I have to wonder about some people. When the bridge was built in the 1970’s, most of the calculations were done on paper with pencil. They added in what they believed was an adequate safety margin.
The designs were approved by City Engineers. State Engineers. The Corps of Engineers. And everyone agreed the design was good based upon what we knew.
Container ships have since that time doubled in size twice? Three times? In 1974 ships were still built to the max dimensions of the Panama Canal. Especially civilian ships. Post Panamax, or too big for the canal didn’t start with co trainer ships, but Oil Tankers. Then it was Suez Max. Then we had post Suez Max, ships that wouldn’t fit in Suez.
Dali weighed more than any two cargo ships when the bridge was built. It is bigger than even the most visionary futurist could predict. It weighs more than anyone dreamed a civilian ship would weigh.
So people claim that the bridge was poorly designed or poorly maintained. Nobody imagined a 100,000 ton cargo ship would ever exist.
That’s the ship information from Marine Tracking.
More than 100,000 tons.
Now to the Bridge. I have mentioned I was a Combat Engineer in the Army. Destroying Bridges was in our book. We spent time learning how to do it. It is amazingly simple to do. So seeing it suffer a catastrophic collapse, I’d have been surprised if it didn’t collapse with a main support destroyed like that. Add in the twisting and bending from the ship hit and the result is pretty much what I’d expect.
As for a Terrorist attack? It would have been a lot simpler and easier to have a couple guys plant a hundred pounds of Thermite and burn through the supports.
The Pilots all have TWIC cards. Transportation Worker Identification Credentials.
The people who get those have full background checks to access the port facilities. Their names are in databases, and if you think they aren’t watched, you have no clue of the paranoia of the Department of Homeland Insecurity.
Today everything is recorded. Every action of every crew member is recorded. Every radio call and the precise time of the calls is recorded.
The NTSB will examine every second of those recordings. They’ll look at the design of the bridge, and the materials used in construction. They will have engineers examine the wreckage to determine the exact sequence of events. The computer model will show how every beam bent and flexed and finally failed.
It will likely take more than a year to complete the investigation. The new replacement bridge will probably be halfway built before the report is finished.
Right now based upon our initial information it looks like the Pilot and the Crew tried to do everything they could to deal with the situation. I’ve heard they even tried an emergency anchor drop.
Wait until we know more before coming up with your idiotic conspiracy theories.
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