Two bodies discovered in truck on Baltimore Bridge collapse as investigators suspend search for missing workers, police say

By Elizabeth Wolfe, Melissa Alonso and Yahya Abou-Ghazala, CNN

The collapse of a major bridge in Baltimore early Tuesday morning due to a major collision with a shipment has left several people dead and strangled one of the nation’s largest ports for the foreseeable future.

Here’s the latest:

• Search Stopped After 2 Bodies Discovered: According to Maryland State Police, two structures were discovered trapped in a red pickup truck in the Patapsco River, in the middle of the collapsed bridge. Search efforts have been halted for the other 4 presumed dead as other cars are encased in concrete and other debris, making the scene unsafe for divers, Superintendent Col. Roland L said. Once rescue operations clear the debris, divers will search for more remains, he said. Workers were believed to be repairing potholes in the bridge when it fell, authorities said.

• The investigation: A team from the National Transportation Safety Board boarded the ship Tuesday night and Wednesday to gather evidence for its investigation, company President Jennifer Homendy said Wednesday. Officials received the data recorder from the ship’s voyage, Homendy said. The company interviewed members of the ship’s crew, in addition to the captain, he said. Investigators have not yet received a pattern of the ship’s fuel; They’ll take one to read about the quality of marine diesel, he said.

• No risk to the public: Coast Guard Vice Adm. Peter Gautier, deputy commander of operations, said there is no risk of tissue being produced that is dangerous to the public. Of the 4,700 participants in the shipment, only two have disappeared from the sea and none involve hazardous fabrics. The shipment has more than 1. 5 million gallons of oil on board but remains stable. The shipment carries 56 units of hazardous materials (764 tons), most of them corrosive and flammable, as well as lithium-ion batteries, the NTSB said.

• Timeline: The first time the team reported a challenge when a pilot radioed for help from tugboats around 1:26 a. m. ET on Tuesday, about 3 minutes before the shipment hit a deck column, the NTSB said Wednesday, presenting a timeline of events as provided through the logger of knowledge of the recovered trip.

• The craft lost power before the crash: A few minutes before impact, there was a “total failure” of the plane’s engine and power supply, according to Clay Diamond, executive director of the American Pilots Association.

• Crew: Twenty-one crew members and two marine pilots were aboard the Singapore-flagged container ship, the NTSB said. As of Wednesday evening, team members had remained aboard the ship, which was scheduled to make a voyage lasting about a month. to Colombo, Sri Lanka.

The Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed shortly before 1:30 a. m. ET on Tuesday when the Dali, a ship loaded with £213 million, lost strength as it tried to leave the harbour and crashed into one of the bridge’s columns, sending other people away. and cars overboard on the frigid Patapsco River.

According to a schedule provided through the NTSB on Wednesday, the shipment’s alarms went off just before 1:25 a. m. m. ET Tuesday when the shipment passed through the canal on its way out of port. At that point, the trip logger stopped recording things like audio. , GPS positions and speed. (A video available before the NTSB released its timeline shows the shipment’s lighting fixtures shutting down at 1:24 a. m. )m. , before turning back on, then turning off and on again between 1:26 a. m. and 1:26 a. m. M. y 1:26 a. m. :27 a. m. )

Data recording resumed at 1:26:02 a. m. m. , approximately 63 seconds after the alarms began, and the pilot can be heard giving steering orders to the crew, according to the NTSB timeline.

At 01:26:39, the pilot radioed the tugboats, which help the ships out of port. Around the same time, a dispatcher from the pilot group called the Maryland Transportation Authority duty officer to inform him that the ship’s lights were off. according to the NTSB.

At 01:27:04 the pilot ordered to drop anchor and gave new flight orders.

A short time later, the pilot radioed that the vessel had lost strength and was approaching the bridge. A Transportation Authority duty officer, over the radio, ordered other Transportation Authority officials to stop traffic toward the bridge, those who were already on site due to the structure. underway there, the NTSB said.

At 1:29:33 a. m. , the shipment’s recorder captured sounds consistent with those of the shipment hitting the deck, the NTSB said. Six seconds later, the pilot radioed the Coast Guard that the bridge had broken, the NTSB said.

The collapse of the bridge and the resulting closure of the port will have a major impact on the city’s economy as well as the nation’s supply chain, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Wednesday. The Port of Baltimore is the largest port in the United States for cars and trucks, with a record traffic of 850,000 vehicles last year.

Buttigieg said there are four important things ahead: reopening the port, addressing supply chain issues until it reopens, rebuilding the bridge and addressing trucking issues until the bridge is rebuilt.

“The reconstruction will be quick, simple or cheap, but we will get there,” he said.

Authorities have not yet provided a timeline for reopening. President Joe Biden has said he intends to have the federal government take over the full maintenance burden and has called on Congress to undertake rebuilding efforts.

LIVE UPDATES: Baltimore Bridge Collapses After Ship Crash

According to authorities, eight members of the structure’s staff were repairing potholes on the bridge when it fell. Two survived, but teams searched the frigid waters Wednesday for the remaining six.

Two of the workers, aged 35 and 26, were discovered trapped in a red pickup truck. They were known to the government as Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes of Mexico and Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera of Guatemala. Both now lived in the Baltimore area.

Their bodies were discovered in the waters Wednesday, according to Col. Roland L. Butler, superintendent of the Maryland State Police.

The other four are presumed dead, authorities said.

Among the missing are Miguel Luna, a father of three, and Maynor Suazo, a father and businessman.

Guatemala’s Foreign Ministry said another Guatemalan is also missing: a 35-year-old man from Camotán, Chiquimula. Another missing user is also a Mexican national, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said.

Brawner Builders Executive Vice President Jeffrey Pritzker told CNN that seven of his workers were on the bridge the night of the collapse. Only one survived.

“They were glorious young men. They were doing a lot of hard work. These guys were other wonderful people who worked hard and now they’re gone,” Pritzker said.

He said the company in the process of setting up payment systems for the families of the victims.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore praised the divers who worked in “conditions of total darkness, frigid temperatures, high tides and high winds, with mutilated steel all around them. “

Moore told CNN that the cave is a “catastrophic and horrific event” for the state and for the families of the missing, with whom he was able to speak Tuesday.

“They reminded us of who those Americans were — that they weren’t just special personnel doing paintings vital to the city and state, but they were other people who were husbands, sons, fathers and brothers-in-law,” Moore said. saying. It is, therefore, a devastated network of paintings of families. “

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott on Wednesday called on others to show “a little decency and respect” when it comes to online speeches about the fatal bridge collapse.

“Don’t spread false information. Don’t play bridge engineer online or in the media. Remember, these are family members, members of other people who lost their lives just looking for public transportation for the rest of us,” he said.

The ship and all its contents still lie in the middle of the channel, with its bow wrapped in much of the mutilated metal deck.

Gautier, vice admiral of the Coast Guard, said the shipment still had more than 1. 5 million gallons of fuel oil and lubricating oil on board. The shipment has 4,700 participants in the shipment, 56 of which involve hazardous fabrics. Two non-hazardous fabrics disappeared at sea and thirteen boats that were going in front of the ship were damaged, he said.

Another 10 ships are stranded in the harbor as a result of the bridge collapse, the federal government said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the port’s economic impact extends far beyond Maryland. It indirectly employs more than 140,000 people and handles more foreign goods than any other port in the country, the governor said.

“It’s not just about the effect it will have on Maryland’s economy. It’s about the effect it will have on our country’s economy,” Moore said.

Buttigieg said he doesn’t have an estimated time frame for the reopening of the Patapsco River channel.

“Not only do we have to get those boats in, but some of the ones that are already there can’t get out. That’s why it’s very vital to open that channel,” he said.

The ship’s pilot did “everything he could” to slow the ship and prevent it from drifting onto the deck once it lost power, said Diamond, director of the American Pilots Association.

Diamond told CNN he was in close communication with the Maryland Pilots Association regarding what happened in the shipment in the moments leading up to the crash.

The pilot temporarily gave a series of orders, asking to anchor and pull the rudder as far to the left as possible, Diamond said. He also called for dispatch to stop traffic on the bridge, an action that several officials characterize as saving lives.

Dropping anchor was done according to popular emergency procedures, but a ship’s speed and mass will determine whether the anchor will hold, a former pilot with the Maryland Pilots Association told CNN.

“We’re thankful that between May 1 and the collapse, we had officials start impeding traffic so there wouldn’t be any more cars on the bridge,” Moore said Tuesday.

But the ship’s normal length and proximity to the bridge meant there was little hope of avoiding the accident, Diamond said.

“These were all the right steps, but it happened so temporarily and with such a short amount of time . . . none of those maneuvers were enough,” Diamond said.

Marine pilots, who will need to be licensed, temporarily board a vessel and help advise the vessel as it maneuvers through local waters.

As the government scrambled to investigate the collapse on Tuesday, questions arose about the shipment’s past and its control company.

The ship was briefly stopped at the port of San Antonio in Chile on June 27, 2023, when an inspector found that strain gauges in the ship’s heating formula were “illegible,” a Chilean Navy spokesperson said.

Vessels operating through Synergy Marine Group have been involved in at least three fatal incidents since 2018 in Australia, Singapore and the Philippines, according to officials from those countries.

In 2018, a member aboard a ship managed by Synergy in Australia was killed in a twist of fate involving the ship’s body lift, according to a report by the Australian Transport Safety Board.

In 2019, an officer on a Singapore-registered Synergy vessel went missing after “probably (falling) overboard while carrying out inspection or clean-up work,” according to a report by the Transport Safety Investigation Bureau of the Singapore Ministry of Transport.

In 2023, at least one seaman was killed when an oil tanker passing through Synergy Marine collided with a dredging vessel in the Philippines, capsizing it, according to an incident report from the Philippine Coast Guard.

Synergy Marine Group is focused on the Baltimore incident, spokesman Charlie Ridgeway told CNN on Wednesday. “It’s beside the point to talk about past incidents at this stage. “

Majlie de Puy Kamp, Flora Charner, Sarah Engel, Jack Forrest, Allison Gordon, Elise Hammond, Jennifer Henderson, Betsy Klein, Jamiel Lynch, Sean Lyngaas, Mary Kay Mallonee, Lauren Mascarenhas, Eric Levenson, Danny Freeman, Linh Tran, CNN’s Pete Muntean, Tori B. Powell, Rachel Ramirez, Maria Santana, Amy Simonson, Sabrina Souza, Aditi Sangal, Eve Brennan, Bex Wright and Michael Williams contributed to this report.

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