From the news....
Six presumed dead after cargo ship crash levels Baltimore bridge
Mar 26 2024
By nightfall, the desperate search for six people who were working on the bridge and vanished when it fell apart had become a grim search for bodies.
“We do not believe that we’re going to find any of these individuals still alive,” Coast Guard Rear Admiral Shannon N. Gilreath said.
Jeffrey Pritzker, executive vice president of Brawner Builders, said earlier that one of his workers had survived. He did not release their names.
Up until then, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore had held out hope that the missing people might be found even as law enforcement warned that the frigid water and the fact that there had been no sign of them since 1:30 a.m. when the ship struck Francis Scott Key Bridge.
The tragic chain of events began early Tuesday when 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 8 knots, which is about 9 mph.
Moore declared a state of emergency while rescue crews using sonar detected at least five vehicles in the frigid 50-foot-deep water: three passenger cars, a cement truck and another vehicle of some kind. Authorities do not believe anyone was inside the vehicles.
Investigators quickly concluded that it was an accident and not an act of terrorism.
The Dali is operated and managed by Synergy Group. In a statement, the company said that two port pilots were at the helm during Tuesday's crash and that all 22 crew members onboard were accounted for.
The Dali was chartered by the Danish shipping giant Maersk, which said it would have no choice but to send its ships to other nearby ports with the Port of Baltimore closed.
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.
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 strike. The ship did not sink, and its lights remained on.
Investigators said in a timeline that the Dali's lights suddenly shut off four minutes earlier before they came back on and that 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 flickered again.
Source
CNN
Search pauses after 2 bodies found: Two construction workers were found trapped in a red pickup in the Patapsco River at the middle of the collapsed bridge, according to the Maryland State Police.
Search efforts have been paused for the four other workers who are presumed dead, because additional vehicles are encased in concrete and other debris, making it unsafe for divers, Superintendent Col. Roland L. Butler said.
Once salvage operations clear the debris, divers will search for more remains, he said. The workers were believed to be mending potholes on the bridge when it fell, officials said.
Timeline
According to a timeline provided Wednesday by the NTSB, alarms on the ship blared just before 1:25 a.m. ET Tuesday as the ship moved through the channel as it left the port. About that time, the voyage data recorder ceased documenting things like audio, GPS positions and speed. (Video available before the NTSB released its timeline shows the ship’s lights going out at 1:24 a.m., before turning back on, and then flickering off and on again between 1:26 a.m. and 1:27 a.m.)
The data recording resumed at 1:26:02 a.m. – about 63 seconds after the alarms started – and the pilot could be heard issuing steering commands to the crew, according to the NTSB timeline.
At 1:26:39 a.m., the pilot sent out a radio call for help from tugboats, which typically help ships in earlier stages of leaving port. About the same time, a pilot association dispatcher phoned the Maryland Transportation Authority duty officer regarding the ship’s lights blacking out, according to the NTSB.
At 1:27:04 a.m., the pilot ordered for one anchor to be dropped and gave additional steering commands.
The pilot radioed just a short time later that the ship had lost power and was closing in on the bridge. A duty officer for the transportation authority, using radio, ordered other transportation authority officers to shut down traffic to the bridge – those officers were already on site because construction work was happening there, the NTSB said.
At 1:29:33 a.m., the ship’s recorder captured sounds consistent with the vessel striking the bridge, the NTSB said. Six seconds later, the pilot reported to the Coast Guard by radio that the bridge was down, the NTSB said.
Source
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