The ship that rammed into Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge on Tuesday causing it to collapse was involved in an accident overseas several years ago.
The incident involving the vessel occurred in 2016 in the port of Antwerp, Belgium, Reuters reported Tuesday.
“The Antwerp port authorities said the container ship Dali hit a quay on July 11, 2016, as it tried to exit the North Sea container terminal,” the outlet said.
“The port authority could give no details about the cause of the accident, but said the ship had remained at the dock for repairs for some time after the incident,” the Reuters article noted.
What appears to be video footage of the occurrence shows the ship hitting the concrete wall as sirens are heard going off in the background:
“As a general rule, these accidents are investigated and ships are only allowed to leave after experts have determined it is safe for them to do so,” an Antwerp port spokesperson explained.
When the ship hit the Baltimore bridge early Tuesday, the bridge collapsed, sending cars and people into the Patapsco River below, Breitbart News reported.
A video clip shows the moment the vessel ran into a portion of the bridge:
Breitbart News’s Oliver JJ Lane said there were “serious problems” onboard the ship in the minutes before the crash. The ship’s power apparently went out prior to the incident.
“Now the BBC notes ‘an unclassified memo’ from the U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) states it has confirmed the ship ‘lost propulsion’ before hitting the bridge,” Lane continued:
So evidently the ship was, as nautical parlance has it, ‘not under command’, meaning “at the mercy of winds and seas” — and in this case, inertia. What we do not know is whether this state of having “lost propulsion” means the engine ceased to function, or if the coupling taking the energy from the engine to the propeller was damaged. In either case the ship was disabled at a critical moment and in a critical place and collided with enormous force.
A bridge engineer speaking to Breitbart News today said the bridge suffered a “catastrophic failure” after being struck, but this isn’t exactly the fault of the bridge. The amount of energy embodied in a moving container ship weighing over 110,000 tons full laden is enormous and fortifying a large bridge against that kind of impact is essentially beyond what material science is capable of.
Right now, rescue efforts are underway to find several individuals who fell into the water after the ship hit the bridge. Baltimore Fire Department Chief James Wallace said two people had been rescued.
Meanwhile, the Governor of Maryland said there was adequate time between the Dali issuing a distress call and the crash for traffic to be stopped from driving onto the bridge, which saved many lives.
WATCH: Search for Survivors Continues After Collapse of Bridge Struck by Cargo Ship
Bill Ferguson via Storyful
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.