Baltimore bridge collapse: What went wrong?

Captain let's look first at these images from just after the crash I mean they're horrifying what were your first thoughts at this I was shocked obviously Heather I was shocked this is a terrible event and my first thoughts went to obviously the victims the families the people that you know were working on that side that day and also my thoughts went to the the crew of the ship and the pilots that were on board and I'm sure did everything they could to avoid that from happening we're going to tap into your expertise and you're going to take us Moment by moment through what happen help us understand what led up to the crash so if we look at some video from early this morning there you see the dolly what would have happened before before a ship like the set sale does a marine pilot go through the same kind of safety checklist that a airline pilot does for example well yeah the the ship crew does the captain and the officers go through an extensive checklist and when the pilot comes on board he has a pilot Master exchange formula that it has to go through and double check if everything is working so I'm sure everything was checked before they set sale this is the moment where it first loses power tell us about that yeah so that's the first blackout obviously from what we can see the ship lost it's an entire uh Power including power to the engines electricity generators seemed like it lost everything so at this point it's sailing eight knots is what we were told is that considered fast no the ship needs a certain speed to have the ability to maneuver itself into the water so eight knots would be a normal speed at normal speed and who would be at the controls at this the pilots would be the control the pilots okay you notice at this point there aren't any tugs around no that's right you probably left the tugs after departure you need the tugs to handle the vessel close to the dock after you depart you need to gain speed you need to let go of the tugs so you can gain speed that seems to be an issue people wondering whether that might have been a factor do you think it was something well in some areas of the world you have teing tugs so there are tugs made for that with that go in the front of the ship that could go faster and help if something happens but we don't have that many uh of that so what is going on right now they're trying to reestablish the power get it back on it's getting very close at this point exactly it's probably emergency power that came back on the emergency generator kicked back in this is where you see the smoke coming out of the funnel at the the after part of the ship so they it starting come it could have been the emergency generator maybe they were able to restart the engines the main engines but obviously that didn't work cuz they're going to lose power soon enough it's going to go back again we know it does go back out again at this point or some point in this time there's a Mayday call yeah tell me what difference that might have made well I think it made a huge difference to save lives the pilots were able the two pilots together working together probably One Pilot looking after the movement of the vessel the other pilot looking looking after communication with the crew and with the traffic system the Coast Guard was able to send a Mayday and as we look at this we can see there's still traffic on the bridge at this point and unfortunately as you see on the right I mean this is the devastating part these are the pothole repair crew members and uh we know what is going to happen very shortly so at this moment again second loss of power and then and then you can see the movement of the ship veering towards the right of the starboard so probably my my guess is that the rudder probably got stuck hard to starboard and they leted go of the anchors so the anchors were drag at the bottom and then it it becomes very difficult to control the movement of the ship because of the loss of power and the r this is essentially a drift at this point it's a drift at this point and they can't I mean this is a 300 M long ship yeah it doesn't come to a stop immediately no it's very heavy so you can't would they be thinking about anchors or anything at this point what kind of things would they be considering options wise to to get out of this crisis yeah I think the first thing they did they send the crew forward the crew was probably standing by forward because they had just left the dock and he asked probably the crew to let go of the anchors I think that happened way back probably 3 minutes back and then they're dragging the anchors but with the momentum of the ship and the weight of the ship the anchors just can't stop a ship like this in such a short distance so they're trying to get you know get power back to the ship so they can reverse the engines right and that's probably why you see the smoke when the engine actually came back if they did come back they probably went full of stern trying to stop the movement of the ship and then they lost power again okay again I think we must be ahead of the MayDay in this in that they're still seeing traffic going across and they did say they were able to stop traffic from Crossing what must have been happening on the bridge seeing this looming yeah very etic on the bridge obviously asking for the crew to run back obviously so that the crew doesn't get hurt the crew that was looking after the anchors after handling the anchors and the the moing lines after departure and basically brace yourself you know cuz it's going to hit hard and you would know that that it is coming at this time yeah there's not much they could have done at that time so again watching this and we're just seconds away from that moment of impact and we have to be very sensitive because of course at this point there are people who are alive on that bridge and the impact is coming and it is horrific what would have been like at the moment of impact on board you know it's on such a big ship you know the steel would have buckled obviously so it it wouldn't be an impact like in a car crash or an airplane crash it's kind of as a soft stop for the crew of The Vessel it's just stunning it was instant yeah the the bridge came down yeah the bridge the pillar just gave up and that was it you know there was not much do and now I mean just to stop to absorb that again no matter how many times we've seen that today it is unbelievable it is unbelievable and now of course the questions and the investigation as you have watched that again in real time with me did you see anything that may suggest what they did wrong or did they appear to have followed protocols from your expertise but from afar obviously yeah from what we know I don't know much more than you do from what we know I think I think everything was done to try and minimize the impact save lives and I think the pilots the captain the crew did that obviously and the rescue workers the police that stop the traffic and help stop the traffic I personally don't think there's anything else that could have done to prevent that at that stage obviously okay was the maintenance of the ship done properly and all that that's just conjunctures we don't know about that so but these are the questions for investigations which are already underway so as you said maintenance what are the kinds of things that they'll look like in terms of where the failures were well there's a vdr on board so there's a video data recorder like a blackbox on an airplane if you want want so they will be listening to that to see what happened the the chain of events so they'll see it and they'll hear the conversations on the bridge and is there also data being recorded as well just like in a plane CR exactly so if if there were things not going the way they should have been in the engine room that that the vdr might have recorded that and then the TSB or the the the people doing the inquiry will will have more details into what led to that blackout and what about human contribution here or human error is that something they'll at they will definitely look into it I don't know if they'll find any but they'll definitely look into it for sure yeah what do you think might be the broader impact of this this is a rare event it's not an unprecedented event there have been dozens of these over the years but what impact could this have on other shipping companies and the you know the maritime industry but there will be an immediate local impact on Baltimore because it handles a lot of cargo uh so you know at least uh I think there's about 40 ships stranded in the harbor right now that will not be able to get out of the harbor until they clear the the pathway the the Fairway so there's going to be an economical impact for Baltimore for sure and and probably for the Eastern seab board reshuffling all this cargo on the Eastern seab board between all the other ports New York you know and and all these ports but will shipping companies manufacturers will they look to see if there's a problem that may affect other similar ships is that we we'll see what the what the TSB finds out if there was a specific you know item that could be uh looked after on other ships they will issue you know a warning and and people will look into it but I would be surprised blackouts do happen it it happened in an area you know the worst of timing uh some sort of a perfect storm event but um you know if they find something that could be looked at on the other ships of the fleet they will probably they will issue you know warnings that that ship owner can look into but as you said a perfect storm and we have the catastrophic results thank you so much for sharing your expertise and really helping us understand everything better Captain you're welcome

Channel: CBC News: The National

Views: 82,316

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Id: azoGQ_Rf65o

Length: 8min 30sec (510 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 27 2024