Baltimore:
The pilot of a cargo ship that struck a highway bridge in the Port of Baltimore had radioed for help from a tugboat minutes earlier and reported a power outage, federal safety officials said Wednesday, citing audio from the ship’s “black box” data recorder.
The head of the National Transportation Safety Board also said the Francis Scott Key Bridge, built in 1976, lacks the structural engineering redundancy common in new bridges, making it more susceptible to catastrophic collapse.
New insights into the deadly disaster emerged a day after the massive Singapore-flagged container ship Daly, sailing from the Port of Baltimore to Sri Lanka, reported losing power and the ability to maneuver before crashing into the bridge’s support towers.
The impact caused much of the bridge to immediately collapse into the mouth of the Patapsco River, blocking the shipping channel and forcing the indefinite closure of the Port of Baltimore, one of the busiest ports on the U.S. East Coast.
Divers on Wednesday recovered two of six missing workers who were thrown into the water when a bridge collapsed, officials said Wednesday.
Maryland State Police Capt. Roland Butler said a red pickup truck containing the bodies of two men was found in about 25 feet (7.62 m) of water near the middle of the collapsed bridge.
He also said authorities had suspended efforts to recover more bodies from the deep sea because of increasingly dangerous conditions at the wreck-strewn port. Butler said sonar images showed there were more underwater vehicles “encased” in debris from the sunken bridge, making it difficult to reach.
The bodies of two men found Wednesday were identified as Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, 35, of Baltimore, Mexico; and Dorian Roniel Cass Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, 26, from nearby Dundalk, Guatemala.
Four other workers on the crew filling potholes in the bridge’s pavement remain missing and are presumed dead. The six also included immigrants from Honduras and El Salvador, officials said.
Rescuers pulled two workers from the water on Tuesday, one of whom was taken to hospital.
The economic impact could be staggering. The port handles more automobiles and farm equipment than any other port in the country, as well as containerized freight and bulk cargo from sugar to coal.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the 8,000 jobs are “directly related” to port operations, which generate $2 million in wages per day.
Still, economists and logistics experts are skeptical that the port closures will trigger a major U.S. supply chain crisis or a sharp rise in commodity prices because rival shipping hubs on the East Coast have ample capacity.
The collapse, which occurred at 1:30 a.m., also caused a traffic quagmire in Baltimore and surrounding areas.
Interview survivors
An NTSB team boarded the idled freighter early Wednesday and began interviewing the ship’s two pilots and the 21 civilian crew members who remained on board, said Safety Board Chairwoman Jennifer Johnson. Homendy said.
Investigators have also begun reviewing information collected from the ship’s voyage data recorder, including radio communications between the pilot and authorities ashore leading up to the disaster.
Minutes before the accident, the pilot was heard calling for tug assistance, the first sign port officials were in distress, and later radio reports said the ship had lost all power, National Transportation Safety Board officials said at a news conference Wednesday. , approaching the bridge. night.
Video footage of the incident shows the ship’s lights flickering, then briefly coming back on before going out again.
Homendy said the recorder data was “consistent with an outage,” but that an actual outage had not yet been confirmed.
The recorders also received commands from the crew to drop anchor, possibly to slow the vessel.
Safety board investigator Marcel Muise said data showed the Dali, about three football fields long, packed with containers, was traveling at 8 miles per hour (12.8 kilometers per hour) when it hit the bridge abutment.
Homendy noted that while the bridge was deemed to be in “satisfactory” condition during its most recent inspection in 2023, it was built in such a way that the failure of one structural member “could cause a portion of the bridge or the entire bridge to collapse.”
On Wednesday, more details of the last-minute efforts to save lives emerged in an open-source recording of an emergency radio chat as authorities were alerted that the Dali cargo ship was heading out of control toward the Key Bridge.
“All traffic on the Key Bridge is suspended. There is a boat approaching and has just lost its direction,” someone said over the police radio.
While some were heard discussing next steps, including reminding all staff to get off the bridge, one person broke through and said: “The whole bridge has collapsed!” The audio was carried by the public streaming service Broadcastify.
U.S. Coast Guard Lieutenant General Peter Gautier said at a White House press conference that the U.S. Coast Guard’s top priority is to restore shipping lanes, stabilize and rescue damaged ships.
Gautier said 56 of the 4,700 cargo containers on the ship contained hazardous materials but did not pose a risk to the public. When the accident occurred, two containers fell into the sea, but there were no hazardous materials inside. Gautier added that the ship was carrying more than 1.5 million gallons of fuel.
Homendy said some hazmat containers on the ship had been damaged and there was a sheen on the water.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
