The giant container ship that struck and downed the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore in the early hours of March 26 remains pinned under the twisted remains of the bridge. Officials have outlined plans for their effort to recover the bodies of victims, free the vessel, dismantle the wreckage and reopen the city’s port as quickly as possible.
They have begun to clean up the debris to clear the channel to one of the nation’s busiest ports, and so far have removed a 200-ton piece of the bridge, officials said. As part of the operation, officials brought in a crane capable of lifting 1,000 tons.
On another front, federal investigators said that they were interviewing key crew members and examining hours of data recordings. But the investigation into the ship crash could take years, they said.
The bridge is a part of Interstate 695 and a critical transportation link on the East Coast. The disaster has become America’s deadliest bridge collapse in more than a decade.
Six construction workers went missing in the collapse, and two of their bodies were recovered from the river on March 27. The four others were very likely encased in fallen steel and concrete, and are presumed dead, the authorities said.
Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland and the F.B.I. said there was no credible evidence of a terrorist attack.
Here’s what we know.
Why did the ship hit the bridge?
It’s not yet clear, and investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board boarded the ship on the night of March 26 to gather documentation. They obtained data from the voyage data recorder, which is essentially the black box. That has been sent to a lab to help the authorities develop a timeline of events that led up to the crash.
The 985-foot-long cargo vessel, called the Dali, was leaving the Port of Baltimore when it had a “complete blackout” that knocked out power to the engine and the navigation equipment, an industry official said. The ship issued a mayday call just before hitting a critical component of the bridge, known as a pylon or pier.
Radio traffic from emergency workers suggested that the crew was struggling to steer the ship, according to audio published by Broadcastify. It was traveling at about nine miles per hour, officials said, which is typical in that zone.
Audio from a Maryland Transportation Authority police channel showed that the mayday call had allowed officers a few precious minutes to close the bridge to traffic. The effort to rapidly shut down traffic probably prevented more cars from being on the bridge during the collapse and saved lives, officials said.
Baltimore harbor pilots were directing the ship at the time of the crash, as is customary when vessels enter ports or canals, according to a joint statement from the ship’s owner and manager. Two tugboats helped the ship steer out of the terminal but then returned to the port for their next ship assignment, port officials said.
Governor Moore said that the bridge was fully up to code and that the collapse did not appear to be the result of a structural issue.
What do we know about the victims?
The two victims recovered on March 27 were identified as Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, 35, of Baltimore, and Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, 26, of Dundalk, Md. Mr. Fuentes was from Mexico, and Mr. Cabrera from Guatemala.
Jose López, a father of two who had emigrated from Guatemala nearly two decades ago and had worked in road and bridge repairs for the past two years, was also among the victims, his family said. But his body has not been recovered.
Divers can no longer reach the area where they believe more vehicles — and victims — remain, so officials have moved to a cleanup operation, removing debris. Once that is complete and vehicles are accessible, divers will return to search for bodies, the police said.
One of the workers still missing is a Honduran citizen, Maynor Yasir Suazo Sandoval, in his 30s, who had been living in the United States for nearly two decades, according to Honduras’s migrant protection service. A nonprofit organization that provides services to the immigrant community in Baltimore identified another missing worker as Miguel Luna, a father of three from El Salvador in his 40s.
What about the ship and its crew?
The Dali is registered in Singapore and was headed for Colombo, Sri Lanka, according to MarineTraffic, a maritime data platform. It was carrying 4,700 shipping containers, according to Synergy Marine, its manager and operator.
The ship, which remains in the narrow shipping lane, has 1.5 million gallons of fuel and lubricant oil on board, said Vice Adm. Peter Gautier, the deputy commandant for operations for the Coast Guard, adding that 56 of the 4,700 containers still on the ship contained hazardous materials. “There is no threat to the public from the hazardous materials on board,” he said.
An inspection of the ship last year at a port in Chile reported that the vessel had a deficiency related to a set of gauges. But they were changed before the ship departed, an official said.
The ship’s 21 crew members — most of whom are Indian citizens — and the two pilots were accounted for, and there were no injuries among those on the ship.
The crew members have remained on board the ship. It is normal for crew members to stay on damaged ships because they must ensure that the crashed vessel does not pose a further danger.
The Dali crew members are most likely working to maintain the ship on a grueling schedule, similar to the one they would be on out at sea. While keeping the ship operable, they are also answering a deluge of questions from officials investigating the catastrophe.
Chris James, who works for a consulting firm assisting Synergy Marine, said crew members had ample supplies of food and water, as well as plenty of fuel to keep the generators going. Once the National Transportation Safety Board and Coast Guard complete their investigations, “we’ll look at potentially swapping the crew out and getting them home,” Mr. James said.
Some have had brief contact with the crew members, sending them letters of support, care packages with candy and home-baked muffins, and Wi-Fi hot spots. “We’re here to support you,” one letter read.
What will the bridge cleanup and recovery process look like?
Construction of the bridge started in 1972, and it was completed in March 1977. The bridge spanned 1.6 miles over the Patapsco River, but the crossing’s overall structure, including its connecting approaches, was almost 11 miles long. It carried about 35 million vehicles annually.
For nearly a week after the collapse, vessel traffic was entirely shut down, and about a dozen ships were stuck in the port, which employs 8,000 people.
Clearing of the debris is likely to be completed in a matter of weeks, engineering and salvage experts say.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will fully cover the costs of clearing the channel, and the Biden administration said it was allocating $60 million in emergency federal highway funds to rebuilding the bridge.
The cleanup operation is expected to be complex and potentially dangerous. Divers are having to battle swift currents and low visibility while they cut the metal and concrete structures into more manageable pieces that can be removed.
“This is daunting; this is complicated,” Governor Moore said of the process. He has not yet given a specific timeline on the cleanup.
The Army corps brought in a crane capable of lifting 1,000 tons to help authorities pull the debris out of the water. Officials may also use sonar technology to map the twisted metal and asphalt that plunged to the bottom of the river.
A week after the collapse, two temporary channels had been cleared and opened — one with a depth of 11 feet and another with a depth of 14 feet — to allow some small barges and other vessels to come and go from the port. But given that the main channel was 50 feet deep, the governor said, it will be a long time before commercial traffic returns to the port at its historical scale and pace.
The work of reconstructing the bridge could take several years, engineers say.
What remains standing of the bridge will have to be evaluated for its structural soundness. Then, Maryland transportation officials will need to evaluate whether to build a larger roadway that can carry more vehicles, and whether to raise the bridge’s height above the water to accommodate larger ships passing under it.
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