The Dali was reportedly detained in Belgium after scraping side of quay and significantly damaging part of hull in good weather
The same vessel that hit the Baltimore Key Bridge on Tuesday, destroying it and sending people and vehicles tumbling into the water, was also involved in a collision while leaving the port of Antwerp, Belgium, in 2016.
According to Vessel Finder and the maritime incident archive Shipwrecklog, the Dali – a 948ft (290-meter) cargo ship with a capacity of 10,000 containers – was leaving the container terminal of Antwerp heading to Bremerhaven.
As it did so, its bow reportedly swung around, causing the stern to scrape the side of the quay, significantly damaging several meters of the hull.
The ship was reportedly detained by authorities afterward and docked in Deurganckdok, Belgium. There were reportedly no injuries or adverse pollution.
I got thru the ‘friends network’ that the ship had lost power, and put out a ‘mayday’ call. This explains why so few cars were on the bridge at the moment of the collision.
The BBC have a video of the full thing.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-68667813
There’s maybe a minute between power going out and the collision. Still cars going over at that point. Google Street View doesn’t seem to show any lights or barriers that could have been used, and I don’t know anyone that can scramble a road black that fast. That’s a half mile long bridge. They had no chance.
The reason there’s so few deaths is just because it was the middle of the night.
Wikipedia says 1.6 miles. So it was already heading towards the support when power went out? Ah, I see power went out twice. I had also noted the black smoke in the first video I saw.
The bit that actually collapsed was half a mile long. The rest seems to still be standing, so anybody on that bit would have been alright.
Hard to tell the path of the ship from that compressed angle tbh, or how far away it was. Dunno what anyone is supposed to do about it with a few minutes notice like that.
the black smoke is likely full throttle upon regaining power to attempt avoiding the structure.
It was also 1:30 am, and work crews were pouring concrete fixing the bridge at the time. That probably meant at least some kind of reduced traffic during the night work I would think.
There would have been a police detail on the bridge with the construction crew. Which is incredibly fortunate. Sounds like they were in the best place they could be for such a tragedy.
It’s a shame they couldn’t help more of the workers escape.