ysabetwordsmith | Suez Canal

You're viewing

ysabetwordsmith's journal
Create a Dreamwidth Account Learn More

Reload page in style: site light

ysabetwordsmith

Cheerful thought for the day: at least you're not the guy who got his boat stuck in the Suez Canal.

Back when canals were built, they came with shipping guidelines about how heavy, deep, wide, or long a ship could be in order to travel through it. Ideally, you don't want a ship big enough to block traffic if it gets stuck. Trouble is, denying ships that passage is annoying and makes their route a lot longer and costlier. So people began to ... modify the rules. Just a little. Then a little more. Sometimes it even made sense, as technology was upgraded to make the locks better. Other times they just did it because they wanted that faster route. Which leads to a big boat getting stuck and blocking the route for everyone.

Every engineer ever: "I told you so."

Here's a wild idea: might could be somebody should check the Panama Canal against its original specs, infrastructure upgrades, and current shipping.

Current Mood: amused
Crossposts: https://ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com/6143411.html

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From: (Anonymous)

[Sarcasm] Isn't it /soooooo fun/ when people ignore your saying "Hey I think there's a problem here"...and then several months to years later they are either annoyed by the problem or your self-implemented solution to the problem?

At least I am not responsible for the boat...not my circus, not my problem.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

An epic example is Washington, where people now know that the Cascadian Subduction Zone sometimes produces extremely violent earthquakes and tidal waves. It would be unfeasible to retrofit everything in the states which is not earthquake-resistant. But they didn't even say "No more building in the kill zone, and let's immediately start moving vulnerable people to safer places." So there are schools, hospitals, hotels, retirement homes, etc. all in the kill zone. A healthy adult would have a hard time making it out of some areas, and definitely not make it out of others, if able to respond immediately to an alarm. Elders, children, the disabled, anyone who can't outrun a wave: doomed. If the fault rips at night when people are sleeping, there will be few survivors of any kind. The casualties could be greatly reduced, but people can't be arsed to do it. There will be all sorts of blaming after the fact.

Me, I'm on team Be Prepared. And I'll sit back and say, "I fucking told you so."

I really feel sorry for the consultants. Developers are required to "consult" before building things -- but not required to follow any recommendations. They waste a few hours in a meeting, say, "Okay, we've consulted," then go do whatever they want. I really hope the consultants keep records so that, after the fact, they can hand over files and say, "Oh yes, I told them not to build there because it would kill people in an earthquake/tsunami situation. It was all quite predictable."

From: (Anonymous)

>>There will be all sorts of blaming after the fact.<<

If you can't stop 'em from being stupid a) plan your life around their stupidity and b) have a plan for what to do afterwards. Whether its rescues, housing refugees, or restocking the House (and Senate).

>>Me, I'm on team Be Prepared. And I'll sit back and say, "I fucking told you so."<<

About 4ish, 5ish years back, from a relative: "You really shouldn't worry so much about all this emergency preparedness stuff, it's just stressing you out."

Last spring, rummaging variously through my emergency kit, first aid kit, and pack-rat salvaged sewing supplies while inner-monologuing to myself: "Ridiculous they said? I told you so! Bwahaha!"

And I actually had enough sewing stuff to make things to share (both with a relative who cannot sew, and a local charity program.)

>>I really hope the consultants keep records so that, after the fact, they can hand over files and say, "Oh yes, I told them not to build there because it would kill people in an earthquake/tsunami situation. It was all quite predictable."<<

Always keep backups if your think its gonna implode and land on you.

I've occasionally thought of the concept of (what I call) "deadman papers," i.e. if medical malpractice, hight drug costs, etc end up killing you...be sure it is all documented and be sure someone can send it to the media. Can also be generalized to things like domestic violence, deporting someone to a death zone, sexual harrasment, etc.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

Based on what I have seen of the court system vs. cost analyses of PR disasters, it seems that releasing evidence to the court of public opinion tends to generate higher penalties than a court of law.

From: (Anonymous)

Th e guv'ment, including the judiciary, has a particular set of priorities: law and order, safety (real or percieved) of citizens, reducing the chance of anarchistic mayhem, enforcing certain social norms and maintaining power.

Individual people often prioritize percieved advantage to they and theirs...but you also occasionally get oddballs like draft resisters, the LSGM*, most good allies (to whomever), and so on.

*And they made a movie about it:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/film/2014/aug/31/pride-film-gay-activists-miners-strike-interview

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kZfFvsKDuUU

From:

kelly_holden

Or building on the Hawkesbury River's flood plain, and then wondering why all the suburbs are underwater. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_2021_Australian_floods#Sydney . Local governments were told to keep low-lying land for parks and things, but none of them listened, because houseses worth many moneys

From:

ysabetwordsmith

In Louisiana, rich people live on high ground while poor people live on floodplains. That's a problem. >_<

I'm also not in favor of rebuilding on places that have burned down or flooded more than once. "Don't build in fire chimneys" would be a good way to reduce costs and casualties from wildfires, while preserving more land for wildlife. If you leave a river with open floodplains, marshes, oxbows, etc. then it will tend to fill those in a flood rather than running into town like what happens if you hem it in too much. In fact if you catch the runoff from town and pipe it through a marsh filter, you can then let that clean water into the river to keep the water levels up.

From:

krait

I'm not a container ship pilot, but it seems to me that if I were operating a large vessel and was suddenly heading into 40-knot winds and sandstorm visibility, I might... stop moving... and secure the vessel firmly in place... until the weather was navigable again? (And warn the traffic behind and ahead of me.)

From:

ysabetwordsmith

That seems logical. I don't know the ship's capabilities, though. How much steering does it have? Probably not a lot, given the phrase "steers like a barge." How much braking? No idea, but the sheer momentum of all that mass would make for a difficult and lengthy braking process.

Hence why it is a good idea to limit the size/mass of ships traveling through tight spaces like a canal. You need the stopping range to be short enough to avoid hazards; the more mass, the longer it gets. Frex, a train can take a mile to stop.

From:

krait

I don't know them, either, but I feel that the pilot ought to! Perhaps the storm came up too fast or shifted direction unpredictably, so that the pilot wasn't warned in time to stop?

And yes, there should definitely be a "nothing longer than the canal is wide" rule... :D

From: (Anonymous)

We would also run into the Catch-22 of retail: anything that goes wrong is your fault. In this case? Stop the barge, delay the shipment any annoy everyone = your fault. Similarly, running the ship aground = your fault.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

One problem is clearly much smaller than the others.

Companies whose structure blames people for all possible outcomes deserve the clusterfuck they get when people try to avoid getting in trouble and wind up making a small problem much bigger.

From:

krait

I found this fascinating series of tweets that clarifies the pilot situation somewhat! It seems the Ever Given was being piloted by a (mandatory) government-selected Suez Canal Pilot, which Evergreen would have paid for but which wasn't their own employee. That adds a lot of layers to the Tree Of Decisions involved!

From:

ysabetwordsmith

A disadvantage of this system would be the pilot knowing the canal but not the individual boat or cargo.

From:

squirrelitude

Anyone who takes preventive measures (that work) is clearly a fool, since then the disaster doesn't happen and there's nothing to point to to say "I told you so". :-P

(Except when you can point to someone else who didn't take those measures, I guess.)

From:

eller

Not sure it's an engineering problem alone - the guy who got his boat stuck in the Suez Canal is, apparently, also the guy who drew a penis pic with his boat, so this might be a case of, ahem, less-than-responsible navigation...

From:

ysabetwordsmith

Do you think he's ... compensating for something?

Dick graffiti is approximately as old as humanity, but there's a time and place for that, and a tight canal is not it. Despite the fact that tight canals might excite some people.

From:

eller

Compensating, definitely. :D At least this is an entertaining boat accident.

From: (Anonymous)

>>Dick graffiti is approximately as old as humanity,...<<

I've always wondered, why dick graffiti? You don't see women doodling boobs and vaginas on everything and snickering about it. (Nor do you usually see people drawing butts on stuff...copier shenanigans aside.)

FYI: I do realize that there is 'art of the female form' in prehistoric figurines, fine art galleries, and naughty tattoos, but they all seem to be more about the Male Gaze and oogling women than about "teeheehee, I drew naughty things" or "yo, I was here," like dick graffiti. (And yeah the prehistoric ones may have also had some religious significance, we aren't really sure...)

From:

ysabetwordsmith

The oldest vulva imagery is religious iconography, from back when everyone remembered where they came from.

I suspect that human males draw dicks on things as a substitute for peeing on them like most male animals do.

From: (Anonymous)

Well, that makes as much sense as anything else.

Although, that means the female equivalent [at least when used to evict annoying males] would be very loudly discussing 'girl stuff'... or possibly leaving 'girl stuff' laying out. LOL.

(Fortunately, anyone with the fortitude to ignore that would usually also have the manners to dissapear for a few minutes when requested.)

From:

ysabetwordsmith

Women definitely do that. It ranges from topics men typically find boring (makeup, chick flicks) to things men typically find squicky (menstruation, childbirth).

From:

ng_moonmoth

Don't know about compensating, but it appears to me that he wanted to proclaim his alignment before he went through the canal. Nothing like using a ship the size of the Empire State Building to draw a picture of how big a dick you are, I guess.

I got some deeper pointers into how this is likely to play out. Apparently it may not, as I had originally assumed, be the company whose name is on the ship in big letters which is going to get stuck. Their line of work is leasing out the ships they own to other companies. Haven't found out who supplies the crew, but that company is the chum in this operation. The sharks are the companies that practice the time-honored trade of marine insurance, and are intent on recovering the payouts they are going to have to make from the company that thought the guy they picked was a good pilot for the run. Current estimates for the size of the feeding frenzy are a decent nine-digit sum, growing daily.

Some years from now, a reinsurer or two is going to be out a goodly bit of cash. And some shipping company is either going to be in receivership or find it either difficult or very expensive to insure their cargo runs. Maybe we'll still be alive to see it. And, as usual, the lawyers are the ones who are guaranteed to come out ahead on the deal.

From:

kelly_holden

Ever Given was still on the Red Sea when the penis was drawn, and according to a couple of threads I've seen on Tumblr, the Suez Canal people make you hire a pilot (in the 'boat driver' sense) from them for the journey, so whoever was holding the wheel for the dick drawing wasn't the person holding the wheel for the accident.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

While I can see the logic of wanting experienced canal pilots, if that's what the Suez Canal management is doing, then they have nobody to blame but themselves. They won't be able to sue the boat company or outside pilot service for damages.

From:

ng_moonmoth

The Twitter thread referenced by

krait above has a comprehensive review of the breakdown here. To summarize from the thread:

Yes, the Canal requires one of their pilots to guide a vessel through. No, that person does not "hold the wheel"; operation of the vessel remains with its captain. The pilot says "go here, this fast", and the captain goes there, that fast. But can, and sometimes does, override the pilot for the safety of the vessel and its crew. Getting good enough to operate even a decent-sized ship safely is very complex; there's no such thing as "good enough to operate any big ship", so that division of labor makes sense.

Seen elsewhere: The ship was at an anchorage, and then leaving for its canal transit, when the "dick pic" course was followed. My own interpretation: the pilot who was going to give directions was in charge at that point, and might have wanted to gain some awareness of how this specific ship, with this specific cargo, maneuvered. Going around in a circle, and mixing in a couple of straight runs, would align with that thought. Don't know whether the pilot was busy having fun, but I'd guess the captain was too busy running the ship to notice.

From:

siliconshaman

They've been saying for years the Suez canal needed widening, and keep putting it off even though it would be fairly straight forward. [miles of desert either side, sea level so no locks etc.]

The Panama canal would be a nightmare to upgrade, you'd need to literally move mountains... and there is only scant inches of clearance either side for quite a lot of modern vessels. I think it was calculated it would be easier to dig a new sea level canal rather than upgrade the existing one... even though that would mean tripling the length of the route the canal took. [in the sixties the US army corps of engineers came up with a plan to use nuclear bombs to make the canal, it would be a lot faster that way they said... that was one of the least unfeasible plans]

Still, they'd going to be reassessing those rules now, it's costing everyone involved roughly $2 billion a day in lost revenue and the prediction is that the Ever Garden is going to be stuck there for weeks probably.

Edited Date: 2021-03-26 01:51 am (UTC)

From:

kengr

It's generally agreed that a sea level canal would be a *really* bad idea. Mostly because of ecological effects as various plants and fish transited the canal.

At least with the current canal, the fresh water in the middle kills off a lot of hitchhikers.

The nuclear option for digging a new canal isn't as bad as it sounds. The idea was to use underground blasts and have the subsidence "craters" from the blast cavities collapsing form the canal.

So almost all the radioactives would be trapped in the melt pool at the bottom of the cavity,

So not as crazy as it sounds.

From: (Anonymous)

I am skeptical of any plan that involves the words 'radioactive craters.'

Plus it might encourage the people who think we should be nuking hurricanes:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/08/26/weather/hurricane-nuclear-bomb-noaa-wxc-trnd/index.html

From:

ysabetwordsmith

My safety standards and those of mainstream society are parsecs apart. I don't approve of using most radioactive technology on a planet with a biosphere and/or people. Accidents are too easy and too dangerous.

I also don't consider water potable if it kills fish.

From: (Anonymous)

I'm about ready to give up on society and all it's ridiculous double standards. [Headdesk.]

From:

ysabetwordsmith

I agree. I'm entirely out of patience with society. I still care about individual species, and the biosphere, but society has veered so far from me that I can barely reach this dimension anymore.

From: (Anonymous)

Would Panama even /want/ to upgrade? I seem to recall a bit of strongarming the last time someone got the bright idea to build a canal there...and that'll be harder to repeat in the Age of Social Media.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

I imagine they would prefer to avoid this kind of clusterfuck, and their canal is just as vulnerable to that.

Is it worth the hassle and expense of widening the canal? Or would they rather revise shipping guidelines? Up to them, but I bet the Suez folks are wishing they'd thought ahead.

From: (Anonymous)

Well, I was thinking more "build a new canal."

With the existing one, an audit might make sense, if they have the $ and political clout to do it.

If possible, it might also be a convenient time to survey what is /near/ the canal, on the off chance that it could possibly be expanded in the future.

Now if they really wanted to plan ahead, they could slowly buy up land a bit at a time as it becomes availible and convert it into parks or something while waiting to get enough to expand the canal proper. But I seriously doubt they are going to have the time/patience/resources to do that.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

>> Well, I was thinking more "build a new canal." <<

Probably not feasible, they had a hard enough time building that one across the shortest route.

>> With the existing one, an audit might make sense, if they have the $ and political clout to do it. <<

They can either invest in that, or deal with a blockage somewhere down the line.

>> If possible, it might also be a convenient time to survey what is /near/ the canal, on the off chance that it could possibly be expanded in the future.

Now if they really wanted to plan ahead, they could slowly buy up land a bit at a time as it becomes availible and convert it into parks or something while waiting to get enough to expand the canal proper. But I seriously doubt they are going to have the time/patience/resources to do that.<<

Well, that's what I'd do, but then I also would've done that at the beginning. You always want clearance on those big transit routes in case you need to expand. Hence why railroads get all that right-of-way.

From:

I'm just having fun because this is a stupid problem in which no one is going to die or get seriously injured (excepting those resulting from delayed medical shipments)

also, the memes are good

From:

Or maybe people should really stop building bigger and bigger floating container containers!

From:

ysabetwordsmith

There's nothing wrong with building bigger containers or bigger ships. The ocean is plenty wide enough to hold them. The problem is when people try to put bigger things through places that were designed for smaller things.

Old roads and bridges often have weight limits that don't always allow for modern trucks.

Canals were designed for ships in a certain size range. People have just been fudging that, and now it bit them on the ass that yes there were reasons for those rules.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Profile

ysabetwordsmith

April 2026

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30

Links

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

(Anonymous) - (no subject)
krait - (no subject)
eller - (no subject)
siliconshaman - (no subject)
starbit - (no subject)
cmcmck - (no subject)

Active Entries

Style Credit

Base style: Transmogrified by Yvonne
Theme: New Ocean by dancing_serpent

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags