Tag: Bridge collapse

Ship that struck Baltimore bridge had four blackouts before disaster — Here’s what we know

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The Dali container ship experienced a near-perfect storm of calamities before it struck Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge in March, killing six people. However, Tuesday’s preliminary report by federal safety investigators leaves many questions unanswered.

For example, the National Transportation Safety Board described four power failures that beset the 984-foot (300-meter) ship. Reasons for three of them are yet to be explained, including two that occurred right before the crash.

Here’s what we know and don’t know about the problems on the ship before the disaster:

The Dali suffered four blackouts in roughly 10 hours: two the day before the crash and two in the minutes before.

The first came after a crew member mistakenly closed an exhaust damper during maintenance, causing one of the ship’s diesel engines to stall, according to the safety report. A backup generator came on, but insufficient fuel pressure soon caused that generator to kick off, resulting in a second blackout. It’s unclear why the fuel pressure dropped.

In response, crew members changed the ship’s electrical configuration, which is considered routine. They switched from one transformer and breaker system that had been in use for several months to another configuration.

The third outage struck hours later, after the ship had left the Port of Baltimore and was navigating the Patapsco River. Electrical breakers unexpectedly tripped, causing a power loss. The Dali’s diesel engine automatically shut down because its cooling pumps lost power.

The pilot’s dispatcher called police and notified the Coast Guard of the power loss. Crew members momentarily restored electricity by manually closing the breakers. Then more breakers tripped, causing another outage as the ship approached the bridge. The crew restored power, but it was too late.

One of the pilots ordered the rudder turned, but since the main engine remained down, there was no propulsion to assist with steering, the report said. The ship struck one of the bridge’s main supports, causing the span to collapse.

The reason behind one power outage is known — the crew member’s failure to close the exhaust damper. The reason for the second blackout remains unclear, and the two instances of the tripped breakers appear to be complete mysteries.

Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, told a congressional committee Wednesday that the first two blackouts were “mechanically distinct” from the second two outages.

She said switching out the breakers following the first two outages “may have affected operations the very next day on the accident voyage.”

Stefano Brizzolara, a professor of ocean engineering at Virginia Tech, pointed out that the crew switched to a configuration that hadn’t been used for several months, describing it as like putting on a pair of shoes that you haven’t worn in a long time that have become “hard and stiff.”

“Every time you switch to electrical components that are not normally used, the risk of failure increases a little bit,” he said.

But changing up a ship’s power configuration is fairly routine, even if it’s been several months, said Neil J. Gallagher, a professor at the Webb Institute, a school that teaches naval architecture and marine engineering.

“It shouldn’t change anything,” Gallagher said. “Transformers are a pretty benign item. It’s just coils of wire. It doesn’t have moving parts. It doesn’t have a whole lot that breaks on it. So, it’s not normally the source of issues like this.”

Gallagher added that the mistake with the damper would have caused some concern but not enough to raise major worries before leaving port.

“They went for 10 hours and had no problems,” he said. “And in all fairness, the breakers that shut down when they were underway were not the same as what happened when the engine lost power because they closed the damper.”

Gallagher said cargo ships do not routinely lose power.

“This is kind of a perfect storm of events that happened at just the absolute worst possible time,” he said.

Brizzolara said the crew seemed to have reacted to power failures in a prompt manner.

“I don’t know if they could do more,” he said. “These things can happen, unfortunately. Machines are prone to fault. And yes, there are redundancies onboard of ships. But even redundant systems can fail. And this is an example.”

Bradley Martin, a former U.S. Navy captain and a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, said the limited space in many ports increases the risks of these type of disasters.

“Anybody who’s ever been around ships knows that machinery fails at inopportune times,” Martin said. “And being so close to infrastructure like this means there’s no good way of reacting quickly enough.”

Thomas McKenney, a University of Michigan professor of naval architecture and marine engineering, said the tragedy in Baltimore raises questions about whether most cargo ships have enough safeguards.

“I think the relevant question here is how reliable and redundant should systems be onboard ships, especially understanding that ships have gotten larger and larger over time,” McKenney said, adding, “Shipping remains by far the most efficient way to transport goods. So it’s really having the right balance between cost efficiency without compromising safety.”

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Final victim of Baltimore bridge collapse recovered, demolition underway

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The body of the last missing construction worker killed in the collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge in March has been recovered, officials announced Tuesday as demolition crews prepared to use explosives in the ongoing cleanup effort.

Officials said the crew of the Dali will remain on board the grounded container ship while crews conduct a controlled demolition to break down the largest remaining span of the fallen bridge.

The steel span landed on the ship’s bow after the Dali lost power and crashed into one of the bridge’s support columns on March 26. Since then, the ship has been stuck amid the wreckage, and Baltimore’s busy port has been closed to most maritime traffic.

Six construction workers were killed in the collapse. The body of Jose Mynor Lopez, 37, was recovered Tuesday, officials said in a statement that evening. All the victims were Latino immigrants who were working an overnight shift filling potholes on the bridge. Police officers were able to stop traffic moments before the collapse, but they didn’t have enough time to alert the workers.

Lopez moved to the United States from Guatemala. During a vigil last month honoring the victims whose families were still awaiting closure, mourners used a crane to hoist a Guatemalan flag in his memory.

Officials said salvage divers located his body and alerted state authorities.

“With heavy hearts, today marks a significant milestone in our recovery efforts and providing closure to the loved ones of the six workers who lost their lives in this tragic event,” Maryland State Police Superintendent Col. Roland Butler Jr. said in a statement.

The controlled demolition, which is expected to take place in the coming days, will allow the Dali to be refloated and guided back into the Port of Baltimore, officials said. Once the ship is removed, maritime traffic can begin returning to normal, which will provide relief for thousands of longshoremen, truckers and small business owners have seen their jobs impacted by the closure.

Officials previously said they hoped to remove the Dali by May 10 and reopen the port’s 50-foot (15.2-meter) main channel by the end of May.

The Dali’s 21-member crew will shelter in place aboard the ship while the explosives are detonated, said Petty Officer Ronald Hodges of the Coast Guard.

Engineers have been working for weeks to determine the best way to remove this last major piece of the fallen bridge. The explosives will send it tumbling into the water. Then a massive hydraulic grabber will lift the resulting sections of steel onto barges.

Video footage released by Coast Guard officials last week showed entire sections of roadway sitting on the ship’s deck.

Hodges said the crew’s safety was a top concern as officials considered whether they should remain on the ship during the demolition. He said engineers are using precision cuts to control how the trusses break down.

“The last thing anybody wants is for something to happen to the crew members,” Hodges said.

They haven’t been allowed to leave the Dali since the disaster. Officials said they’ve been busy maintaining the ship and assisting investigators. Of the crew members, 20 are from India and one is Sri Lankan.

A spokesperson for the crew didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment Tuesday afternoon.

The National Transportation Safety Board and the FBI are conducting investigations into the bridge collapse.

Danish shipping giant Maersk had chartered the Dali for a planned trip from Baltimore to Sri Lanka, but the ship didn’t get far. Its crew sent a mayday call saying they had lost power and had no control of the steering system. Minutes later, the ship rammed into the bridge.

Officials have said the safety board investigation will focus on the ship’s electrical system, including whether it experienced power issues before leaving Baltimore.

Maryland leaders said last week that they plan to rebuild the bridge by fall 2028.

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Vinati Organics MD expects minimal benefits from anti-dumping duty on butylphenol

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Vinati Saraf Mutreja, Managing Director of Vinati Organics says the anti-dumping duty imposed by the government on imports of a key chemical compound is not likely to lead to any significant gains for the company.

The Ministry of Finance imposed an anti-dumping duty on imports of para-tertiary butyl-phenol (PTBP) last month.

“The impact of this duty is not very significant because PTBP product as a whole is not a very large product (less than 10% of overall revenue) in our portfolio,” she said.

The potential benefit of the duty would be around ₹4 crore, she said.

Mutreja said that the fourth quarter of the last financial year has been particularly strong.

The new financial year (FY25) is expected to outpace FY24 by 20-25% as the trend of destocking seems to be nearing its conclusion, she stated.

“We are seeing good recovery for most of the products, customers are sitting on very little or zero inventory and hence the reordering has picked up,” she said.

Most of the demand is coming from the export market and in “Domestic as well, we are seeing demand shaping up quite strongly.”

She believes that because of the Red Sea issue and bridge collapse in Baltimore, freight rates to the US and Europe have doubled from all-time lows.

“But we have seen many highs during COVID, so it has still not gone up to those levels, it is still 30% of that. It is being transferred and most customers are obeying that cost,” she said.

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The company is expanding and adding a new line for 2-Acrylamido 2 Methylpropane Sulfonic Acid (ATBS), which is about ₹300 crore investment and is expected to be completed by December 2024.

On March 11 this year, the company subscribed to an additional ₹499 crore fully paid-up equity shares of its wholly-owned subsidiary, Veeral Organics Private Limited (VOPL).

“We have almost commercialised and started trial production in VOPL, which is our subsidiary where we have new niche products like MEHQ, Guaiacol and a few others,” she explained.

The current market capitalisation of the company is ₹15,674.26 crore.

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Baltimore bridge collapse: The Indian crew may take months to return home

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The crew of 20 Indians and one Sri Lankan on board the container vessel Dali that collided with a bridge in Baltimore last week are set to remain on board the ship till the investigation regarding the accident is completed.

Joshya Messick, the director of the Baltimore International Seafarers’ Center, a non-profit organisation which works to protect the rights of mariners, told BBC that he has been in touch with the crew via WhatsApp after arranging a care package delivery that included WiFi hotspots. He said the crew is “rattled” and keeping mum about their situation as the probe unfolds. He added that they are in a sensitive situation and what they speak can reflect on the company.

Chirag Bahri, the international operations manager of the Croydon, UK-based maritime charity International Seafarers’ Welfare and Assistance Network said he believes that it is likely that it will take months for the mariners tp be able to return home. “Maybe after a few weeks, a few of the junior ranks may be repatriated home,” he told BBC, adding that it is likely that the senior ranks are still required to complete the formal investigation and are kept in the US.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson of the Grace Ocean Pte and Synergy Marine told news agency PTI that the crew members are busy with their normal duties on the shop and in assisting the National Transportation Safety Board and Coast Guard investigators on board.

The crew is on board the container vessel Dali that collided with the 2.6-km-long four-lane Francis Scott Key Bridge over the Patapsco River in Baltimore in the early hours of March 26. The 984-foot cargo ship was bound for Colombo, Sri Lanka. On how long the crew would have to stay on board the ship, the spokesperson said, At this time, we do not know how long the investigation process will take and until that process is complete, the crew will remain on board.

The Singapore-flagged Dali is owned by Grace Ocean Pte Ltd and managed by the Synergy Marine Group. Earlier, the non-profit organisation Baltimore International Seafarers’ Center had said that the Indian crew on board the container vessel was healthy. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in Delhi earlier said that there were 20 Indians on board Dali and the Indian embassy in Washington was in close touch with them and local authorities.

Last week, US authorities began interviewing personnel on board Dali. The Synergy Group had said in a statement that the NTSB boarded the vessel on Wednesday and collected documents, voyage data recorder extracts, and other evidence as part of their investigation. Grace Ocean and Synergy has confirmed the safety of all crew members and two pilots aboard the vessel. They, however, reported one minor injury and said the injured crew member has been treated and discharged from a hospital.

Six people, who were part of a construction crew repairing potholes on the bridge when the collision occurred, are presumed dead. Divers recovered the bodies of two of the construction workers from a red pickup truck found submerged in the river and a search was on for the remaining four victims. US President Joe Biden said that the crew on board Dali had alerted transportation personnel about losing control of the vessel, enabling authorities to close the Baltimore bridge to traffic before the devastating collision, undoubtedly saving lives.

With inputs from PTI

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Ship was undergoing engine maintenance before it crashed into Baltimore bridge, Coast Guard says

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The ship that crashed into a bridge in Baltimore was undergoing “routine engine maintenance” in the port beforehand, the Coast Guard said.

US Coast Guard Rear Admiral Shannon Gilreath said at a news conference on Wednesday that authorities had been informed that the ship was going to undergo routine engine maintenance before it lost power. But he said authorities were not informed of any problems.

The bodies of two people have been recovered from the site of the Baltimore bridge that collapsed into a river early Tuesday when a ship crashed into it, said Col Roland L Butler Jr, superintendent for Maryland State Police. Butler said Wednesday that a 35-year-old and a 26-year-old were recovered from a red pickup truck in the Patapsco River near the mid-span of the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge.

The six construction workers who were missing and presumed dead were from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, Butler said. Governor Wes Moore told the families of the victims in Spanish, “Estamos contigo, ahora y siempre”, which means, “We are with you, now and always.”

Maryland Governor Wes Moore is also taking a closer look at the aftermath of the bridge collapse in Baltimore. Moore boarded a Coast Guard ship with federal and local officials Wednesday to better understand the path the ship that caused the collapse took and how the crash happened, the governor’s office said. His office said his goal was to support the Coast Guard and other federal partners, thank first responders, and learn more about what happened.

One of the construction workers presumed dead in Baltimore was a 38-year-old father of two who dreamed of someday returning to his native Honduras, his brother says.

Carlos Suazo says his brother, Maynor Suazo, had been in the US for 18 years but “always dreamed of, in his old age, retiring peacefully in Honduras”. He describes him as the beloved youngest sibling among four girls and four boys. “He was someone who was always happy, was always thinking about the future. He was a visionary,” Carlos Suazo says.

He last spoke to his brother Sunday, when they had lunch to discuss planning for a family birthday party. He says the family hasn’t lost hope his brother will be found alive.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on Wednesday that it’s too soon to say if regulations would be waived to rebuild the bridge and reopen the port. But he said President Joe Biden has said the federal government should “tear down any barriers, bureaucratic as well as financial” that could affect the timeline of any rebuild.

Buttigieg also had a message for Republicans in Congress who might oppose having the federal government pay for the effort. Infrastructure should be a bipartisan issue, he said.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says it’s too soon to say how long it will take to reopen the Port of Baltimore or replace the destroyed bridge.

Buttigieg noted at a White House news briefing Wednesday that the bridge took five years to construct. “That does not necessarily mean it will take five years to replace,” he said.

Coast Guard Vice Adm Peter Gautier says hazardous materials aboard the damaged ship pose no threat to public safety. Gautier said at the briefing that the ship is holding over 1.5 million gallons of fuel, and that more than 50 of the cargo containers on board contain hazardous material. But he says that the ship is stable and that authorities have determined there is no safety risk.

“There is no threat to the public,” he says.

Officials in Singapore said they will conduct their own investigation into the bridge collapse, in addition to supporting US authorities.

The ship that struck the bridge, the Dali, was traveling under a Singaporean flag. The Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore said Wednesday it was working with the ship’s management company, Synergy Marine Group, to get information to the US Coast Guard for its investigation.

A 2023 inspection of the ship in a Chilean port turned up a problem with the fuel heater’s pressure gauges, but it was corrected before the ship left the port, the Maritime Authority of the Chilean Navy says.

Previous reports had indicated the June inspection of the Dali in Chile identified a problem with the ship’s “propulsion and auxiliary machinery”, according to the shipping information website Equasis, but the records didn’t elaborate. The Chilean Navy said in a statement Wednesday that the ship had been inspected in the port of San Antonio on June 27, 2023, and that the pressure gauges of the fuel heaters “were detected to be illegible”.

The problem was corrected the same day, and the ship was able to depart, the Chilean Navy says. The Dali was most recently inspected by the US Coast Guard in New York in September 2023, and no deficiencies were detected, according to Equasis.

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Six presumed dead after Baltimore bridge collapse, as port disruptions hit cars to coal

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The 1.6 mile-long bridge collapsed in a matter of seconds. The catastrophic consequences are set to stretch out for weeks.

As much as 2.5 million tons of coal, hundreds of cars made by Ford Motor Co, and General Motors Co, and lumber and gypsum are threatened with disruption after the container ship Dali slammed into and brought down Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge in the early hours of Tuesday.

Moody’s Analytics said that the disastrous collapse primarily impacts auto markets due to Baltimore’s role as a key import hub for vehicles, particularly affecting Asia-Pacific’s largest car exporters like China and Japan. Moody’s Analytics also highlighted that the coal market, with over a quarter of U.S. seaborne coal exports which make up about 1.5% of the global coal trade, facing potential disruptions.

However, the event is unlikely to have a significant impact on Asia-Pacific macroeconomic data.

Six people were presumed dead after a search in the Patapsco River, officials said Tuesday evening. The toll could have been worse except for a mayday call from the Singaporean-flagged vessel as it lost power.

The aftermath of the bridge’s collapse throws another spotlight on the fragile nature of global supply chains that have already been strained by drought in Panama and missile attacks on Red Sea shipping by Yemen-based Houthi militants. Docks in New Jersey and Virginia face the threat of being overwhelmed by traffic that’s being forced away from Baltimore, one of the busiest ports on the US East Coast.

“It’s a large port with a lot of flow through it, so it’s going to have an impact,” John Lawler, Ford’s chief financial officer, told Bloomberg TV. “We’ll work on the workarounds. We’ll have to divert parts to other ports along the East Coast or elsewhere in the country.”

Baltimore only handled about 3% of all East Coast and Gulf Coast imports in the year through Jan. 31, said S&P Global Market Intelligence. But it’s crucial to cars and light trucks with European carmakers such as Mercedes-Benz Group AG, Volkswagen AG and BMW operating facilities in and around the port. It’s also the second-largest terminal for US exports of coal, with a shutdown potentially hitting shipments to India.

About a dozen large vessels are stuck inside Baltimore’s harbor as well as a similar number of tug boats, according to IHS Markit and Wood Mackenzie’s Genscape. The list includes cargo ships, automobile carriers and a tanker named the Palanca Rio.

That’s just the impact on the port.

About 35,000 people used the bridge every day. The annual value of goods going over is about $28 billion, according to the American Trucking Associations.

“We rely on our infrastructure systems for our daily needs, for a huge amount of the goods that we get in the United States from overseas and to have it cut off so suddenly, it’s a huge crisis,” said Yonah Freemark, a researcher at the Urban Institute.

The Francis Scott Key Bridge, named for the man who wrote the text of the Star-Spangled Banner, took five years to build and was completed in 1977. The cost at the time was around $141 million, according to one estimate. A rebuild today is likely to cost “several billion dollars,” said Freemark.

US President Joe Biden said he wants the federal government to pay and vowed “to move heaven and earth to reopen the port and rebuild the bridge.”

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Watch: Ship strike causes US bridge to collapse in Baltimore, all-Indian crew safe

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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A major bridge at the US port of Baltimore, named after Francis Scott Key, collapsed on Tuesday morning after it was struck by a container ship, plunging cars and around 20 people into the river. The rescuers started a search operation to look for survivors in the Patapsco River after the major portion of the 1.6-mile (2.57 km) long bridge crumpled into the water, Reuters reported.

Kevin Cartwright, the spokesperson for the Baltimore City Fire Department, told the news agency that around 20 people could be in the river along with vehicles.

“This is a mass-casualty, multi-agency event. This operation is going to extend for many days,” Cartwright noted.

The Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland which crosses the Patapsco River has reportedly Collapsed within the last few minutes after being Struck by a Large Container Ship; a Mass Casualty Incident has been Declared with over a Dozen Cars and many Individuals said to… pic.twitter.com/SsPMU8Mjph

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) March 26, 2024

The Francis Scott Key Bridge was opened in 1977. It is named after Key, the author of the American national anthem ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’.

In multiple videos of the incident going viral on social media, the ship can be seen crashing into the bridge in darkness. Soon after the bridge crashed, the ship caught fire before sinking.

Maryland Governor Wes Moore has declared a state of emergency and said that the state was working with an “interagency team” to quickly deploy federal resources from the Joe Biden-led administration.

Meanwhile, the FBI informed that its personnel were “on scene”.

Baltimore is among the busiest ports in the US for car shipments. In 2022 itself, it handled over 7,50,000 vehicles, according to data from the Maryland Port Administration.

According to LSEG ship tracking data, the Singapore-flagged container ship — the Dali — is owned by Singapore’s Grace Ocean Pte and managed by Synergy Marine Group.

The ship was chartered by shipping company Maersk and carried its customers’ cargo. Synergy said the crew, who are all Indian nationals, and the two pilots on board had all been accounted for and there were no reports of any injuries, reported BBC.

The Dali was expected to depart Baltimore on Tuesday morning and arrive at Colombo on April 22, reports said.

The local police said so far they have not found any evidence regarding whether it was done intentionally or not.

“There is absolutely no indication that there’s any terrorism, that this was done on purpose,” Baltimore Police Chief Richard Worley said.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow