Container Ship Hits Baltimore Bridge

Mind blowing that port don’t have tugs on stand by near the bridge when large ship transit near key infrastructure

The video that everybody is watching offers no depth perception nor proper angle of the bridge to ship.
The ship had long ago made way and tugs were long left behind. Steaming nicely in the channel.
Then, All lights went out, came back on, heavy engine exhaust, anchor dropped and lights out and on and off,,,, crunch..
I fear the worst issue was backing hard (heavy engine exhaust) causing the single prop ship's aft to shift to port, bow to stb to the bridge support.

It is sad and maddening that this can still happen these days.
I also don't think there were real large protecting fenders in place as learned the hard way after the Tampa Bay bridge disaster years ago.

Possibly with the current.
Speed over the bottom is impressive when you still have to operate faster than the water under you.
Could have been this same current on her port side, that pushed her out of the channel.

Life was good till the lights went out.

Just found; Nice east wind was blowing on her port side.

I had thought the world had learned important lessons after the Tampa Bay disaster,, NOT.. Not here...

I read somewhere that some bridges have been protected, why this one is wasn’t ? Who knows. Government incompetence…

I can not get a image of the Tampa Bay bridge.
I have an image from the Dames Point bridge in Jax and of the FSK bridge that got clobbered.
Note that the Jax bridge has remote fenders that may be in a position to block a collision with the bridge support.
I have no idea what those micro islands are for along side of the FSK bridge.
Any bridge engineers out there to help explain these designs?

If which ever bureaucracy is responsible for cleaning up the main channel gets its act together, it should not take long to pull the wreckage and clear the channel. The rest of the bridge can be removed without affecting marine traffic. I don’t think it will have a lasting impact on the port. They have to clear the main channel quickly so vessels trapped in port can get out

it took 5 years to build the bring in the 70s hopefully it can be rebuilt faster than that. The long term impacts will be traffic.

My overhead pic above does not show them, but there were remote protection fenders.
The pic below shows one on the other side of the bridge. Kind of small ???
I can imagine, that ship clobbered the protection fender then the bridge support.
The hull has to be sitting on the first fender and bridge support remains.
I wonder if the ship has hull damage? Any leaks?