traffic, the rest went through the two tunnels, so there won’t be much extra congestion. The main purpose of Key Bridge was to carry Hazmat, which can’t go through the tunnels. So those trucks will have to go the long way around the beltway (but probably few extra miles).
This is not a big deal (unless you are among the dead). I always hated the bridge and chose the tunnels when possible.
Interestingly, there are two Algol-class fast freighters (the size of aircraft carriers) in Baltimore harbor, representing about a quarter of the US rapid-reaction sealift capability.
You missed a couple …
https://gcaptain.com/these-are-the-ships-stuck-behind-the-baltimore-key-bridge/
That said, even four ships are not a quarter of the reserve capability.
Keyword “rapid-reaction.” The Algol class freighters can carry the entire equipment of a mechanized Army division and, under ideal conditions, cover a thousand miles a day. Antares and Denebola are two out of eight Algols in inventory. The ROROs and other smaller ships would be bringing up the rear and, if you wanted, you could county any old yacht-club blue-water sailboat as “sealift” (remembering Dunkirk).But you do you.
At the current rate, our federal government spends about 684 million dollars every hour, paying a contractor to clear the debris and rebuild this bridge should take part of one morning’s output. It can be done in about 13 months.(see the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis). No need to interfere with the investigation into how it happened. If it makes anyone feel better, we can put bumpers on the supports so the next boat just bounces off instead of killing people and destroying the whole span.
As to the ship losing power several times en-route to it’s collision, the light switch would convince most spectators that this was just an accident.
I worked in Baltimore about half time from 2008 to 2010. Every so often, a vast mountains of coal slowly rose on the between the rail yard and the waterfront. Then it would suddenly disappear.
That coal undoubtedly came from West Virginia, and was bound for China. AFAIK, that was still going on before the bridge accident. If so, we can rule out a Chinese attack.
For those interested:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rxKQ8Tr94s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alpaDfnT-Bk
Several more.
It’s probably worth remembering that contra media reports, Baltimore is an inconsequential port at the head of the Chesapeake Bay, handling 35 million tons a year. That’s compared to New York at 150 million tons and Houston at 250 million tons, Even Hampton Roads, at the *mouth* of the Chesapeake is bigger. Boston is currently being dredged to post-Panamax depth, and Boston Harbor is free of inconvenient bridges. I think Baltimore is less than 2% of US port capacity.