Human beings, in the wake of any accident, are particularly prone to asserting that “lessons will be learned,” until the true costs of such learning are realised.
“Bolting the stable door when the horse has bolted” will have its equivalents in many languages and cultures, although it might be suggested that until the exit of the horse, the deficiencies of the door may not have been apparent.
Last year’s confrontation between the containership Dali and the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, quite understandably, has provoked a lot of soul-searching among maritime people, civil engineers, and safety administrators the world over. In the United States, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) was tasked with a nationwide survey of bridges over shipping channels, in an effort to assess the risks of similar ship-strike incidents.
They have now concluded that there are 68 of such bridges throughout the country that represent some sort of major risk of this type. We can only hope that as the Trumpian bonfire of the Federal agencies gathers pace, the excellent NTSB lives to see some useful reinforcement of these structures.
There was no appropriate reaction to the frequency of power outages aboard ships in difficult port waters, even though these have been constantly reported.
Of course, learning about a risk does not automatically mean that anything will be done to mitigate it, especially where price and practicalities swim into the ambit of the authorities. But it does prompt people to do something, as the legal implications of inactivity, after the risk has been identified, are obviously considerable.
While it may be practical, from a civil engineering perspective, to build strong protection around any vulnerable parts of a bridge, a huge increase in what might be described as insurance against the untoward can more easily be provided by the provision of towage services. Good business for tug companies, perhaps, but arguably essential, despite the costs the ship operator will doubtless protest about , but subsequently pass down the line.
The case of Dali and the Baltimore bridge, the huge costs of compensation, and the replacement of the structure will provide a lucrative business for very many lawyers for many years. Some cheerful person was suggesting that the replacement structure will have been planned, designed, tendered, and constructed while the legal arguments surrounding the fatal allision are still being rehearsed in several courts.
Some might suggest there will be no case to answer and that the power shutdown that caused the ship to veer off course was completely “internal” and no fault of anyone unconnected to the ship. But a defence to such an obvious attack might centre upon the fact that such a mishap was entirely predictable, witness the long list of other bridge collapses due to ship strikes over the years.
And while what defences that were built into the piers when the bridge was built nearly sixty years ago might have appeared to be adequate in that period, the authorities appeared to have taken no attention whatsoever to the huge scaling up in the weight and dimensions of the ships using the channels in and out of the port.
Furthermore, there was no appropriate reaction to the frequency of power outages aboard ships in difficult port waters, even though these have been constantly reported by pilotage authorities throughout the world.
Plenty will have reacted to the Baltimore alarm bell, but others will have ignored the signals.
Engines shutting down in embarrassing circumstances, electrical failures, steering difficulties, and various problems associated with fuel changeovers are all part and parcel of the modern pilotage. One would have to be very introverted not to have been aware of these well-publicised alarm signals.
It might also have been important to have observed that the designers of the modern container vessel like to build their ships with very pronounced flare at bow and stern, with a considerable overhang that has been bad news for many port structures throughout the world. A protective shield around a bridge that would be currently effective would be very different to one that appeared adequate in the 1970s.
You would be entirely wrong to assume that the sort of analysis of risk that has taken place in the ports and waterways of the US will have been replicated in other parts of the world where ships and bridges are in close proximity. Plenty will have reacted to the Baltimore alarm bell, but others will have ignored the signals.
“It won’t happen to us,” they will assert, hoping their stable door is firmly bolted.