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Post by orioles70 on Mar 26, 2024 18:56:36 GMT
Mrs Orioles and I were touring Fort McHenry on Sunday afternoon. It's got a great view of the Francis Scott Key bridge (or did). Mr Key had the opposite view during the Battle of Baltimore (1814). He was a captive on the British command vessel during the bombardment which led him to pen The Star Spangled Banner. a day later, the bridge is gone after a huge container ship lost power and plowed into one of the main support columns an unlucky road crew was working overnight to fix pot holes on the bridge, they fished 2 of the 8 out of the water but I fear the worst for the other 6 the crew did issue a May Day alert as they drifted towards impact and that may have saved lives by closing the bridge to auto traffic it makes me wonder why they don't build protective barriers to fend off wayward ships? like really, really big guard rails the Port of Baltimore is going to be shut until they finish the search and then pluck the twisted metal out of the shipping channel luckily some of the same equipment that helped unstick the Evergrand ship (ran aground further south in the Bay) is still here I remember the bridge being built in the '70s (I think it opened during the ANWR tour) - Mrs O knows that I can find an ELO connection to almost everything. www.cnn.com/us/live-news/baltimore-bridge-collapse-03-26-24-intl-hnk#h_1652f6b8572b04068c0408df86d22076
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Post by Timeblue on Mar 26, 2024 20:54:09 GMT
On our news here they said that bridge regulations in the 70s didn't require the 'islands' that surround bridge supports these days. Obviously if they had been in place then this tragic accident might not have been as bad as it was.
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Post by orioles70 on Mar 26, 2024 21:23:47 GMT
turns out that there were concrete "dolphins" to protect the support column, but they weren't nearly big enough to ward off a massive container ship I guess they needed to build "whales".
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