It will likely take weeks or months for federal investigators to sort out exactly what led to a container shipthe Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland, on Tuesday. But shipping industry experts, engineers and law enforcement have started to glean information from videos, photos and accounts of the disaster.
“Everything that could have went wrong did go wrong, and the place, unfortunately, was right by the bridge,” Kevin Calnan, a maritime transportation professor at California State University Maritime Academy, refrained from speculating about what led to the disaster, noting that the federal investigation would dig into any mechanical or operational failures. But he said propulsion failures do occur on giant cargo vessels.
Large cargo vessels are often equipped with redundant systems, meaning there would have likely been multiple failures that caused the ship to lose control,The Baltimore Banner. Captain Jeffrey Spillane, the dean of the School of Maritime Education and Training at State University of New York System Maritime, told the publication that the plume of black smoke seen billowing from the ship ahead of the collision indicates it experienced a catastrophic issue.
“It’s difficult to overstate the impact of this collision,” he said. “It’s not just as big as a building, it’s really as big as a block. One hundred thousand tons all going into this pier all at once.”Tuesday, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said that the probe will be “very broad” and include reviewing the ship’s data recorders, and collecting information about the vessel’s operations and safety history, the vessel owner’s company policies, bridge construction and protective structures, and more.