Posted on 03/27/2024 7:52:29 AM PDT by george76
“If I’m a company that gets my ships flagged by countries with few if any hiring regulations and my crew is made up of a random assortment of guys from impoverished Third World countries, then you bet I’m going to tout my crew’s diversity!
“
I have a neighbor who spend 10 years in the Merchant Marines and his stories are always about a rag-tag collection of functional to barely functional 3rd world crew getting just enough done to make it to the next port. And then there’d be a 50% turnover with new language barriers.
Can we please wait until the dust has settled and we can figure this out? Maybe DEI was the reason, maybe it was not. Let's see how the facts play out.
Sorry, that's a no-go.
Actually it's more fun to watch the utter ignorant chanting "DEI! DEI!" before the facts are known.
Enjoy!
You mean like if these DEI idiots put "Green" diesel in both generators that were NOT designed to handle that crud?
Actually it's more fun to watch the utter ignorant chanting "DEI! DEI!" before the facts are known.
Enjoy!
Sorry, how silly of me to suggest such a thing.
Now, for shedding light and truth on a problem, he’ll be called a racist, with full-throttle vitriol.
“ The bridge was not designed and built to withstand such an impact. Bollards could have been built to protect the support pilings, but for whatever reason - $ I’m sure - that was not done. Even if the Port Director is a DEI appointee and knows nothing about ports and shipping (and knowing Baltimore and Maryland politics, I’m sure that is the case), she wasn’t of the crew or piloting the ship.”
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Such protections could have been added AT ANY TIME even AFTER the bridge was opened almost half a century ago. Is there any critical bridge FORTIFICATION provision in Biden’s MASSIVE “infrastructure” bill or does that money go to windmills and similar misallocations of investment?
So the crew of a foreign cargo ship were DEI also? Amazing!
But was he navigating the ship at the time of the incident?
Haha!
While DEI has assuredly increased the rate of errors, and decreased quality - beyond the elevation of unqualified candidates to simply the distraction and irrelevant focus - I don’t really see that there are facts in evidence indicating this particular issue is from DEI.
Thanks for the additional insight. Without expertise I observed the same thing.
Would the engine going down typically kill *all* electrical immediately? I’d hope they’d at least have several minutes of battery supply for instrumentation and control.
What’re the chances this was just bad fuel into a marginally maintained engine?
Quite the contrary. Loss of electrical power would necessitate shutting down the main engine, as the lube oil pumps, cooling pumps, and scavenge air pumps are all electric motor driven.
I went up on the beach 16 years ago, so am not certain that procedures are still the same, but in my experience a ship would always have at least two generators up and paralleled before entering a port and whilst maneuvering within the port. As it would be a stretch to imagine both generator engines going down at once, I consider the possibility that the blackout might have been caused by malfunction in the switchgear, like weakened circuit breakers or thermal overloads.
Indeed, there is on board a bank of batteries that would immediately and automatically engage to supply emergency lighting, the gyro, navigation electronics, and radios, but would not be sufficient to power the steering pump AC motor.
RE: fuel, it is possible that the engine crew were switching the main engine over from MDO (marine diesel oil) to heavy oil, if the engine was already hot enough and the turbochargers were spooled up. However, the generator engines would not be affected because they continue to burn MDO.
Top to bottom there must be a merit-only process in place for hiring, promoting, assigning, unassigning, and terminating people on anything. As soon as “Merit-Only” is compromised then the organization is more susceptible to failures like occurred.
Personally I’m a believer that having Diversity is a very good thing. But it needs to be used for ENCOURAGING people in unrepresented groups to upskill and to seek opportunities for growth. It doesn’t mean they will get selected for every opportunity they try to get. Even when they fail on an interview they’ll have learned some lessons and be better able to try for future opportunities with better ability to succeed.
I'm not sure, other than government graft, why the estimates of rebridging the channel are so high. "Repairing" rather than "rebuilding" it should be the goal. Design of original bridge was fine, no need to redesign it. Large amount of the environmental impact statement regarding the prior bridge still holds. No rational need to repeat most of it. Seems like at most one support needs significant repairs. The two ends abutting the collapsed section may need some repair where that section pulled out of its connections. But otherwise the ends are fine. Fix those supports and lay new truss and roadway over the gap. Start prefabbing replacement bridge sections and move them into position as soon as the channel is cleared and the supports repaired.
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