Who do you think will have to pay up for the bridge collapse? 👨‍💻 Remove personal information off the web with Incogni with code LEGALEAGLE legaleagle.link/incogni ⚖⚖⚖ Get a great lawyer, fast! legaleagle.link/eagleteam

It's insane to me that if one niche hobbyist shipwatcher hadn't set up a 24/7 livestream of the Port of Baltimore, we'd have no footage of the collapse, let alone high-def.

As someone who works in civil engineering with state DOTs, the “over one third of bridges need repair” is not an overstatement at all, in fact probably a vast understatement.

I think the media should emphasise this: 26 past 1 a.m. , a huge ship near a bridge puts out a Mayday call; 28 past 1 a.m. the traffic is stopped. 2 minutes - I think the authorities did their job very well there.

My wife is a civil engineer and she’s part of that group that says nothing can withstand an impact like that. Mass is a large part of energy and it was a massive ship.

Baltimore resident here. I cannot remember a time where the key bridge was NOT undergoing some form of repairs. She was an old bridge, but the state did their damnedest to keep her standing. I don't think it's the state or the engineers fault the bridge collapsed when a city block rammed right into a critical weakpoint. EDIT: Don't know why I typed bay bridge, I meant key bridge

To give everyone a sense of scale: You see all those containers stacked up on top of the ship? EACH ONE is a semi trailer. When they're not on ships, they can be put on wheels and hauled down the highway. Picture those as thousands of tractor trailers stacked up. And ships that big are common. Overseas freight is a HUGE business.

The guy who does "What's going on with shipping" is fantastic and does a really nice deep dive into the maritime insurance.

While nothing could survive a _direct_ hit, the work is usually to avoid direct hits. Like putting extra dirt or concrete (confusingly called Dolphins) around the pillars, to stop and redirect any runaway ship. See the _second_ Sunshine Skyway Bridge, where they had a fresh reminder to install them. And yes, you can retrofit them.

Objection! 7:04 - Mærsk is a Danish shipping company, not Dutch.

They said the largest container ship in the world at the time the key bridge was built was less than 25% the size of the one that caused this accident. It’s funny how this was one of the plotlines (which was based in reality) in season 2 of The Wire, fighting to modernize Baltimore’s port to accommodate these bigger ships.

As an engineer I think people don't understand just how big the forces at work are in this accident. It's the weight of a skyscraper traveling at 8 knots and it's pointy. This is enough momentum to punch through the Hoover Dam or partially collapse one of the pyramids at Giza. The NTSB is usually very thorough and they'll figure out what happened to make every backup and precaution fail. Doubtless in the future the tugs will be required to escort ships past the bridge.

i talked to a couple of our State Bridge Design people at the lunch table. they had some issues with the design of the pylons, but generally agreed that there isn't a bridge in the world that's designed to handle a hit from a ship that big.

Hi Devin, longtime fan. Here are a couple of notes from a retired merchant mariner Capt - - they were Chesapeake bay pilots, not harbor (docking) pilots - the lights on the ship don't show the safest place to pass... those are nav lights that all ships display. Bridges typically have lights to indicate such things. - it doesn't take 4 pilots to pass under a bridge. I think maybe that article cited led to some misinformation in your video

What's critical here is that when the channel was widened 10 or so years ago, it removed the buffer area around the bridge supports. Prior to that, the 10--15 feet river depth would have caused a ship this large to go aground before it impacted the bridge piers.

Thank you legal eagle. By the way I am a Lawyer in Turkey and my family name is "KARTAL" which means eagle! Having worked as a maritime lawyer for almost 25 years, your analysis is great. If there was no limitation of liability, there would not be maritime trade, and there would be no global economy as we take for granted today. Same goes for limitation of liability of airlines for aviation accidents. These activities have the potential to damage property in the billions or cause death in the hundreds. If liability was not limited, no one would ever attempt to put money into an enterprise which can be devastated with a single accident. Compromise is what makes it possible for goods and people to travel around the world and make everyone at least a little bit more wealthier. Insurance must be added to this wonderful scheme, because insurers will pay most of not all of the damage, without destroying the entrepreneurs and investors who put money into moving goods and people around the world. No pain no gain. Sad but true.

Thank you for this. I'm born/raised in Baltimore and I know I've spent 1/3rd of my life either coming or going on that bridge. We're getting A LOT of information from everywhere and a lot of it is going in circles... Nice to get some clear answers to some of the questions.

Should the bridge have been able to survive that impact? Well, the ship weighs in at 95,000 metric ton when empty. It was drifting at around 9 miles/hour. The kinetic energy of that is ½ * mass * velocity^2 . That's 0.5 * 95,000.000 kg * (4.17 m/s)^2 . That's ~825 megajoule of kinetic energy. For reference, 1 kg of TNT is ~4.2 MJ of energy equivalent. So, if the ship was empty (it wasn't) and at 15 km/, it would need to dump around 196 kg worth of TNT in energy. While I'm sure we could build bridges that could withstand that kind of impact, I don't think anyone wants to actually PAY for a bridge that could.

I don't get why the bridges construction is a topic at all? NO bridge is built to withstand that sort of impact, otherwise it would be a solid block of concrete which defeats the purpose of being a bridge. It is always understood by everyone that such an impact is a critical failure mode of any bridge, those risks are taken into account when constructing and using the bridge. That's similar to building anything near the sea, everyone knows that this poses a risk of tsunami damage, this is taken into account in the risk/reward calculation.

This is why I’m subscribed I literally need you to make sense of what’s going on in these events.. there is always something going on and you answer the question, what does that mean for me. How does this impact affect the people and the natural order of things. This is always very helpful content. Who is at fault?

I do wanna shout out the editor for making still images look so dynamic. The edit at 0:34 is super smooth, and the moving water under the Domino sugar building is a really nice touch.

Don't know who gonna pay. But I know who gonna get paid: LAWYERS

I live maybe 20 minutes away from the bridge, just outside of Baltimore. It's a horrible tragedy that we all felt (and continue to feel) but I'm just glad that they were able to stop traffic. God only knows how many more lives could have been lost

Thank you for share more information and details than any media

Always appreciate the thorough and methodical way you go through things like this

“We must construct additional pylons” But seriously, the bridge collapse took over the local medias and everyone’s mind for several days around me.

Even if you want to argue the bridge had a deficiency, I don’t think they were necessarily designed to withstand an impact from something that big.

It was nice to see a video about this has the know details and facts. Also, the segues to the ads are well done.

I am looking forward to your future KZfaqs about this issue.

@02:01 Objection! The red and green lights on the ship are to indicate the port (red) and starboard (green) sides of the vessel. These lights, when used in conjunction with a steaming, masthead, or other light is used as an aid to communicate to other mariners the direction and disposition of the vessel. You are probably getting these navigation lights confused with the red and green channel marker buoys which demarcate harbor entrance/exits (among other things).

I appreciate you and thank you for making content.

Some very knowledgeable people here in the comments. I’m learning more about large container ships than I ever thought I would in my lifetime. Loving it 👍🏽

When the owner of a transportation vehicle makes financial cuts that lead to lack of employees to properly maintain systems and fail to upkeep vehciles, then they should be held liable and accountable. Like the Ohio train accident, it was all the fault of the greedy company executives.

I live about 10 minutes away from the (former) bridge. It is so bizarre how casual it has been here. No one says it's gone, all traffic diversions just say "key bridge closed." It's not just closed, it's GONE! It has been business as usual here in Baltimore aside from a few traffic warnings

Yoo thank you explaining it and going in detail playa 💪

Thanks for the video

As someone who lives in downtown Baltimore, it sucks that we're only in the news for the bad stuff... there will be some big changes because of this not only for traffic and everyday life but also on our economy and the way the port operates. I think they'll probably have tug boats escort ships all the out of the harbor in the future too

The "new" Cooper River Bridge in Charleston was built with this in mind and has preventative measures in place to atop this from happening. They are planning to replace 2 other bridges in the area and will add measures there as well as designated bike lanes. What is REALLY needed, is money to be spend on our infrastructure including railroads, roads, bridges, etc.

You just gave the best summary of what exactly happened. Much better than the news organizations.

God your recent videos have such a slick lighting and edit, you have a really good editor

Part of the issue I think is that structures are often made YEARS ago and the speed at which some things changed...makes it impossible to plan ahead. So if the bridge had somehow quadrupled their resistances, which were high even for the times, they'd still have fallen short of the weight of that ship. Same goes for a ton of other bridges, buildings, etc. Even when they exceeded the requirements at the time, it's still not enough for modern times. Salt usage, weights, winds, etc

Those who have watched the WTYP episode on the Beriut explosion know that who "owns" a ship is a more complicated question than it might seem at first.

They're talking about renaming the bridge when rebuilt, though Francis Scott Key, the writer of Star Stangled Banner, is still quite worthy. Among the suggestions, this one was amusing--the "Spare Key Bridge."

The problem with the type of liability sought under the law is that fault is found to rest on one entity, rather than a "blameless PIR" which looks at _all_ the contributing factors from _all_ parties and sets action items for _everyone_ to do better. In this case, I imagine _both_ the ship _and_ the bridge were underfunded on maintenance, and setting new standards/enforcing existing standards on both sides will have more future benefit than just deciding if _either_ the bridge _or_ the ship was responsible

My heart goes out for the lives lost. I am not sure what can be done if the power loss was unforseeable. Also hopeful for a swift and thorough investigation so things can be made safer if practical.

Note on ntsb: their report cannot be used in the legal suits, to my understanding (ntsb was mentioned right after talking about lawsuits). It's part of how they remain impartial.

I am still in awe of the speed of police to stop all traffic on the bridge with just a few minutes notice - their actions saved many lives that morning. It’s just tragic that the workers on the bridge, didn’t have enough time to get off too. Condolences to their families, friends, colleagues and the people of Baltimore. R.I.P

Masterful analysis.

Isn't Maersk danish? He called them a Dutch shipping company

As a former US Navy Officer, the loss of hydraulics is suspicious. Usually, both power and hydraulics will have a secondary system in place to prevent loss during an underway operation. Seeing how the ship lost power and steering is not easy to do. It also strikes me that the emergency Aft Steering (secondary steering position in the engineering area of the ship) lost control of the ship as well. It is usually manned when transiting in and out of port or in the loss of bridge control. A lot of things will need to fail for a ship to lose control of everything at once. I have my guess as to what it was, but I don't think it is right to share as that's not my place as I don't have access to all the information. I would hate to be the one that has to SITREP this boondoggle.

I was listening to an interview on the BBC with some bridge engineers who stated that if it becomes apparent that part of a structure has become unsafe for whatever reason, in this case because the ships got much bigger and much heavie. Therefore the structure if hit by one of these ships is likely to collapse, then the port authority should have put in place measures in the water, booms breakers and structures that would help deflect any ship away from a collision with a structure no longer able to contend with a new type of much larger ship. In the UK it is likely that the port authority is in part responsible for not putting in place measures they knew would be needed should the much heavier ships collide with the structure. My own opinion is that if the port authority knew that the bridge would not withstand an impact of the ships currently using that navigable waterway then they have a great deal of responsibility to bear.

This is a legal spaghetti case. There are so many laws that can apply here. US Federal law, State law and International Maritime Law. The interesting thing is why the ship lost power and steering? Why backups didn't work? Was this a known issue? If yes why was the ship allowed to sail? It is best to wait on the engineers, regulators and maritime investigators conduct their work before we start discussing insurance claims and legal actions.

Being from Baltimore and driving across this bridge. It's crazy to think this thing even collapsed. It's not as big as the Bay bridge or as high but it's still a big bridge.

No matter how many redundant systems sometimes crap happens. I got called to a local airfield for an unrelated telecom issue, when I got there it was all foggy, no lights, radar dishes parked. Got to the control tower asked what happened. They had 2 grid feeds from separate directions[1], the day before a balloon had come down taking out the overhead one side then that morning a construction gang dug up the other feed. Okay it's triple redundant because they had standby generator, only 10 minutes into its run this regular tested generator threw a conrod...Shit happens. [1] A few years later one of our switches which had been built without generators because it had 2 grid feeds too with an estimated 1/10,000 year chance of failure lost both and couldn't get them back before the standby batteries died. We lost a dozen car park spaces to the new generator room.

Shouts to my Hispanic brothers who lost their lives that day

god i love these videos, keep it up legal eagle!!!!

“Why didn’t they retrofit the bridge to survive a ship impact?” “We’d like to retrofit existing bridges to survive a ship impact. This will necessitate a small property tax increase-“ “FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS!!!” Edit: My point is that everything costs money, and budgets are always a compromise between what people want and what people are willing to pay for.

I live 10 minutes from the bridge. Woke me up at night when I heard the crash and alarms.

It’s not often that a 32,000 ton+ cargo ship would impact one of the main pillars of a bridge at 8 knots with the bridge built to 1970s standards. In seriousness I pray for everyone afflicted by this disaster and for a new bridge to be made soon after the clean up and investigations.

I'm leaning towards the fact that even if the bridge had been brand new, recently maintenanced and in perfect condition - it still would have collapsed, and that will have a significant impact on further investigations/litigation.

A recent report is the the Ship Dali was having continuous self powering problems while being loaded in port. Maybe the available video shows power interruption problems. Maybe it show those problem could have affected the ships ability to navigate. Whatever the highest level of knowledge/orders should be considered.

One would imagine the owners of the ship, since reporting seems to imply it’s a maintenance issue

Taxpayers who else?? 😮😮😢😢

Those ships are so big.

Unfortunately I have a hunch that there is the "Bakken dilemma" so the North Dakota oil field thing where there was one company's guys working on other company's field supervised by third party.

I can't believe you didn't mention general average. Such a delightfully archaic piece of maritime law needs more airtime. Sal from What's Going on With Shipping is your man for this story anyway.

All I know is it's a traffic nightmare. My leg hurts from stop and go traffic. It's crazy to look out and see the bridge jutting into the harbor like a ski jump with a huge ship in the middle like that's the landing target.

When I was studying for my paralegal certification, those who were thinking of specializing in admiralty law were told that as a field it was very hidebound and nothing new or refreshing was going to be happening.

Very nice getting the straight facts and legal expert reaction to this whole situation. That said it's utterly disgusting the way some politicians are dishonestly trying to abuse this situation to advance agendas that would never be able to address these kinds of events, along with scapegoating completely unrelated groups of people.

I live north of Seattle. Several years ago a truck struck a beam on a bridge over the Skagit River and brought down the whole bridge

Thank you for using myriad correctly!!!! That's part of why you're my favorite internet lawyer! Because you use proper grammar! And yes, that's my favorite one of your videos

I saw a report that they already filed a request asking that their liability be limited to cargo and the ship. I was wondering how they could do that. Thanks for answering that question.

The bridge may have been up to code, but that code was written for ships 1/3 the size of the one we're dealing with here. There need to be much larger structures protecting the bridge supports from ship collisions simply because of the physics of ships this massive. These are upgrades that can and should be done nationally.

As an engineer i can affirm this bridge couldnt withstand such an impact. BUT there are ways to protect pillars from collisions in the first place. Protection from collisions is a foreseeable actions

I think the bridge design and maintenance was likely fine. The issue is more related to building a barrier from the bridge and cargo ships. I think the building code needs to be updated so that critical bridge supports near cargo ships should have an impassable barriers before any ship like this can get near the bridge pier.

The shipping company filed a court document today saying the bridge collapse was not due to any fault of persons or equipment on the ship. Something seems off about all of this.

Wasn't expecting I-35 to be mentioned! Crazy time when that happened. Silver lining to all that is the replacement Saint Anthony Falls Bridge is really nice. Built in about a year too! We were kinda shocked how fast that was. To this day when highway work is being done there's a very good chance remaking a bridge is also on the list. I'm still always a bit nervous driving over bridges downtown though. Even if they're perfectly safe.

FIU bridge collapse: Yeah, that one still haunts me on occasion. My wife worked fir FIU so even though we're not in the area, we got a LOT of details from folks down there when it happened. Major F-up on the engineering side and the actual construction company. And like others are saying in the comments below, it all happened due to money. "We can't close the interstate to let just this one bridge be assembled--the lost revenue would be staggering!" sigh.... They could have closed the interstate overnight and required the construction company to erect it during the middle of the night but that would have cost too much money.

Great vid…. 🙏🙏🙏

1:22 those are RORO/PCTC (Roll On/Roll Off or Pure Car and Truck Carriers) - which carry cars and or trucks. A container ship (the one with the boxes like MV Dali) carries containers. Two very different ship categories.

"Why wasn't your window strong enough to survive the baseball?"

A wonderful marine historian here on YT, Oceanliner Designs, talked about this case. He said, given international marine protocol for narrow, shallow waterways like thie Baltimore pasageway, 3 tug boats (one ahead tied to the bow, one aft tied to the stern, and one alongside, tied, on standby to assist) should have been used all the way passed the bridge for a ship this big (it is 2 times bigger than the Titanic, and the opening for the ship was a small space only a few meters wider than this ship on either side - VERY tight passage, right next to the central bridge pier). The Baltimore Port only requred a tug up to before the bridge. Grossly out of touch with what standard marine safety protocols around the world require.

As a seafarer myself and in Engineering Department of the ship, there are tons of backup machinery in case something fails. I'm talking about 2 pumps each for Lubrication, Fuel, Hydraulics, Air system and Cooling Water (Fresh water and Sea water), and each machinery has 2, meaning Generators and Main Propulsion have their own set of 2. Also all of those machinery have corresponding backup (Auxiliary) pumps which means even if 2 pumps fails (or the power fails) there's still smaller pumps capable of running the ship. There's also an Emergency Generator beside 3 Main Generators (really big ones) so an engine failure on 3 will still able to run the ship as all non-essential machineries like AC and normal lights are off to lower the load. Basically a ship is capable of sailing on Emergency Generator alone if worst comes to worst, theoretically. Now onto inspections, there are 3 port authorities that are somewhat infamous for how strict they are in the world, US Port Authority, Australia's AMSA, and Chinese Port authorities (they're getting stricter every year) not to mention EU countires and Port Authorities. To prepare for going to Port in US alone will cost the ship tons of drills, testing of machineries and cleaning. I'm talking about a month of preparation with minimum of 2 weeks, basically lot of overtime for all crew to test and drill for emergency (these authorities are no joke for us!) as failing for inspection means lots of trouble and more overtime for us to rectify said troubles. Overall my point is, it takes a lot, I mean a lot to cripple a ship. You need to be a bad Engineer to disregard all maintenance operation and it will still take months prior to this incident to f up the ship. I know nobody is perfect and those shipping companies that does wihtheld supplies for ship maintenance and crew living ain't gonna go to these 3 countries (US, Australia and China) and EU in the first place since it will cost them tons with their little budget and low profit and one peep of a seafarer about their living condition and these companies are now under special spotlight every time. They'll be going to more convenient deals that will not give them much trouble with convenient countries, and even then a skeleton ship is still susceptible to ITF (International Transport Workers' Federation) raid and charges, basically a seafarer police that will force companies to treat us better as well as making the ship more safer. TL;DR - It takes a lot to cripple a ship with bad machineries and poor company policies, my conclusion is, a cyber attack is easier way to cripple a perfectly good ship undergoing regular inspection of US Port Authorities and maybe other good Port Authorities. Also I heard Synergy is a somewhat good company.

Diesel electric vessels typically have 4 to 6 main generators, so they can operate with multiple lost generators. The electrical distribution is also redundant and in the worst case the tie breaker will open and split the network in two. Propulsion is also redundant with two independent propulsors. If everything fails, the emergency generator will kick in which powers steering and other essential systems. So it's quite unlikely something like this would happen. I don't really have any experience with diesel vessels such as the Dali, but I imagine the class rules require similar redundancy. There should still be an emergency generator powering the steering in case of a blackout. But it might be difficult to steer with just a rudder at such a low speed.

I live in a US state where a lot of the bridges need repair. Honestly, it's a growing issue that needs to be addressed more or we'll see collapses pretty frequently soon. Cause as said in the video, there's a backlog and that's honestly unsettling...

In the case of the Sunshine skyway bridge collapse in Tampa bay in 1980, it was said that a through truss would have been better. But now, this was a continuous through truss and it still collapsed completely when one pillar fell away.

theres a guy sort of doing the same video as you called What's Up With Shipping? he definitely goes more in depth on the maritime side of things, but he doesn't have your legal expertice. it would be cool if you two were to get together and talk about this topic

There is a rumor a state trooper called desperately for backup so that he could save the men on the bridge but he could not move or more idiot drives would have tried to cross the bridge. To that officer, I am normally ACAB due to corruption but you sir? You sir are a hero for wanting to do that and I hope you don't have trauma for being put into a literal trolley scenario IRL.

This is a complicated one, to be sure. I can't claim to be anything close to an expert, but I do have years in the merchant marine industry, at a maritime college, and serving on board an LNG tanker, so I do have immediate opinions on a lot of the matters involved in this case. First and foremost, this is not technically a 'collision'. A collision involves two objects in motion striking each other. This is actually, properly speaking, an allision, wherein an object in motion strikes an object that is stationary. Not legally relevant, per se, but just something one of my instructors used to get very upset about in reports. On to legal ramifications. The first port of call, so to speak, in any maritime accident is always the captain of the vessel. They have assumed total control of the vessel from the time they relieve their predecessor to the time they are relieved, so any matter that involves the ship involves them as well. Full recordings of the Vessel's data recorder on the bridge are still being pored over, but several things are clear. The main plant (engine/power system) of the vessel went offline, thus costing the vessel any form of propulsion, forward or backward. There are redundancies in place for steering with the rudder even without power, yes, but there's not really such a thing as a redundant main engine on any of the vessels I've served on. Clearly in the video, some lights on the vessel do come back on before the allision, but not all of them, leading me to assume that their backup generator automatically kicked on instead. This should provide power for steerage and lighting, as well as bridge resources, but will not, generally, have enough power to turn the screw and re-instigate propulsion for the vessel. A secondary note of interest is that even with pilots on board, the captain would have had final say over any helm/throttle commands given on the bridge, where he should have been positioned during the transit out of the harbor. If the helm was non-responsive, as I stated, there are redundancies, but these are generally located far aft at the actual rudder post for hand-steering, and I'm unaware of any responsibilities in safety management procedures to have individuals stationed there during transit, and given the size of the vessel, it likely would have taken several minutes to get anyone into that position in the first place, an amount of time they did not have in this instance. So it comes down to what were the root causes of the vessel straying from the channel. At 8 knots, it should have had sufficient steerage and momentum to maintain rudder control after the backup generator automatically turned on, and there are no imminent turns or deviations in the channel that should have caused them to carry a rudder angle through the loss of power. What has been shown on the VDR thus far is that the pilot was ordering both steering and rudder orders during and after the loss of power, which seems somewhat anathema to me, as the ship was proceeding directly down the channel before the power went out. In brief, it's had to pin blame on anything yet. The maintenance records for the vessel show nothing that I would consider out of the ordinary, particularly nothing that would cause a total loss of power, and this could come down to simply one of the most catastrophic cases of worst luck at the worst time that we've seen in a while in the industry. I can agree with one thing, though. The lawyers and specialists are going to be busy with this one for a while.

Speaking as a resident of Pittsburgh, origin of half the bridges on earth, the fact that there wasn't a stone or concrete abutments over the water level is shocking.

Me. I'm liable. Sue me if you can.

I’ve also seen that the bridge wasn’t fitted with adequate protective features anytime post construction

The May 23rd 2013 Skagit River Bridge collapse in Washington State might have some insight here too. While that bridge did need repairs, it collapsed because of an impact with a truck

That ship may have been moving very slowly, but that is a supermassive object. No bridge would want that you touch it

I may not be intimately familiar with the construction of the DALI specifically, but I've got several years of experience with an aircraft carrier and its propulsion system. These kinds of things are built with redundancies upon redundancies to counteract potential one point failures that can occur in the propulsion and electrical systems. The fact that the ship had back to back (what appears to be) complete losses of power with the lights going out speaks to some level of failure that is incredibly extensive. Electrical distribution systems like this, at a minimum, likely have a backup emergency generator to power vital loads off an emergency bus in the case of total losses of power. I'm very interested in finding out what it is that could have lead to a failure of this degree because something this extensive is either a crazy bad accident, or something that was layers upon layers of a long time coming.

Cant help but chuckle whenever I hear you say semem protection act 🤭

1:56 - The ship also has lights to indicate port and starboard

I’m impressed with how many times you said seamen without laughing

"Longer than several footbal fields." US measurement system never cease to amaze me.

If anything happens I'm coming to your team asap for all legal issues ❤