As a giant cargo vessel was about to crash into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in the Port of Baltimore last year, a warning from a pilot aboard the ship gave the police enough time to clear the bridge of traffic, likely saving lives.
But investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board said in a hearing on Tuesday that the police never called the work crew that was on the bridge that night. If they had alerted an inspector with the crew, investigators said, the six workers who died after the ship hit the bridge would likely have had enough time to drive to safety.
This was one of the findings announced by N.T.S.B. investigators who have been examining the accident since March 26, 2024, when a 984-foot-long cargo vessel known as the Dali struck the bridge, sending thousands of tons of debris into the water, killing six men and bringing ship traffic into one of the nation’s busiest harbors to a standstill.
While the events leading up the crash — a series of power outages that left the Dali drifting uncontrollably toward the bridge — have been clear for more than a year, the circumstances surrounding those power outages have been the subject of deep scrutiny and high-stakes litigation.
Investigators said the sequences of events that led to the crash began with a single loose wire, which had been dislodged from a terminal block, triggering the first of two blackouts. This set in motion a frantic four minutes of power outages, backup system failures and feverish efforts by the members of the ship’s crew, culminating in a catastrophic collision.
“None of us should be here today,” said Jennifer Homendy, the chairwoman of the board in her opening statements at the hearing in Washington, D.C. “This tragedy should have never occurred. Lives should have never been lost. As with all accidents that we investigate this was preventable.”
Campbell Robertson reports for The Times on Delaware, the District of Columbia, Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia.
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