Somewhere there’s a P&I Club underwriter who is choking on his cereal. There’s a big bill coming.
Early reports are that the ship lost propulsion and was aware of it. They supposedly radioed the emergency to authorities, but there wasn’t much anyone could do at that point.
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There’s a timelapse out there of the moments leading up to the collision that shows the ship losing power a couple of times before hitting the bridge stanchion. There was also smoke coming from somewhere on the ship.
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Reports say that the vessel was under the control of a local pilot - as required by the port authority. It was billowing smoke and the lights went out seemingly before it hit the bridge.
Doesn’t absolve the vessel of liability from the collision but, unless the fire was started by the captain dropping a crack pipe when passing it to the first mate, we’ve likely got a “peril of the sea” right here.
I think this what also happened to the South Padre bridge years ago.
There was a guy who used to live in our neighborhood who supposedly made his nut selling insurance for cargo ships.
He had his first name scrawled on his cast iron gate (think Elvis at a Graceland) and he had a fleet of exotic cars and trucks each with a vanity plate that had some variation of his name.
He stored the vehicles somewhere else and would somehow sell manage to have 4 or 5 of them parked in his drive or in front of his house.
After Hurricane Katrina (I think), we sent my client Pemex this picture (or one just like it):
They responded along the lines of “Wow that’s bad. Hope they have insurance.”
We replied “You should know. It’s your rig.”
Ships hit bridges all the time. It’s just that they rarely do so with such dramatic results.
I am assuming he is a broker - taking commission on the premium. No one gets rich underwriting cargo insurance, especially containerized cargo. Just Google images for “container ship accident”.
Global premium is massive due to the extraordinary value of goods shipped by container (hence the rich broker). Global losses are massive because they pile them up like they’re a magician auditioning for the Johnny Carson show, and then head off into the untamed ocean.
Yeah I bet that’s correct.
That was similar in that cars went into the ocean; the difference is that it was in an area where the news didn’t cover it much.
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From what I read earlier, there were not very many on the bridge at the time. Something like only seven people were unaccounted for at the time. But that could change, of course.
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My understanding is that the 7 number was the number of workers on the bridge at the time.
During this recent news conference, it’s stated that a “mayday” was issued from the ship which allowed the authorities to stop traffic to the bridge just prior to collapse. If so, that’s huge.
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Here’s another, better angle of the collision. You can clearly see the power going in and out of the ship prior to the impact.
Some of the news videos are infuriatingly vapid. One local news “personality” asked the expert “This bridge was supposed to be up-to-code and in good condition, how could it all come crashing down like that?” I’m yelling into the screen “because a big-ass fucking ship ran into it!!!”.
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They’re telling us they didn’t pay attention in physics class without telling us they didn’t pay attention in physics class.
p = mv
the “m” here standing for a “massive fuck-off container ship”.
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Aside from the fact that so many people are primed to go straight to conspiracy or other types of over-dramatic thinking, I think a lot of people don’t realize just how goddamn big and heavy a container ship is.
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