Yes.
Nothing will pass until some sort of channel has been cleared, and that will be top priority after search and rescue has given up. The container ship will need to be towed away if its still reasonably seaworthy. Or can be made so.
One a channel is cleared traffic can resume until such time as a new bridge is put across.
That is years away.
Yes. a bloody great wrecked bridge, for a start.
It is the FINANCIAL Times, not the Washington Woke.
Well if they had a power failure AND as reported they sent an SOS AND the construction workers tried to stop cars getting on to the bridge, then the blame if any devolves down to whoever failed to maintain the ship properly, and the systems not in place to ensure that a powerless hulk drifting on the current couldn't take out a bridge in the first place.
Last night's tv programme on the RNLI in the Bristol Channel showed that the "Second Severn Crossing" [or whatever it's now called] had support towers in the water, Topically the concern was about a barge with no power hitting one of them
Exactly, possibly a rather important question in the London insurance markets.
>> >> > >> >> >> >>>> Tim+ wrote:
>> >>>>
>> >>>>> There's already talk of replacing the bridge (which was
>> >>>>> undoubtably an elegant structure), but surely at the mouth of a
>> >>>>> very busy shipping port a tunnel would make much more sense? >> >>>>
>> >>>> Or build some sort of island surrounding the supports?
>> >>>
>> >>> Which raises the question, are British bridges vulnerable to
>> >>> similar events?
>> >>>
>> >>> Are any UK container ports upstream of bridges? Are the boats that
>> >>> do go under major bridges big enough to destroy them?
>> >
>> >> We only have a few big estuaries. The Severn is probably the biggest
>> >> with the M4 going over it.
>> >
>> > How about the Forth, the Humber, the Clyde and, even the Thames and
>> > there's also Milford Haven at the mouth of the Cleddau
>> >
>> >
>> Yes, those are the few big estuaries we have. How many have bridges
>> with piers? You might include the drowned rivers on the south coast
>> like Falmouth and dartmouth, but there are no bridges that I can >> recall.
>
> Last night's tv programme on the RNLI in the Bristol Channel showed that
> the "Second Severn Crossing" [or whatever it's now called] had support
> towers in the water, Topically the concern was about a barge with no
> power hitting one of them
However I think the concern was more for the barge(& occupants) than the bridge
Avpx
Those bridge supports are pretty strong concrete. They were concerned that the dutch barge conversion would capsize if it hit one.
The Baltimore bridge supports were a disaster just waiting to happen. It was only built in 1979 by which time container and other ships were already getting quite big.
The ship suffered a total power loss as can be seen from the videos. They dropped the port anchor but that slewed the vessel towards the bridge support.
That is probably because anything bigger would run aground first.
Humber Bridge: main centre span (1410 metres).
But they were way off course already, the power loss (from the pictures I've seen) only seems to happen seconds before the ship hit the bridge. It takes minutes, if not hours, to change direction in ships that big.
Missed that one.!
Longer than the Golden Gate then
It looks like although it would be unlikely to span the Baltimore total width in a single span, the piers for a much higher and wider suspension bridge could be well out of the navigable channel, and buried deep and made of concrete, not cheap but not the worst expense in the world...
I couldn't think of an appropriate word ; "hinged" might have been better.
Brian
I think that meaning was applied some time after Lear's death. I had a friend who referred to his folding ladder as "runcible"
I also have a hinged spoon somewhere, which influenced my choice of words ;-)
Brian
I think that's also called a "spork".
I am sure if my spoons could talk all of them would be completely unhinged
Folding mast would be clearer IMO
In use with that meaning since the 1920s.
I have never heard it used that way.
Is there anything suitable to anchor the cables to at both landward ends though? According to a geological map of the area, the land there is a mixture of sand and silt, which probably is not good in tension. We got the Tamar bridge because Brunel couldn't anchor cables for a suspension bridge, in that case because the railway line curved on the approach. The Baltimore bridge may have been that unusual design for a reason. It wouldn't even have been a problem had the piers been properly protected from impact.
That was a trade mark, now expired, for utensils of that design.
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