Maybe they need, at least around the bridge, a channel with actual walls, like the Panama Canal. Once the ship is in it, it wouldn’t be capable of anything but glancing blows.
Just drop a few hundred barge loads of rocks around the piers. Low tech, and very effective.
Gross tonnage isn’t the figure you want, since it’s a confusingly titled measure of a ship’s volume for trade purposes. The figure that affects its momentum would be its displacement, which Wikipedia says is 148,984 tons - presumably unladen.
Extremely poor to zero. This ain’t a recreational dive spot in the Caribbean. On a good day there will be low viz(ability) between the depth & where they’re diving it’d be crap.
I was doing dive training Mon night in a quarry. I literally couldn’t see my hand 3-4" in front of my face; with my light down it was pitch black & with my light up, there was so much s#¡t in the water diffusing the light that I still couldn’t see it.
Which makes the channel narrower if they rebuild using the same pier/support locations. I’m assuming the new bridge will be a wider span
Well, this is not good news:
Dozens of containers onboard the cargo ship that toppled the Baltimore Key Bridge have hazardous materials inside — with some having already spilled into the harbor waters, according to officials.
The Singapore-based Dali tanker was carrying 56 containers laden with 764 tons of hazardous materials –including corrosives, flammables and lithium ion batteries, National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy said in a briefing Wednesday.
Some of the containers “were breached,” Homendy said, with authorities “aware” that some of the hazardous materials spilled in the Baltimore harbor.
Oh, absolutely. On a weekday it might be 50,000 and on Sunday, 10,000 or whatever. The average number was still a lot smaller than I’d expected, for some reason.
To be fair, the bridge was generally not used by people travelling through (from north of Baltimore to south of the city), except for some truck traffic; the tunnels are 5+ miles shorter.
The alternate surface route (which truckers will now have to use) is 10ish miles longer.
You’d think so, but apparently that is not the case. Unfortunately this is a major and long-standing worldwide problem.
Was this already posted here? Either way, I found it very interesting.
Well, yes… but I hasten to add that while it’s bad not all “hazardous materials” are created equal. It will complicate the clean up but most likely poses more hazard to salvage crews and local marine life than the land-bound general public.
And a few of them were “smashed flat”, or at least that’s how I’d describe it. The containers that were at the bow of the ship and are now under what remains of the bridge are pretty much just gone now.
If dirty crap had settled to the bottom of the fuel tank(s) it might have been stirred up again when more fuel was added, allowing the gunk to gum up the works?
Right, we don’t know enough yet on that front, either. I did hear a spokesperson, I believe for the Coast Guard, on TV say that there was a “sheen” on the water by the collision site. No definition of what exactly it was.
It is entirely possible that whomever reported that “sheen” on the water had no idea what it was, either.
Although my first thought was “something oily”.
Oily was my first thought too. I believe that comment followed a statement about hazardous cargo containers being breached. If I’m correct in recalling that it was a Coast Guard person speaking, they’ll likely get a handle soon (if they haven’t already) on what it is and how to deal with it.
Yes, itr blocks the port. And it is the 9th largest port in the USA measured by the volume of goods passing through.
The Port of Baltimore generates nearly $3.3 billion in total personal income and supports 15,330 direct jobs and 139,180 jobs connected to Port work. The Port also generates more than $395 million in taxes and $2.6 billion in business income. It serves over 50 ocean carriers making nearly 1,800 annual visits.
The Port’s private and public terminals handled 847,158 autos and light trucks in 2023, the most of any U.S. port for the thirteenth straight year.
In 2023, the Port ranked first in the nation in handling automobiles, light trucks, farm and construction machinery, as well as imported sugar and gypsum. The Port ranked second in the country for exporting coal. In 2022, the Port ranked sixth for importing coffee, 119,000 tons worth $609 million.
The ship is large intact and easily returned to port.
It could be diesel leaking out of destroyed trucks of the road crew that was working on the bridge. Probably not much more than pick-up trucks, but 20-200 gallons of fuel would put quite a sheen on the water I think.
Just spit-ballin here.
Probably best to get the bridge off of it first. 
I live near there. The Columbia River bar, the crossing from the ocean into the river, is also known as the graveyard of the Pacific. Tides and currents continue to sink a lot of smaller boats. The captain of a large ship does not get to bring his ship into the river. Columbia River bar pilots are either sent out in a boat and climb up the ladder into the boat, or are sent out in a helicopter. Just getting on the ship is an amazing feat.
Once the ship is across the bar it is moored and requires another group, the River pilots to guide it up river into such ports as Portland. The captain of the ship does not control the ship once it as entered the river, even before.
I am curious about who was piloting the ship.
Did anybody else happen to catch Transpo Sec’y Pete’s comments – this one in particular?
“If not for several factors, including those responders’ efforts, the mayday call, the maintenance closure that was already underway, and the time of day of this impact, the loss of life might have been in the dozens,” Buttigieg said.
[bolding mine]
It was the first and only time I’d heard of it.
If this is the case, then – within a relatively unimaginable tragedy – this is even more fortuitous than we knew. It speaks to the fact that the body count could only have been higher if a temporarily closed thoroughfare had been open instead.
Sorry to quote myself, but it seems that a Harbor pilot was controling the ship.
I hadn’t heard this, but just guessing, I think it means some lanes were closed but not all. Usually they won’t close an entire bridge for general maintenance like filling potholes. Close one lane, fix it, move to the next.
The fortuitous part of this would be that they already had traffic controls in place, so it would be much easier to move them to block all lanes.