A Mexican ship was on a training exercise, and it hit the Brooklyn Bridge. Yes, this is real life. I sincerely am looking forward to Trump’s reaction. I’ll bet it’s hilarious.
I remember years ago some new, taller shipping cranes were being brought in to the Oakland port, and it was a very technical process for the ship carrying them going under the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges, timing it just right for very low tides, and taking it really slow. And that’s the first thing I thought of when I watched the footage of these idiots barreling through, not even close to clearing the underside of the bridge. Like how do you miss that badly?
From what I understand, the ship was out of control - it was drifting backwards. There was a tug which was supposed to keep it under control which failed somehow. The ship came in under the central part of the bridge which is taller, but then while out of control drifted under the side part of the bridge which is lower, which is why it hit the bridge. Probably the failing NYT will have maps and diagrams and stuff to explain it better, but it's not a question of "what kind of ********ing captain rams his tall ass boat into a bridge".
That's kind of where I'm at. Last night, it was funny, but now it's a tragedy. I haven't seen a good analysis of what went wrong. The Mexican navy ship has a captain who is ultimately responsible for what happens to his ship, but when you go into a busy harbor like New York, they will often put a harbor pilot on the ship - but probably not on a foreign navy ship, because there's security issues with a local pilot taking charge of a navy ship, I doubt our Navy ships let a foreign pilot take control when we go to a foreign port. But there needs to be coordination between whoever's in control of the ship, and the port authorities. So who screwed up and let this ship loose? Did DOGE cut funding for the NY/NJ port authority, the way they're cutting funding for the air traffic control system? I'm sure our resident Trump fluffers will say it's the NY/NJ port authority's fault, but these big ports get a lot of federal funding, which is the kind of thing DOGE likes to cut. Or maybe it was just the Mexican captain's fault. I suspect we will see some blather from Trump about how unsafe Mexican navy ships won't be allowed in US ports any more, but the Trump administration lies all the time about everything, so I don't think we should trust what they say.
https://gothamist.com/news/sailing-...-bridge-damage-still-being-assessed-nypd-says Lost power. City officials said the ship, the Cuauhtemoc, struck the bridge shortly before 8:30 p.m. after losing power. Its two tall masts snapped off when it made impact with the 140-year old suspension bridge as drivers sped by in either direction, according to multiple videos of the incident. In one video of the incident, crew members can be seen hanging onto ropes after the masts were severed.
Side note on Cuauhtemoc. He's a corrupt AF politician now https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/mexico-politics-blanco/