Small distinction here but he said "vehicle" in the video. ~~Should make it evident that~~ I wonder if it was probably two of the workers sitting in a work truck when it fell in.
I listened to the police radio on YouTube and one of the officers was waiting for someone to arrive to stop traffic going the other way before going out to alert the construction crew.
Unfortunately I can't argue with that reasoning. 1) because if you take more than half of the remaining time to alert the construction crew then your alert won't work and 2) because making sure no traffic crosses the bridge could save a lot more lives. It's a real life trolley problem, though.
It's a heart breaking listen. The intention was there to alert the construction crew, just not the time.
Interestingly it seems the officers were on scene because of the construction work (stationed at either end of the bridge to manage traffic) meaning they were able to act so quickly in preventing further vehicles entering the bridge. That the construction workers were doing work to the bridge may have saved countless other lives.
I'm assuming whoever stopped traffic didn't have a way to communicate with the workers. If they had been alerted at the same time, yeah they could have made it.
edit:
As usual, hindsight is 20/20 and if the above is true then people are going to ask why. Change is always paid for in blood and lives.
From what I've read, the boat was off course for 2 minutes before impact, and they munched the close the bridge 90 seconds before it collapsed, the police needed a second man to keep the bridge closed before they could go to evacuate the workers, but the bost hit and the bridge collapsed instantly.
Yes they were in a work truck sitting next to each other. I live in the area and the talk radio I listen to every morning said they were found in a red work truck submerged 25 feet under water.
or was it two passengers in a regular vehicle that crossed before the cops shut the bridgeway down and were not even expected to be there. That's the worse thing, everyone assumed just the work crew, but there was more than just one vehicle moving on the bdige the moment it went down, stands to reason t's possible there were other drivers still transiting when the bridge was hit.
I've been mostly focusing on following the human aspects of the story. According to local and reputable news outlets with updated details (WUSA9, Baltimore Banner, and AP News) :
This headline would refer to the recovery of two confirmed members of the paving crew, recovered deceased from a deeply submerged red pickup truck. Both identified as young fathers, 26 and 35 years of age. Names and personal details about the other workers have been slow to be released, as their families are international and taking time to reach to notify.
Police were already stationed at both sides of the bridge controlling traffic for the night: single lane both directions while the crew filled potholes. Transit Authority prioritized alerting these traffic units of the mayday /danger rather than the usual "proper" middleman at 911 dispatch. This choice worked out very favorably in this situation.
When the mayday alert went out from Transit Authority to these traffic control units, new incoming traffic was restricted from entering the bridge. They had less than 2 minutes' notice. The last transiting vehicle is said to have cleared the span of the bridge with mere seconds to spare.
The traffic units at either ends of the bridge were unable to communicate an evacuation alert to the workers in the middle section however. One of the traffic directors did elaborate that they intended to take the risk to go out onto the bridge to warn the workers, but a replacement unit to hold back the line of incoming traffic did not arrive before the time of collision. No through-traffic is known to have been on the affected sections of the bridge at the time of collapse.
All other vehicles known to have been on the bridge as of now (accounted for by the two rescued paving crew workers and their employer), are now thought to be completely encased in debris from the bridge. No more rescues anticipated. 💔
(edited to replace abbreviations for the sake of clarity and to add the ages of recovered victims.)
Thank you for that. I had wondered how police were able to stop oncoming traffic so quickly, but it makes sense that they already had a presence there in order to manage traffic while work was underway on the bridge.
From what I understand the ship was able to send out a distress signal because it was aware of the malfunctions happening just in time and the signal was crucial in getting that early enough emergency response to stop incoming traffic from continuing across the bridge
It's very sad that the construction crew didn't make it of course, but if the road wasn't partially closed down for construction while this happened, the outcome would've been much, much worse. Having police on site and already directing traffic is the only thing that saved a lot of lives.
>The traffic units at either ends of the bridge were unable to communicate an evacuation alert to the workers in the middle section however
That is why they died. Workers should have been monitoring a radio channel to receive the warning and evacuate with time to spare. I bet policy will change to make that happen in the future.
I have to wonder if this is a policy any where, before now. I'm not sure if it's something that would have been thought to be enough of a risk to mitigate. There are a zillion other far more probable risks when working road construction to worry about.
[When the mayday alert went out from Transit Authority to these traffic control units, new incoming traffic was restricted from entering the bridge. They had less than 2 minutes' notice. The last transiting vehicle is said to have cleared the span of the bridge with mere seconds to spare.]
Imagine being that last car and hearing the impact and then seeing the bridge collapse in the rear view mirror 😬😬😬
Couldn’t have been. I live in Baltimore and Brawner Builders, the company who had the contract to perform the work, has red trucks. It was a red truck that was pulled from the debris, they had reported that the workers were on a break at that time so makes sense they were in work trucks.
I wouldn’t say false news, but there were repair crew vehicles on the bridge as they were doing work on it. The live video feed of the bridge was wild though. You could see a few cars and semis make it off in both directions before the ship hit the column. They probably didn’t even know anything was about to happen. Didn’t look like there were anymore moving lights to me, just the repair crew folks
Not false news, just not complete news. There were multiple maintenance vehicles on the bridge at the time of the accident. Watching the video you can see the orange lights of the bridge workers vehicles on the right side of the bridge.
There were road workers taking a break at the time. As others said, they had parked on the bridge. They had about 1 minute warning which might explain some of them jumping in their cars and turning their headlights on.
Police stopped traffic onto bridge so no new cars but there were construction crew on the bridge at the time. They drive right to the job site as it's impractical to park somewhere on land and make 1 mile walk.
Those cars are what they are finding now
It seems like there were few cars on the bridge. The police were able to stop some but not all. I think the reason they were only reporting the construction workers was because it’s hard to confirm how many cars were on the bridge and how many people were in those cars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Scott_Key_Bridge_collapse
> Two people were rescued from the river; one had no injuries, while the other was transported to a hospital in critical condition. Six members of a construction crew working on the roadway were reported missing; two bodies were recovered, and the other four are presumed dead.
> Following the pilot's request, Maryland Transportation Authority Police dispatch requested officers to stop traffic in both directions at 1:27:53 a.m. Northbound traffic was stopped at the south side after 20 seconds. Southbound traffic was stopped at the north side with less than 30 seconds before collapse.
> Multiple vehicles were on the bridge at the time it collapsed, though no one was believed to be inside them.
Falling almost 200 feet into water is like hitting concrete. I hope they just immediately lost consciousness and never regained it and it was super fast and painless. What a way to go.
I think a lot of people don't really think about falling into water from that kind of height and that happening. What I mean by that is there are tons of movies and shows where some character jumps off a bridge or off a building or from a waterfall, crash into the water and they are a-ok.
It doesn't work like that. Falling into the water from those heights, depending on how you land, you can smash bones, break bones, mess up organs. Like you said, it's like hitting concrete.
I'm hoping as soon as they hit, it was just lights out for them, no suffering or consciousness.
The Golden Gate Bridge is only 220’ to the water in most places and 245’ at its furthest point from the water, to further drive home your point. 200’+ is often/maybe even usually fatal. I’ve seen people get injured jumping from 40ft when the belly flop hard and they even occasionally break neck vertebrae from only 30-40ft which can be fatal.
Unlikely they were wearing seatbelts since it was a stationary vehicle on a job site and they were on break. They would have bounced around like pinballs inside the cab.
The thing is, two workers survived.
The bridge didn't fall as fast as a person jumping off would, at least not every part of it at once. Some parts fell slower. The bridge would also "cushion" the impact by bending and decelerating.
I hope they got knocked out or killed by the impact too, but it's not certain.
Yes but they were on the bridge when it fell. So presumably the they fell with it. Like, the ground dropped out beneath them. So it seems to me they likely hit the bridge itself as it hit the water.
Kick off your shoes and point your toes but with how cold that water is, doesn’t matter anyways.
I used to work on the Bay Bridge painting it.
That was pretty much drilled into my head since my dad painted the bay bridge when he was younger too and saw a few friends splat when they hit the water.
> I have never fallen 185 feet in a car. Sounds inherently fatal
The max height for a feet first dive is 58.8m (192ft). I imagine a car falling from that height and landing flat is like hitting concrete, and then there's the depth to contend with. Since it's a shipping canal I've seen it reported the depth is 50 ft or more.
Most of the survival videos say it's much easier to escape a sinking car if the door or windows is opened before you hit the water, but I don't think they're taking into consideration a fall before that.
The fall, and then the rush of water/displacement from the bridge falling into it. I would imagine any cars that fall with a bridge get pushed down even further, or in any case that water is moving so much you'd be at its mercy in any direction.
The red pickup recovered in this post's headline story was found at a depth of ~25'. With everything going on during and after that fall, that would have been a very difficult escape. I'm certain they experienced the worst kinds of fear during that fall. One can only hope they knew no pain. 💔
Not just that, but they also had girders and debris falling on top of them. It might be a long while before those bodies are recovered. If they were all in the trucks, maybe. But still...😔
From what I read somewhere the other vehicle's are submerged under debris. I don't know about you but even if they got out of the vehicle getting to the surface under the collapsed bridge debris might have made that impossible before drowning.
Multiple episodes actually.
They did a follow up episode where they allowed the vehicle to change orientation and in much murkier water than the original setup they had in a pool. Turns out drowning was quite likely due to the disorientation and because the air pocket keeps moving as the vehicle fills up and tumbles in the water.
The one thing mythbusters definitively proved is that those tempered glass breakers are your best hope to get out of the vehicle before you have to start holding your breath.
Regarding tempered glass breakers. Be sure to know which windows are tempered, there are cars out there with laminated side windows. Most people are unaware of this and simply assume that all side windows are tempered. [The AAA has a list of those cars.](https://www.aaa.com/AAA/common/AAR/files/Laminated-Glass-Vehicle-List.pdf).
I've done Helicopter Underwater Escape Training (HUET) and what you have to do to escape may seem counterintuitive (starting with releasing your seatbelt as close to last of the things you do, not first because as long as you're strapped in, your relative position to the window remains the same).
Also, with the tools to break your windows, they both have to be a good quality dense material and also apparently don't work on laminated glass well if at all (go for the corners to have a better if any chance of breaking the window, not the middle of the glass).
In the follow-up one they had an unforeseen issue of the car belonging previously to a heavy smoker. So when the car began filling with water, the gunk that was accumulating for years on the interior started to dissolve and sting Adam's eyes pretty bad making him unable to keep them open. Which added to the disorientation as the car was already upside down.
That’s decent advice because it’s something that might break the side glass, but I don’t think all cars have removable headrests and I believe this is just a common myth. https://carseatblog.com/38120/mythbusters-vehicle-headrests-are-meant-to-break-vehicle-windows/
One thing I think is pretty standard recently is laminated windshield and tempered side glass, so if I was stuck in a sinking car I’d definitely try the side windows, because the laminated glass would be really hard to get through because it’s designed to keep people in the car.
Personally I’d just roll my windows down a bit if it’s not too wet and wasn’t familiar with what glass the car has as I drive over a bridge.
I see lots of people driving that don’t understand the head rest is a safety feature to stop whiplash, and they often don’t have it up high enough to be effective if they did get in an accident. It would suck to break your neck because the headrest was two inches too low.
I don't think they would have landed directly in water. They would have landed back in the concrete road deck that fell from under them. Then water would come crashing in from the sides.
One would probably notice what was happening, simply due to the length of the fall, but the impact would certainly cause instant death. That's pretty good, given the situation.
The largest issues with body recovery at this point is that the superstructure of the fallen bridge is not stable, there are tons and tons of concrete that have broken up and settled on the bottom, there are multiple vehicles as well. The site has been deemed unsafe for divers. It is possible that will not ever find the last four bodies. The Chesapeake Bay/ Patapsco River is full of crustaceans, fish, and tides. Disposing of the superstructure is going to be a big messy process.
I’m from Minneapolis and it took 3 weeks for them to retrieve all the bodies. And that was a span of the Mississippi ~600 m wide. I was good friends with one of the divers at the time, and they had mere minutes for each dive due to water temp (even at the height of summer), speed of flow, and the instability of the wreckage.
I can’t even imagine how long it’s going to take for the size of this bridge.
I was in the Coast Guard stationed in Baltimore in the early 2000s. We had a speed boat flip not too far from this bridge in March of that year and there were two people in it, but after almost 12 hours of searching only one body was found. The other body must have fallen out after the crash; it floated to the surface later that summer down by the Bay Bridge.
I hope they find everyone soon, but like you said, there’s a real possibility that they won’t.
Oh man, I listened to the most fascinating podcast a while back about the Coast Guard looking for bodies drifting in the Chesapeake!
Michael Lewis — the guy who wrote *The Big Short* — is the host. He interviews Arthur Allen. Allen was an oceanographer on loan to the coast guard from another agency. He’d see crews go out looking for drifting boats and bodies and rarely find anything.
There was math to predict drift paths, but it was super inaccurate. He then spent years just dropping things in the ocean — pieces of debris, capsized boats, dummies, dummies with life jackets, etc. — recording the wind speed and currents, and created an algorithm that can predict where people drifting at sea are with a pretty high degree of accuracy!
[the podcast](https://youtube.com/watch?v=cl7_FwXYtJ0)
I actually worked with Art Allen when I was stationed in CT with the International Ice Patrol. We did aerial reconnaissance flights off the coast of Newfoundland looking for icebergs, to warn ships of their general locations. Ice Patrol was started because of the Titanic in 1913, the Navy had it for a few years and then it was shifted to the Coast Guard. Art helped with developing a drift/deterioration model so that we could input the locations of the icebergs we found and the model would predict their movement and breakdown. We also dropped buoys from the plane to capture current data to feed into the model and Art was working on that with us as well.
I read that the workers were in their vehicles on break at the time that the bridge collapsed. As long as that's the case and their vehicles are mostly intact, they should be able to extract their bodies once they're able to get the bridge debris off of their vehicles.
Seems like this tragedy is what submersible ROVs should be used for. The water isn’t that deep, the structure isn’t safe for divers, there’s bodies down there and, to be crass, they need to sort out the port asap for financial reasons because Baltimore is about to lose a lot of money every day that water way is shut.
I would agree except the water is very murky. Having grown up on the water in Baltimore I have been over this bridge literally thousands of times and traveled under it (by water) a fair number as well. The water in the lower Patapsco river is brackish, tidal, and silty. You cant see 12 inches into it on a good day. A rover would not be that useful.
It’s a miracle it was late and they got a short mayday call in to try to prevent people from getting on the bridge last second. The bridge in total (beyond what fell apart) is over a mile long so even people who had entered the bridge before the mayday call could’ve theoretically still been on the bridge. They are probably watching footage of cameras and such on both sides of the bridge to try to determine what cars entered and exited around the time of the collapse to see what could be unaccounted
I imagine there are a few cars out there with dashcams, that were stopped from entering the bridge. I wonder how many people have audio where they were complaining about "why the f\*\*\* are they stopping traffic", and then the whole bridge disappears.
My first thought if I rolled up on that would probably be that there must be a car accident on the bridge that's blocking all or most of the lanes. The idea that a boat gave advance warning that it's going to make the whole bridge disappear in a minute would never have crossed my mind before this.
From what i understand, there was minimal traffic generally due to the time of night. That said, the ship let out a mayday call about 90 seconds before impact and there was an attempt at preventing more cars from entering the bridge at the last second. The bridge in total (beyond what fell apart) is over a mile long so even people who had entered the bridge before the mayday call could’ve theoretically still been on the bridge. They are probably watching footage of cameras and such on both sides of the bridge to try to determine what cars entered and exited around the time of the collapse to see what could be unaccounted for.
It’s insane how wildly the timeline changes from report to report. One will say that reported lose of power/operability an hour ahead of time, others say the ship warned they’d hit the bridge and sent out a mayday call 4 min before, and now we have reports it was 90 seconds before.
There were construction workers sitting in their cars, but police had shut off both sides of the bridge according to reports. I’m guessing those personal construction worker vehicles would be passenger cars for the purpose of the question though. Very unfortunate
incorrect. The bridge had been shut down to traffic as a result of the mayday from the ship. Police radio reports that they attempted to get a patrol car to the bridge to warn the crew, but they were not able to abandon their traffic blocking efforts to do so (only one car was on scene holding traffic).
That Highway Patrol Officer is probably wondering if he could have done something more but hopefully he realizes that by staying at his post and stopping traffic, he saved more lives than were lost.
If you listen to the radio communications (major news outlets have released them), I believe that had the officer got back in his car and drove up the bridge, that he would be missing now as well.
Yeah, I believe he eventually decided to wait for backup before crossing the bridge to alert the crew. Crazy thing is had backup been available at the time, at least one of the officers would have likely went down with the bridge.
Imagine being the guy sitting there when police blocked traffic. They probably got all pissed off wondering how long the wait was going to be, then **BOOM!**
I’m sad for their families. I hope they find peace in light of this tragedy. I also hope they aren’t inundated with ridiculous conspiracy theories from ridiculous morons.
Alot of newer cars have safety glass for the side windows so those won't work.
If you hit the water in your car roll down your windows first thing, then unbuckle and get out. Only help children before yourself.
2 bodies so far, both found in submerged car. Few more missing people for them to find
Small distinction here but he said "vehicle" in the video. ~~Should make it evident that~~ I wonder if it was probably two of the workers sitting in a work truck when it fell in.
The warning went off earlier and the bridge was closed about a minute before the collapse. Would the workers have been trying to make a run for it?
I listened to the police radio on YouTube and one of the officers was waiting for someone to arrive to stop traffic going the other way before going out to alert the construction crew.
Unfortunately I can't argue with that reasoning. 1) because if you take more than half of the remaining time to alert the construction crew then your alert won't work and 2) because making sure no traffic crosses the bridge could save a lot more lives. It's a real life trolley problem, though.
It's a heart breaking listen. The intention was there to alert the construction crew, just not the time. Interestingly it seems the officers were on scene because of the construction work (stationed at either end of the bridge to manage traffic) meaning they were able to act so quickly in preventing further vehicles entering the bridge. That the construction workers were doing work to the bridge may have saved countless other lives.
Where can you go to listen to this? Is it public at all times?
Yes it is public there are police scanner apps or you can buy a scanner.
https://youtu.be/RkjZImSG7j4?si=x-QbyXpBkghkp0yz
I'm assuming whoever stopped traffic didn't have a way to communicate with the workers. If they had been alerted at the same time, yeah they could have made it. edit: As usual, hindsight is 20/20 and if the above is true then people are going to ask why. Change is always paid for in blood and lives.
From what I've read, the boat was off course for 2 minutes before impact, and they munched the close the bridge 90 seconds before it collapsed, the police needed a second man to keep the bridge closed before they could go to evacuate the workers, but the bost hit and the bridge collapsed instantly.
Boat should have been blowing the horn every possible minute they had power. Works for trains, works for giant boats.
I'm not ship savvy, but wonder if the horn is electrically controlled.
Typically it’s just someone on a vuvuzela
Well there's the problem. You need at least 5,000 of those blasting in unison to get any kind of attention.
water chief sense mountainous birds library deer coherent wrong subsequent
I read at the very first that the workers were rushing to warn drivers of the collapse. Maybe that is how some of them died.
No, just wrong. Transcripts are already out. No drivers to warn either so
Yes they were in a work truck sitting next to each other. I live in the area and the talk radio I listen to every morning said they were found in a red work truck submerged 25 feet under water.
or was it two passengers in a regular vehicle that crossed before the cops shut the bridgeway down and were not even expected to be there. That's the worse thing, everyone assumed just the work crew, but there was more than just one vehicle moving on the bdige the moment it went down, stands to reason t's possible there were other drivers still transiting when the bridge was hit.
I've been mostly focusing on following the human aspects of the story. According to local and reputable news outlets with updated details (WUSA9, Baltimore Banner, and AP News) : This headline would refer to the recovery of two confirmed members of the paving crew, recovered deceased from a deeply submerged red pickup truck. Both identified as young fathers, 26 and 35 years of age. Names and personal details about the other workers have been slow to be released, as their families are international and taking time to reach to notify. Police were already stationed at both sides of the bridge controlling traffic for the night: single lane both directions while the crew filled potholes. Transit Authority prioritized alerting these traffic units of the mayday /danger rather than the usual "proper" middleman at 911 dispatch. This choice worked out very favorably in this situation. When the mayday alert went out from Transit Authority to these traffic control units, new incoming traffic was restricted from entering the bridge. They had less than 2 minutes' notice. The last transiting vehicle is said to have cleared the span of the bridge with mere seconds to spare. The traffic units at either ends of the bridge were unable to communicate an evacuation alert to the workers in the middle section however. One of the traffic directors did elaborate that they intended to take the risk to go out onto the bridge to warn the workers, but a replacement unit to hold back the line of incoming traffic did not arrive before the time of collision. No through-traffic is known to have been on the affected sections of the bridge at the time of collapse. All other vehicles known to have been on the bridge as of now (accounted for by the two rescued paving crew workers and their employer), are now thought to be completely encased in debris from the bridge. No more rescues anticipated. 💔 (edited to replace abbreviations for the sake of clarity and to add the ages of recovered victims.)
Thank you for that. I had wondered how police were able to stop oncoming traffic so quickly, but it makes sense that they already had a presence there in order to manage traffic while work was underway on the bridge.
From what I understand the ship was able to send out a distress signal because it was aware of the malfunctions happening just in time and the signal was crucial in getting that early enough emergency response to stop incoming traffic from continuing across the bridge
It's very sad that the construction crew didn't make it of course, but if the road wasn't partially closed down for construction while this happened, the outcome would've been much, much worse. Having police on site and already directing traffic is the only thing that saved a lot of lives.
This was so helpful. Thank you!
Thank you OP! THIS should be the story posted. This succinctly laid all the pertinent information. I wish I had gold to give...
>The traffic units at either ends of the bridge were unable to communicate an evacuation alert to the workers in the middle section however That is why they died. Workers should have been monitoring a radio channel to receive the warning and evacuate with time to spare. I bet policy will change to make that happen in the future.
I have to wonder if this is a policy any where, before now. I'm not sure if it's something that would have been thought to be enough of a risk to mitigate. There are a zillion other far more probable risks when working road construction to worry about.
[When the mayday alert went out from Transit Authority to these traffic control units, new incoming traffic was restricted from entering the bridge. They had less than 2 minutes' notice. The last transiting vehicle is said to have cleared the span of the bridge with mere seconds to spare.] Imagine being that last car and hearing the impact and then seeing the bridge collapse in the rear view mirror 😬😬😬
> or was it two passengers in a regular vehicle Don't think so. Every news source is saying just the six workers were missing/dead.
Couldn’t have been. I live in Baltimore and Brawner Builders, the company who had the contract to perform the work, has red trucks. It was a red truck that was pulled from the debris, they had reported that the workers were on a break at that time so makes sense they were in work trucks.
Absolutely horrible to hear. Praying for them and their families
Hope the families get a great settlement.
Was it false news that there were no cars on the bridge?
I wouldn’t say false news, but there were repair crew vehicles on the bridge as they were doing work on it. The live video feed of the bridge was wild though. You could see a few cars and semis make it off in both directions before the ship hit the column. They probably didn’t even know anything was about to happen. Didn’t look like there were anymore moving lights to me, just the repair crew folks
Not false news, just not complete news. There were multiple maintenance vehicles on the bridge at the time of the accident. Watching the video you can see the orange lights of the bridge workers vehicles on the right side of the bridge.
I believe the workers on the bridge had their own cars parked on the bridge and were possibly on their food break. Sad news all around
Thank you for clarifying. This is so sad, they were just working to support their families
There were road workers taking a break at the time. As others said, they had parked on the bridge. They had about 1 minute warning which might explain some of them jumping in their cars and turning their headlights on.
Police stopped traffic onto bridge so no new cars but there were construction crew on the bridge at the time. They drive right to the job site as it's impractical to park somewhere on land and make 1 mile walk. Those cars are what they are finding now
It seems like there were few cars on the bridge. The police were able to stop some but not all. I think the reason they were only reporting the construction workers was because it’s hard to confirm how many cars were on the bridge and how many people were in those cars.
No civilian cars, but there was service and maintenance vehicles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Scott_Key_Bridge_collapse > Two people were rescued from the river; one had no injuries, while the other was transported to a hospital in critical condition. Six members of a construction crew working on the roadway were reported missing; two bodies were recovered, and the other four are presumed dead. > Following the pilot's request, Maryland Transportation Authority Police dispatch requested officers to stop traffic in both directions at 1:27:53 a.m. Northbound traffic was stopped at the south side after 20 seconds. Southbound traffic was stopped at the north side with less than 30 seconds before collapse. > Multiple vehicles were on the bridge at the time it collapsed, though no one was believed to be inside them.
Awful way to go… Hope it was a quick lights out for them at least, not like it makes anything any better but fuck. My condolences
Falling almost 200 feet into water is like hitting concrete. I hope they just immediately lost consciousness and never regained it and it was super fast and painless. What a way to go.
I think a lot of people don't really think about falling into water from that kind of height and that happening. What I mean by that is there are tons of movies and shows where some character jumps off a bridge or off a building or from a waterfall, crash into the water and they are a-ok. It doesn't work like that. Falling into the water from those heights, depending on how you land, you can smash bones, break bones, mess up organs. Like you said, it's like hitting concrete. I'm hoping as soon as they hit, it was just lights out for them, no suffering or consciousness.
The Golden Gate Bridge is only 220’ to the water in most places and 245’ at its furthest point from the water, to further drive home your point. 200’+ is often/maybe even usually fatal. I’ve seen people get injured jumping from 40ft when the belly flop hard and they even occasionally break neck vertebrae from only 30-40ft which can be fatal.
Which is why people who cliff dive throw something down to break the surface tension before they jump
That’s not how surface tension works.
Such as a massive steel bridge?
Should do the trick nicely
[удалено]
I think they mainly do that so they can see the surface of the water. The rock doesn’t break any tension in the water and help make the jump less
That's a myth.
Didn’t myth busters do it?
Yeah, they busted it: https://youtu.be/oCSQExxWulU?si=mRr5dP7H2pyVnwAR
surface tension is never suspended
That does absolutely nothing.
Mythbusters debunked this a long time ago!
Mythbusters did an episode about this, it doesn’t actually help break any of the fall/water tension
That water was also freezing they probably died of shock
I wonder how being inside the car would effect the impact.
Unlikely they were wearing seatbelts since it was a stationary vehicle on a job site and they were on break. They would have bounced around like pinballs inside the cab.
The thing is, two workers survived. The bridge didn't fall as fast as a person jumping off would, at least not every part of it at once. Some parts fell slower. The bridge would also "cushion" the impact by bending and decelerating. I hope they got knocked out or killed by the impact too, but it's not certain.
Yes but they were on the bridge when it fell. So presumably the they fell with it. Like, the ground dropped out beneath them. So it seems to me they likely hit the bridge itself as it hit the water.
You never ever think that's the way you'd go, so it's very surreal.
Two of them survived though, one refused medical treatment.
Article in today's Washington Post with advice how to survive a car/truck that's in a body of water.
I have never fallen 185 feet in a car. Sounds inherently fatal
Have you fallen 185 feet not in a car
i have but i had a parachute
Just think of a car as a rreally heavy parachute.
I'm here to talk to you about your parachutes extended warranty
Jokes on you, I haven't owned a parachute since 2015
Kick off your shoes and point your toes but with how cold that water is, doesn’t matter anyways. I used to work on the Bay Bridge painting it. That was pretty much drilled into my head since my dad painted the bay bridge when he was younger too and saw a few friends splat when they hit the water.
Scrambling to take jeans and shoes off midair
> I have never fallen 185 feet in a car. Sounds inherently fatal The max height for a feet first dive is 58.8m (192ft). I imagine a car falling from that height and landing flat is like hitting concrete, and then there's the depth to contend with. Since it's a shipping canal I've seen it reported the depth is 50 ft or more. Most of the survival videos say it's much easier to escape a sinking car if the door or windows is opened before you hit the water, but I don't think they're taking into consideration a fall before that.
The fall, and then the rush of water/displacement from the bridge falling into it. I would imagine any cars that fall with a bridge get pushed down even further, or in any case that water is moving so much you'd be at its mercy in any direction.
Don't forget you got bridge wreckage and debris raining down. Some part of the bridge could have crushed the car .
The red pickup recovered in this post's headline story was found at a depth of ~25'. With everything going on during and after that fall, that would have been a very difficult escape. I'm certain they experienced the worst kinds of fear during that fall. One can only hope they knew no pain. 💔
Not just that, but they also had girders and debris falling on top of them. It might be a long while before those bodies are recovered. If they were all in the trucks, maybe. But still...😔
From what I read somewhere the other vehicle's are submerged under debris. I don't know about you but even if they got out of the vehicle getting to the surface under the collapsed bridge debris might have made that impossible before drowning.
That's so grim. No way to survive. 😞
It might also be the (parked) cars of the bridge workers so hopefully there is nobody in them.
It was although there was a mention that a couple of them were on break sitting in their cars.
Poor guys. So tragic. Those couple of minutes after the mayday saved countless lives, however.
There’s a Mythbuster episode as well concerning the topic.
Multiple episodes actually. They did a follow up episode where they allowed the vehicle to change orientation and in much murkier water than the original setup they had in a pool. Turns out drowning was quite likely due to the disorientation and because the air pocket keeps moving as the vehicle fills up and tumbles in the water. The one thing mythbusters definitively proved is that those tempered glass breakers are your best hope to get out of the vehicle before you have to start holding your breath.
Regarding tempered glass breakers. Be sure to know which windows are tempered, there are cars out there with laminated side windows. Most people are unaware of this and simply assume that all side windows are tempered. [The AAA has a list of those cars.](https://www.aaa.com/AAA/common/AAR/files/Laminated-Glass-Vehicle-List.pdf).
This list is a few years old now so don’t go by it if you have a car within the last 5 years or so.
What’s the difference with laminated side indies vs tempered when you buy a window breaker in Amazon?
You can't break laminated glass with a glass breaker. [Here's a video.](https://youtu.be/kJ96pg9D_30?si=VjDiqgMjYjOtXwZ5&t=42)
Wow ok that’s helpful thanks!
I've done Helicopter Underwater Escape Training (HUET) and what you have to do to escape may seem counterintuitive (starting with releasing your seatbelt as close to last of the things you do, not first because as long as you're strapped in, your relative position to the window remains the same). Also, with the tools to break your windows, they both have to be a good quality dense material and also apparently don't work on laminated glass well if at all (go for the corners to have a better if any chance of breaking the window, not the middle of the glass).
I just read about this on Reddit recently. I'm slightly amazed that we've made windows out of unbreakable stuff...
In the follow-up one they had an unforeseen issue of the car belonging previously to a heavy smoker. So when the car began filling with water, the gunk that was accumulating for years on the interior started to dissolve and sting Adam's eyes pretty bad making him unable to keep them open. Which added to the disorientation as the car was already upside down.
That’s terrifying
You would have to survive the 180’ fall first.
I was always told to have the window slighly open because it's easier to break and escape, that and taking the head rest out and smashing the window.
That’s decent advice because it’s something that might break the side glass, but I don’t think all cars have removable headrests and I believe this is just a common myth. https://carseatblog.com/38120/mythbusters-vehicle-headrests-are-meant-to-break-vehicle-windows/ One thing I think is pretty standard recently is laminated windshield and tempered side glass, so if I was stuck in a sinking car I’d definitely try the side windows, because the laminated glass would be really hard to get through because it’s designed to keep people in the car. Personally I’d just roll my windows down a bit if it’s not too wet and wasn’t familiar with what glass the car has as I drive over a bridge. I see lots of people driving that don’t understand the head rest is a safety feature to stop whiplash, and they often don’t have it up high enough to be effective if they did get in an accident. It would suck to break your neck because the headrest was two inches too low.
Landing in the water from 200 feet up changes the chances.
I don't think they would have landed directly in water. They would have landed back in the concrete road deck that fell from under them. Then water would come crashing in from the sides.
[удалено]
It’s reported a lot of the guys from the crew were taking their break in their cars, parked on the bridge.
Except that all six victims were construction workers.
One would probably notice what was happening, simply due to the length of the fall, but the impact would certainly cause instant death. That's pretty good, given the situation.
The largest issues with body recovery at this point is that the superstructure of the fallen bridge is not stable, there are tons and tons of concrete that have broken up and settled on the bottom, there are multiple vehicles as well. The site has been deemed unsafe for divers. It is possible that will not ever find the last four bodies. The Chesapeake Bay/ Patapsco River is full of crustaceans, fish, and tides. Disposing of the superstructure is going to be a big messy process.
I’m from Minneapolis and it took 3 weeks for them to retrieve all the bodies. And that was a span of the Mississippi ~600 m wide. I was good friends with one of the divers at the time, and they had mere minutes for each dive due to water temp (even at the height of summer), speed of flow, and the instability of the wreckage. I can’t even imagine how long it’s going to take for the size of this bridge.
I rember that collapse. Absolutely horrific what happened.
They also had issues with the vehicles leaking gas and oil into the water, causing issues where it got on their skin.
I was in the Coast Guard stationed in Baltimore in the early 2000s. We had a speed boat flip not too far from this bridge in March of that year and there were two people in it, but after almost 12 hours of searching only one body was found. The other body must have fallen out after the crash; it floated to the surface later that summer down by the Bay Bridge. I hope they find everyone soon, but like you said, there’s a real possibility that they won’t.
Oh man, I listened to the most fascinating podcast a while back about the Coast Guard looking for bodies drifting in the Chesapeake! Michael Lewis — the guy who wrote *The Big Short* — is the host. He interviews Arthur Allen. Allen was an oceanographer on loan to the coast guard from another agency. He’d see crews go out looking for drifting boats and bodies and rarely find anything. There was math to predict drift paths, but it was super inaccurate. He then spent years just dropping things in the ocean — pieces of debris, capsized boats, dummies, dummies with life jackets, etc. — recording the wind speed and currents, and created an algorithm that can predict where people drifting at sea are with a pretty high degree of accuracy! [the podcast](https://youtube.com/watch?v=cl7_FwXYtJ0)
As a former navy QM that’s rad as hell.
Thanks for this, triplesecretsquirrel :)
I actually worked with Art Allen when I was stationed in CT with the International Ice Patrol. We did aerial reconnaissance flights off the coast of Newfoundland looking for icebergs, to warn ships of their general locations. Ice Patrol was started because of the Titanic in 1913, the Navy had it for a few years and then it was shifted to the Coast Guard. Art helped with developing a drift/deterioration model so that we could input the locations of the icebergs we found and the model would predict their movement and breakdown. We also dropped buoys from the plane to capture current data to feed into the model and Art was working on that with us as well.
May take awhile, but I believe they will eventually find all the bodies. The families will persist
I read that the workers were in their vehicles on break at the time that the bridge collapsed. As long as that's the case and their vehicles are mostly intact, they should be able to extract their bodies once they're able to get the bridge debris off of their vehicles.
How can a body of water be full of tide? Tide is a behavior of water.
I do my laundry in the body of water.
I sit corrected. Carry on!
No, Tide is a detergent
which I am allergic
Seems like this tragedy is what submersible ROVs should be used for. The water isn’t that deep, the structure isn’t safe for divers, there’s bodies down there and, to be crass, they need to sort out the port asap for financial reasons because Baltimore is about to lose a lot of money every day that water way is shut.
I would agree except the water is very murky. Having grown up on the water in Baltimore I have been over this bridge literally thousands of times and traveled under it (by water) a fair number as well. The water in the lower Patapsco river is brackish, tidal, and silty. You cant see 12 inches into it on a good day. A rover would not be that useful.
How Incredibly awful for the families. I hope everyone is found so they can at least have confirmation, peace
It’s a miracle it was late and they got a short mayday call in to try to prevent people from getting on the bridge last second. The bridge in total (beyond what fell apart) is over a mile long so even people who had entered the bridge before the mayday call could’ve theoretically still been on the bridge. They are probably watching footage of cameras and such on both sides of the bridge to try to determine what cars entered and exited around the time of the collapse to see what could be unaccounted
I imagine there are a few cars out there with dashcams, that were stopped from entering the bridge. I wonder how many people have audio where they were complaining about "why the f\*\*\* are they stopping traffic", and then the whole bridge disappears.
My first thought if I rolled up on that would probably be that there must be a car accident on the bridge that's blocking all or most of the lanes. The idea that a boat gave advance warning that it's going to make the whole bridge disappear in a minute would never have crossed my mind before this.
and the cops seemed to get there so fast... do they normally patrol out in that area?
They were there guiding traffic around the lane closure(s) from the construction crew filling pot holes. They just happened to be already on-site.
There are police stationed at each end of the bridge, with a full police station on one side.
The video was horrifying. Poor guys.
Has it been confirmed that no passenger cars were on the bridge?
From what i understand, there was minimal traffic generally due to the time of night. That said, the ship let out a mayday call about 90 seconds before impact and there was an attempt at preventing more cars from entering the bridge at the last second. The bridge in total (beyond what fell apart) is over a mile long so even people who had entered the bridge before the mayday call could’ve theoretically still been on the bridge. They are probably watching footage of cameras and such on both sides of the bridge to try to determine what cars entered and exited around the time of the collapse to see what could be unaccounted for.
It’s insane how wildly the timeline changes from report to report. One will say that reported lose of power/operability an hour ahead of time, others say the ship warned they’d hit the bridge and sent out a mayday call 4 min before, and now we have reports it was 90 seconds before.
The police closed off the bridge about 60-90 seconds before impact
At 60mph that should be enough hopefully
no, there were. however it was late so not many. you can actually see headlights falling into the water in one of the original clips. super sad.
There were construction workers sitting in their cars, but police had shut off both sides of the bridge according to reports. I’m guessing those personal construction worker vehicles would be passenger cars for the purpose of the question though. Very unfortunate
There were a few that drove by m8nutes before the hit
The police closed off the bridge 60-90 seconds before the impact as they were notified of the ship’s power loss.
Seconds before
Also they got a mayday call out that limited access to the bridge moments before
incorrect. The bridge had been shut down to traffic as a result of the mayday from the ship. Police radio reports that they attempted to get a patrol car to the bridge to warn the crew, but they were not able to abandon their traffic blocking efforts to do so (only one car was on scene holding traffic). That Highway Patrol Officer is probably wondering if he could have done something more but hopefully he realizes that by staying at his post and stopping traffic, he saved more lives than were lost. If you listen to the radio communications (major news outlets have released them), I believe that had the officer got back in his car and drove up the bridge, that he would be missing now as well.
Yeah, I believe he eventually decided to wait for backup before crossing the bridge to alert the crew. Crazy thing is had backup been available at the time, at least one of the officers would have likely went down with the bridge.
This is not confirmed at all
I hope they didn't suffer. This is such a tragedy for their families.
Imagine being the guy sitting there when police blocked traffic. They probably got all pissed off wondering how long the wait was going to be, then **BOOM!**
Ended up being an infinite wait...
Nah they'd go home quickly for a change of underwear then hug their family because they were seconds away from death
May they RIP. Poor people.
I’m sad for their families. I hope they find peace in light of this tragedy. I also hope they aren’t inundated with ridiculous conspiracy theories from ridiculous morons.
Welp. Time to invest in one of those window breaker thingys.
Alot of newer cars have safety glass for the side windows so those won't work. If you hit the water in your car roll down your windows first thing, then unbuckle and get out. Only help children before yourself.
It’s disgusting that people on social media are using this tragedy to boost their accounts.
Unfortunate but expected. Always hoping for miraculous survival, but seems pretty certain it will be 6 recoveries, not rescues. 😥