Questions swirl over the bridge’s collapse after a massive cargo ship slammed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge moments after losing power early on Tuesday.
As a spring tide rushed out of Baltimore harbor just after midnight on Tuesday, the hulking outlines of a cargo ship nearly three football fields long and stacked high with thousands of containers sliced through frigid waters toward the Francis Scott Key Bridge.
The vessel, the Dali, was a half-hour into its 27-day journey from Baltimore to Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Then the lights on the Dali went dark. The crew urgently reported to local authorities that they had lost power and propulsion. The ship bore down on the bridge.
In a scene captured from a livestreaming camera, the ship smashed into a pillar of the bridge with so much force that the massive southern and central spans of the bridge collapsed within seconds.
A highway repair crew was on the structure, working the night shift, filling potholes. At least eight members of the construction crew plunged into the 50-foot-deep Patapsco River below.
Six people were presumed dead as officials suspended the search-and-rescue effort on Tuesday night.
“Based on the length of time we’ve gone in this search, the extensive search efforts that we’ve put into it, the water temperature, that at this point we do not believe we are going to find any of these individuals still alive,” Coast Guard Rear Adm. Shannon Gilreath said.
Two construction workers were rescued from the water; one went to the hospital and was later released.
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Source: Elections - nytimes.com
