Baltimore Bridge Collapse: Divers Recover Two Bodies Of The Six Missing Workers From Harbor

Divers found the remains of two of the six workers missing since they were tossed into Baltimore Harbor from a highway bridge that collapsed into shipping lanes when a cargo ship collided into the structure.

On Wednesday, the bodies were pulled from the mouth of the Patapsco River a day after the massive container ship lost power and its ability to maneuver before plowing into a support pylon of the Francis Scott Key Bridge. Maryland State Police Colonel Roland Butler said a red pickup truck containing the bodies of the two men was found in about 7.62 meters of water near the mid-section of the fallen bridge.

He also said that authorities had suspended efforts to locate and retrieve more bodies from the depths because of increasingly treacherous conditions in the wreckage-strewn river. Butler said sonar images showed additional submerged vehicles “encased” in fallen bridge debris and superstructure, making them difficult to reach.  The two men whose bodies were recovered on Wednesday. Four more workers who were part of a crew filling potholes on the bridge’s road surface remained missing and presumed dead.

The six workers also included immigrants from Honduras and El Salvador, officials said. Rescuers pulled two workers from the water alive on Tuesday, and one was hospitalised. The collapse of the bridge forced an indefinite closure of the Port of Baltimore, one of the busiest on the U.S. Eastern Seaboard, handling more automobile and farm equipment freight than any other in the country. The Port of Baltimore handles more automobile freight than any other U.S. port – more than 750,000 vehicles in 2022, according to port data, as well as container and bulk cargo ranging from sugar to coal.

Earlier on Wednesday a team of federal investigators boarded the idled freighter, still anchored in the harbor channel with part of the mangled bridge splayed over its bow, to begin interviewing the ship’s 22 crew members, who remained aboard the vessel. In their first on-board visit to the ship late on Tuesday night, National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) personnel recovered a key piece of evidence they hope will help piece together a precise timeline of the accident – the vessel’s “black box” data recorder.

New details emerged on Wednesday of the intense efforts to save lives in the minutes before the steel bridge collapsed, from recordings of radio chatter by authorities after they were alerted that the cargo ship Dali was drifting out of control toward Key Bridge. “Hold all traffic on the Key Bridge. There’s a ship approaching that just lost its steering,” someone is heard saying over a police radio minutes before the 1:30 a.m. crash on Tuesday.

As people talked about what to do next, one person suddenly said, “The entire bridge collapsed.” The recording offered a glimpse of how authorities scrambled before the crash sent the six bridge-repair workers on the night shift to their deaths in the frigid harbor waters. The Singapore-flagged Dali, a container ship the length of three football fields, had reported a loss of power before impact and dropped anchor to slow the vessel, giving authorities barely enough time to halt road traffic on the bridge and likely preventing greater loss of life.

(With agency inputs)