Traffic will immediately redirect to closest port with capacity. Norfolk is probably first choice.
More miles on railroads means more revenue.
Ship was reportedly headed to Sri Lanka. No info if by Suez Canal. Not by Panama Canal, but Panama Canal expansion probably means increased traffic from Asia that way.
IIRC, it was going via South Africa.
DB2
I had a post from a writer up earlier that talked about the collision and the workers who just did their jobs in a tragic situation. Sadly, it’s been taken down for reasons unexplained. (I copied it from another social media site so maybe that’s it.)
Here is something from that same writer, interviewing someone who knows something about all of this. A sample:
You’re dealing with international shipping, so you’re dealing with a Singaporean vessel with a Singapore flag that’s leased to a Danish company that the classification society is Japanese, the insurance is British with an Indian crew on board that is coming out of the Port of Baltimore in federal waters controlled by the Coast Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers. It’s a mess. It’s an absolute mess. It’s a horror story.https://slate.com/business/2024/03/baltimore-bridge-collapse-francis-scott-key-maryland-deaths.html
I’m not sure what he knows; but his comment is absurd. Every ship and every port and every shipper and every insurance company is mingled every where in the world every day!! None of this is unusual or odd or a mess! The professionals make it work every day! What a crock!
JimA
Tugboats are cheaper and more flexible and all around useful than putting protection sufficient for ever larger freighters around bridge supports.
This is not complicated.
d fb
Well, every day they don’t have to deal with the aftermath of a ship colliding with a bridge and bringing it down. The rebuilding costs alone, not to mention the liabilities are enormous.
But that was just one snippet from the interview, which I found quite enlightening. For some reason the URL didn’t translate into a link, so I’ll try again for those who want to learn something about all this from someone versed in navigation and logistics issues. Link via slate.com
If you go back and edit it to contain less of the quote, it will reshow.
Re: bridge pier protection.
Tons of gravel should be cheap. No protection is absurd. Never enough for all situations. But piers near channel should obviously have some protection.
You’d be surprised. You can’t just magically dump a bunch of gravel around bridge piers. Engineering needs to be done to provide protection that is adequate and will last. Material needs to be procured and transported to site. Equipment needs to be procured, maintained, and fueled to place the material. Workers need to be paid.
Sheesh. Efforts are in progress to replace and repair a lot of old infrastructure in the US. But, there’s not nearly enough money to address everything.
Here’s a Reuters exposé:
{ six victims of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse were all immigrants from Mexico and Central America, doing the kind of grueling work that many immigrants take on
…
“One of the reasons Latinos were involved in this accident is because Latinos do the work that others do not want to do. We have to do it, because we come here for a better life. We do not come to invade the country,” said Lucia Islas, president of Comité Latino de Baltimore, a nonprofit group. }
ralph
There was protection around the pier. Not enough for this particularly large ship, obviously, but there was some.
–Peter
Upon further investigation, it looks like the protection I heard about would only be sufficient for very small craft. So while I’m not technically wrong, I’m functionally wrong in that the minimal protection around the piers is probably not sufficient for most cargo vessels making their way under this bridge.
–Peter
It was big enough for the largest vessels at the time the bridge was built, in 1977. The one that hit the bridge was more than 4 times larger than that.
It’s true that they’re too small for the most cargo ships now using that port. I would wager a lot of port managers are now looking at what protections they have and whether to mandate tugs under all bridge crossings.
There are a dozen ships trapped in that harbor right now, and it will take days, perhaps weeks before enough of the bridge is removed and the wrecked ship moved out of the way so port operations can continue.
Since then, the 20 Indians and one Sri Lankan on board have mourned the deaths of those lives lost, had their cell phones confiscated by the FBI and endured a series of controlled explosions to break apart a massive piece of bridge stuck atop the ship’s bow…
“By international maritime regulations, there has to be some crew left on the vessel,” said Nestlehutt, president and executive director of The Seamen’s Church Institute, which promotes the safety and welfare of mariners.
DB2
This is nothing new. When Covid shut down cruise ships crews took months to get home. Are they still being paid?
