BALTIMORE — A major Baltimore bridge collapsed like a house of cards early Tuesday morning after it was struck by a container ship, sending several vehicles plunging into the dark water below, sparking an intense search for survivors and shutting down one of the nation’s busiest ports.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore declared a state of emergency and said the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge was most likely the result of an accident and not an act of terrorism.
“Our state is in shock,” the governor said.
Follow live updates here
Moore said the cargo ship Dali notified authorities that it had lost power and issued a mayday moments before the 984-foot vessel slammed into a bridge support at a speed of eight knots, which is about nine miles per hour.
Meanwhile, rescue crews using sonar detected at least five vehicles in the frigid 50-foot-deep water, including three passengers cars, a cement truck and another vehicle of some kind, Moore said. Authorities do not believe anyone was inside the vehicles.
An unknown number of workers were doing repairs on the bridge when the ship hit a support pillar, and at least six people were still believed to be missing, Moore said.
“This is still, very much, a search and rescue mission,” he said during an afternoon news conference flanked by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md.
An ‘active search-and-rescue posture’
Earlier, two workers were rescued from the water, Baltimore Fire Chief James Wallace said.
One was in good condition and refused treatment, Wallace said. The other was seriously injured and was being treated in a trauma center.
Moore said there might be drivers in the water were it not for the “folks” who, upon hearing the mayday, blocked off the bridge and kept other cars from crossing.
“These people are heroes,” Moore said. “They saved lives. They saved lives.”
Nearly eight years ago, the Dali was involved in another collision. In July 2016, the ship collided with a quay at the Port of Antwerp-Bruges in Belgium, damaging the quay.
The nautical commission investigated the accident, but the details of the probe were not immediately clear Tuesday.
The Dali is operated and managed by a company called Synergy Group. In a statement, the company said two port pilots were at the helm of the Dali at the time of Tuesday’s crash and that all 22 crew members onboard were accounted for.
The bridge, which is about a mile-and-a-half long and carries Interstate 695 over the Patapsco River southeast of Baltimore, was “fully up to code,” Moore said.
A 24-person team of National Transportation Safety Board investigators was already at the crash site.
NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said that her agency will lead the investigation into the cause of the bridge collapse. She said a data recorder on board the ship could provide more information about what happened.
“But right now we’re focusing on the people, on the families,” she said. “The rest can wait.”
President Joe Biden vowed to rebuild the bridge and send federal funds.
“This is going to take some time,” Biden warned. “The people of Baltimore can count on us though to stick with them, at every step of the way, till the port is reopened and the bridge is rebuilt.”
Speaking in Baltimore, Buttigieg echoed the president’s promise.
“This is no ordinary bridge,” he said. “This is one of the cathedrals of American infrastructure.”
But Buttigieg warned replacing the bridge and reopening the port will take time, cost money, and could affect supply chains.
The Port of Baltimore is the 11th largest in the U.S. and the busiest port for car imports and exports, handling more than 750,000 vehicles in 2023 alone, according to data from the Maryland Port Administration.
The Dali was chartered by Danish shipping giant Maersk, which said it will have no choice but to send its ships to other nearby ports with the Port of Baltimore closed.
Writer David Simon, a champion of Baltimore who set his TV crime drama “The Wire” on the streets of the city he once covered as a reporter, warned online that the people who will suffer the most are those whose livelihoods depend on the port.
“Thinking first of the people on the bridge,” Simon posted on X. “But the mind wanders to a port city strangling. All the people who rely on ships in and out.”
Timeline of crash
Dramatic video captured the moment at 1:28 a.m. Tuesday when the Dali struck a support and sent the bridge tumbling into the water. A livestream showed cars and trucks on the bridge just before the collision. The ship did not sink and its lights remained on.
Investigators, in a timeline, said the Dali’s lights suddenly shut off four minutes earlier before coming back on and then, at 1:25 a.m. dark black smoke began billowing from the ship’s chimney.
A minute later, at 1:26 a.m., the ship appeared to turn. And in the minutes before it slammed into the support, the lights flicked off and on again.
Maryland Department of Transportation Secretary Paul Wiedefeld said the workers on the bridge were repairing concrete ducts when the ship crashed into the structure.
They were employed by Brawner Builders Inc. And at least seven workers were pouring concrete to fix potholes on the roadway on the bridge directly above where the ship hit, a foreman named James Krutzfeldt said.
Krutzfeldt, who was not working on that job, said one of the missing is another foreman whom he considers his mentor and “work dad.”
“I’m still kind of in shock,” he said.
Earlier, the U.S. Coast Guard said it had received a report that a “motor vessel made impact with the bridge” and confirmed it was the Dali, a container ship sailing under a Singaporean flag that was heading for Sri Lanka.
Bobby Haines, who lives in Dundalk in Baltimore County, said he felt the impact of the bridge collapse from his house nearby.
“I woke up at 1:30 this morning and my house shook and I was freaking out,” he said. “I thought it was an earthquake and to find out it was a bridge is really, really scary.”
Families of bridge workers wait for updates
A group of people who said they were relatives of the Brawner construction workers gathered at a Royal Farms convenience store near the entrance of the bridge. Together, they waited for word of their missing loved ones.
Marian Del Carmen Castellon told Telemundo her 49-year-old husband, Miguel Luna, is among the missing.
“They only tell us that we have to wait and that they can’t give us information,” she said.
Asked how she was holding up, Castellon said, “Devastated, devastated because our heart is broken, because we don’t know how they have been rescued yet. We are just waiting for the news.”
Luna’s co-worker Jesús Campos said he felt crushed, too.
“It hurts my heart to see what is happening. We are human beings and they are my folks,” he said.
Campos told The Baltimore Banner that the missing men are from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico.
Some of the construction workers who still haven’t been found recently had babies, Earl Schneider, a structural foreman with the company, said.
“I know everybody on that crew personally,” Schneider told NBC News. “They’re all great people. It’s tough. It’s been a rough morning.”
Earlier, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott urged his constituents to pray for the missing workers — and the first responders struggling to locate them.
“This is an unthinkable tragedy,” Scott said.
‘A long road in front of us’
Built in 1977 and referred to locally as the Key Bridge, the structure was later named after the author of the American national anthem.
The bridge is more than 8,500 feet long, or 1.2 miles. Its main section spans 1,200 feet and was one of the longest continuous truss bridges in the world upon its completion, according to the National Steel Bridge Alliance.
About 31,000 vehicles a day use the bridge, which equals 11.3 million vehicles per year, according to the Maryland Transportation Authority.
The river and the Port of Baltimore are both key to the shipping industry on the East Coast, generating more than $3.3 billion a year and directly employing more than 15,000 people.
Asked what people in Baltimore can expect going forward, the state’s transportation secretary said it is too early to tell.
“Obviously we reached out to a number of engineering companies, so obviously we have a long road in front of us,” Wiedefeld said.
Julia Jester reported from Baltimore, Patrick Smith from London and Corky Siemaszko from New York City.
Credit: Source link
