I didn’t realize Baltimore was so important for the car market of the Midwest and East Coast. Apparently 800,000+ cars are delivered per year through the Port of Baltimore, but with the bridge collapse today it sounds like shipments could cause some car market issues for a swath of the country.
/s right? Right?
As someone who lifts very very heavy things for a living, whoever ends up running the cranes involved will remember this demo job as the sketchiest shit they ever did. Even after every cut and lift of the steel has been engineered to death, this will be a painfully slow process, just to keep the involved workers from getting added to the list of casualties.
Looks like Army Corps of Engineers are on the case.
1000+ ton crane and a plan for the part of the bridge on the ship is the current rumor. Estimated to be ~4000tons on top of the barge right now.
1000+ ton crane is far larger than I knew about and will reduce the number of needed cuts.
This is still very dangerous and will take weeks. But it’s cool to see the best equipment the USA can afford get on this case.
I’d hate to be the guy in charge of walking down there and cutting the bridge up. That’s got to be one of the most dangerous jobs here.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/29/us/francis-scott-key-bridge-collapse-friday/index.html
Largest I’ve operated is 500 ton, largest I’ve seen in person was 900. 1000 ton capacity is a lot of crane. That said, a 1000 ton crane can go over in a heartbeat. All it takes is a shock load from a piece dropping as it’s cut, a failure of the rigging, or even the piece rendering out causing the center of gravity of the load to move further from the crane. Any of those things could send it ass over tea kettle killing everyone in its path. Demo is hands down the most dangerous thing you can do with a crane.
For the same reasons, this is why little 24 ton boom trucks flip doing tree trimming work. Cut a limb loose, it shocks the boom, swings away from the crane, and over she goes.
I wish them luck.
I’m glad an expert like you has contributed to the discussion! Thanks.
Biggest thing I did was watch a few trees get cut down, lol. I’m no where near a real engineer (outside of electrical engineering, but that deals with small things, not big things…)
Thanks! I love my work. But like one of my old timer buddies says a lot “it’s amazing the kind of sketchy shit you get used to”.
This looks doubly dangerous, as the 1000+ ton crane is not just a big-ass crane, its also on water.
Lets hope for fair weather and good seas. They’ll need all the stability that they can get!
This is the Chesapeak 1000, the 1000 ton capacity crane barge that’s been conscripted to clean up the bridge debris.
Oooooh super fucking cool. I’ve never been around a barge crane. I know guys that ran big crawlers on barges. Barge work is a whole different ball of wax. You have separate capacity charts to factor how much the barge lists when the crane is loaded. Giant brass balls on the guys doing that shit.