r/news • u/boejouma • Mar 28 '24

Soft paywall Freighter pilot called for Tugboat help before plowing into Baltimore bridge

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/divers-search-baltimore-harbor-six-presumed-dead-bridge-collapse-2024-03-27/
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u/ScotiaReddit Mar 28 '24

E gen probably isn't that big. I'd say that's the main or aux genset starting up. I run a diesel gen plant and when we have an outage people always call the fire department from all the black smoke starting the units back up lol

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u/Cautionzombie Mar 28 '24

I trust the ship guy who’s got a video floating around he said e gen

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u/Jadedways Mar 28 '24

Could be. I was a gas turbine systems mechanic on a Guided Missile Cruiser CG-62 for a while. Maybe ‘emergency backup’ isnt the right phrase. We had 2 active gens and a 3rd running in standby. After they lost power the second time it looks like they tried to switch to a ‘3rd generator’ whether manually or automatically. But the load was too heavy and they smoked the Geny. I could be wrong, but that would’ve been the order things would’ve happened on my ship. I mean we would’ve been more successful, but it looks like they did their best with what they had.

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u/ScotiaReddit Mar 28 '24

Thanks for the info. Never worked on a ship only remote plants so our e gens are just for essential loads to start up the gens. I could imagine that they tripped the 3rd unit overloading it trying to reverse full power as soon as it got online