Baltimore bridge collapse: Indian crew safe, 6 missing workers presumed dead, here’s all we know about the incident

Baltimore bridge collapse: Indian crew safe, 6 missing workers presumed dead, here’s all we know about the incident

As many as 22 of the 24 crew members, all Indians, onboard a large container vessel which rammed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore early Tuesday, causing the bridge to collapse into the Patapsco River, were accounted for and are known to be safe, a New York Times report stated quoting the ship’s manager.

The Governor of Maryland, Wes Moore, soon after the ship hit the bridge, declared a ‘state of emergency,’ thanking rescue workers for search operations which ended Tuesday night. Two people were rescued, one unharmed, and one in serious condition who was later hospitalised and released.

About six missing construction workers are presumed to be dead, according to The New York Times report. Coast Guard and state police officials, citing cold water temperatures, said that construction workers had been missing too long to hope for rescue. “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 told the NYT.

What led to the bridge collapse?

The cargo vessel, called the Dali, registered in Singapore was headed to Colombo, Sri Lanka, said the Synergy Marine Group, and was carrying 4,700 shipping containers, according to Synergy Marine, its manager and operator, the report stated.

The ship lost power and issued a mayday call just before hitting the pier of the bridge. Despite the mayday call, the road repair crew and its vehicles remained on the bridge, authorities told the New York Times.

Radio traffic from emergency workers revealed, according to the report, that the crew had been struggling to steer the ship, when the lights went dark abruptly.

According to a joint statement from the ship’s owner and manager, Baltimore harbor pilots were directing the ship at the time of the crash. The Governor declared that the collapse did not occur due to a structural issue.

The Dali

The Maersk-chartered vessel, carrying cargo, was 985 feet long and 157 feet wide, according to the website of the Danish company.

Having undergone through 27 inspections since 2015, the Dali had a deficiency related to gauges and thermometers. The only other deficiency, a damaged hull “impairing seaworthiness,” was found in 2016 at the port of Antwerp, Belgium, which resulted in the vessel hitting a stone wall later that year.

This time, however, a spokesperson from the Grace Ocean Investment, Dali’s owner, declined to comment on the deficiency that turned up last year.

The Key Bridge

The bridge, whose construction was completed in March 1977, spans 1.6 miles over the Patapsco river, the NYT report mentioned. The bridge which took five years for construction crosses the 50-foot-deep Patapsco river where the US national anthem author Francis Scott Key wrote the “Star Spangled Banner” in 1814 after witnessing the British defeat at the Battle of Baltimore and the British bombing of Fort McHenry.

According to reports, potholes on the bridge were being fixed by eight construction crews, who fell into the water.

According to some engineers, the collapse might have been avoided if the pylons holding up the bridge were better protected with blocking devices called fenders, the NYT report highlighted.

The bridge, which experts believed would take years to replace, was a major north-south artery, and its collapse wiped out a roadway that thousands of people used to travel to and from Baltimore on a daily basis. According to a Maryland state government report issued in November, the bridge carried more than 12.4 million commercial and passenger vehicles in 2023.

Closure of the bridge

President Joe Biden called on Congress to support efforts to fund the repairs, and said he expects that the federal government will pay for the “entire cost” of rebuilding the bridge. “I’ve directed my team to move heaven and earth to reopen the port and rebuild the bridge as soon as humanly possible,” Biden said, a PTI report stated.

Biden, according to an NYT report, announced that the Port of Baltimore would be closed indefinitely, which experts believe would hamper deliveries, including farm and construction machinery.

“At this time, we have no other indication — no other reason to believe there was any intentional act here,” Biden said.

Highlighting that the Port of Baltimore is one of the nation’s largest shipping hubs and handled a record amount of cargo in 2023, the US president said, “It’s also the top port in America for both imports and exports of automobiles and light trucks,” adding that around 850,000 vehicles go through that port every single year and 15000 jobs depend on that port, news agency PTI reported.

“And we’re going to do everything we can to protect those jobs and help those workers. The bridge is also critical to — for travel, not just for Baltimore but for the Northeast Corridor,” the president added.

‘Migrant workers supporting their families’

Alongside the six men who have been pronounced dead was laboring a construction company employee who revealed to the New York Times that his co-workers were migrants working to support their families.

“We’re low-income families,” said Jesus Campos, who worked at the construction company based in Baltimore County, Brawner Builders, for about eight months. “Our relatives are waiting for our help back in our home countries.”

The company routinely conducts maintenance work on state bridges. Its workers were repairing the bridge’s roadway when it was struck by the ship, the report stated.

Brawner’s owner, distressed, spent the early Tuesday hours near the bridge hoping for a rescue of the six workers, and has also since met with families of all of the missing workers. According to the report, he told The Baltimore Banner that the employees who remained missing were from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico.

While the nationalities of the missing people are still being determined, a nonprofit in Baltimore confirmed that at least one of the missing men, Miguel Luna, 40, was a married immigrant from El Salvador and has three children, according to Gustavo Torres, the executive director of the nonprofit.

Moreover, Guatemala’s Foreign Affairs Ministry confirmed that two of the workers were Guatemalan nationals, from the regions of Petén and Chiquimula, the report highlighted. The ministry said that the country’s consul general in Maryland spoke with the siblings of the two workers and is hoping to meet with their families.

‘Unfortunate accident’: India on bridge collapse

The Indian Embassy in the United States condoled the “unfortunate accident” in Baltimore which brought one of the most important ports in the northeast US to a halt.

“Our heartfelt condolences to all affected by the unfortunate accident at the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore,” the Indian Embassy in the US said in a post on X. The Embassy also created a dedicated hotline for any Indian citizens who may be affected or require assistance due to the accident.

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