Re: Full video of ship hitting and destroying the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore

On 3/27/2024 4:20 PM, Joe Gwinn wrote:

The main news channels show only the last ten seconds, which omits
anything useful for deducing cause.  There is talk of contaminated
fuel, which likely would have been loaded in Baltimore.
 .<https://twitter.com/Abramoloy/status/1772579083219619978>
 Joe Gwinn

I know that cargo ships aren't built to the same standards of redundancy as aircraft but it's remarkable to me that this failure managed to take down every external light on the ship by the look of it. Black as pitch, not even the mast beacon stays lit. Very helpful in an emergency.
Incidentally I noticed it looked like the bridge's center beacon admirably kept blinking to the last, even after the rest of the bridge's power gets cut.
I read that cargo ships of this size run diesel generators to power the steering pumps at low speed and then do PTO from the main shaft once they're cruising, and that the black smoke may have been an emergency generator coming up. But the steering pumps probably aren't a priority, in a river current that thing's a cork on backup power.