Date: 2025-01-15 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00026465
INFRASTRUCTURE
BALTIMORE BRIDGE ACCIDENT
NYT Live Updates: Baltimore Bridge Rescue Efforts
Shift to Recovery of 6 Missing Workers
BALTIMORE BRIDGE ACCIDENT
NYT Live Updates: Baltimore Bridge Rescue Efforts
Shift to Recovery of 6 Missing Workers
Original article: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/27/us/baltimore-key-bridge-collapse
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
Peter Burgess
The collapse of the span, triggered when a cargo ship struck a support structure of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, has upended operations at one of the nation’s busiest ports.
Victoria Kim
Here is the latest on the collapse.
Investigators were piecing together on Wednesday what had caused a massive cargo ship to lose propulsion as it left Baltimore and strike a major bridge, making it collapse. Rescue workers were trying to recover the bodies of six workers who plunged into the cold waters from the Francis Scott Key Bridge when it fell.
Jennifer Homendy, the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, said that agency investigators had boarded the ship overnight and had begun to interview the crew and collect data. She told CNN that the agency hoped to release more information gleaned from the ship’s data recorders later Wednesday.
The disaster severed Interstate 695 and upended operations at one of the nation’s busiest ports, causing a major disruption to shipping and global supply chains that is likely to ripple for weeks. The port is a vital link for the auto and coal industries.
Divers resumed the search for the workers in the Patapsco River early Wednesday, Mayor Brandon M. Scott of Baltimore told a local television station. The Coast Guard suspended the search for survivors shortly after dusk on Tuesday, some 18 hours after the impact. Officials said they were presuming that the missing members of a road repair crew that had been working on the bridge were dead, given the elapsed time and the cold water temperature. Two surviving workers had been plucked from the river earlier Tuesday.
Investigators were also beginning to piece together what led the cargo ship, a Singapore-flagged vessel nearly three football fields in length, to abruptly lose propulsion and plow into a mid-river pylon holding up the bridge.
Officials said that shortly before the impact, the ship, the Dali, suffered a “complete blackout” and issued a mayday warning, prompting traffic to be stopped at both ends of the bridge and averting a larger tragedy.
Here is the latest:
One of the missing workers is a Honduran citizen, 38-year-old Maynor Yasir Suazo Sandoval, who had been living in the United States for two decades, according to Honduras’s migrant protection service. A nonprofit organization that provides services to the immigrant community in Baltimore identified another as Miguel Luna, a 40-year-old father of three from El Salvador.
President Biden said he expected the federal government to pay for the “entire cost” of the bridge’s reconstruction, calling on Congress to support funding for the work.
Ships belonging to Grace Ocean Private Ltd., the owner of the Dali, have been cited in recent years for labor violations.
The National Transportation Safety Board said its investigation would look into the structure of the bridge, including what protective structures existed around its pylons. The secretary of transportation, Pete Buttigieg, called the disaster a “unique circumstance,” saying he doubted that any bridge could have withstood a direct impact of such magnitude.
Jacey Fortin March 27, 2024, 11:05 a.m. ET8 minutes ago 8 minutes ago Jacey Fortin
Bill Ferguson, a Baltimore Democrat who leads the State Senate in Maryland, said on Wednesday that he and Luke Clippinger, a Democratic House delegate, were drafting an emergency bill to provide income replacement for workers who were affected by the bridge collapse. “The economic and stability loss to the thousands impacted in the days ahead cannot be understated,” Mr. Ferguson said on X.
Jacey Fortin March 27, 2024, 10:40 a.m. ET33 minutes ago 33 minutes ago Jacey Fortin
Jennifer Homendy, the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, said investigators had boarded the Dali on Wednesday to gather electronics and data.
“Right now we do have the data recorder, which is essentially the black box,” she told CNN. “We’ve sent that back to our lab to evaluate and begin to develop a timeline of events that led up to the strike on the bridge.”
Sources: Spire Global, Google Earth By Agnes Chang and Weiyi Cai
Credit...Pete Kiehart for The New York Times
Emiliano Rodríguez Mega
March 27, 2024, 10:09 a.m. ET1 hour ago
1 hour ago Emiliano Rodríguez Mega
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico confirmed in a news conference that two of the missing workers were Mexican citizens. He refused to identify them but said that their families were being assisted by the government. Mr. López Obrador added that the episode showed how migrant workers in the U.S. often take risky jobs. “That is why they do not deserve to be treated as some irresponsible and insensitive politicians in the United States tend to treat them,” he said.
Matthew Mpoke Bigg March 27, 2024, 10:07 a.m. ET1 hour ago 1 hour ago Matthew Mpoke Bigg
Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, said private companies would be held accountable for the crash at the Francis Scott Key Bridge if they are found to be responsible. “We can’t wait for that to play out to get to work right now,” he said in an interview with CNN.
James C. McKinley Jr. March 27, 2024, 10:04 a.m. ET1 hour ago 1 hour ago James C. McKinley Jr.
Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland said divers were dealing with tremendously dangerous conditions as they searched for the missing workers. “We’re talking about frigid temperatures, we’re talking about a moving tide, we’re talking about darkness and mangled metal,” Mr. Moore said in an interview with CBS News. He said the economic impact of the collapse would be immense, as the port is indirectly connected to about 100,000 jobs.
James C. McKinley Jr. March 27, 2024, 9:46 a.m. ET1 hour ago 1 hour ago James C. McKinley Jr.
Mayor Brandon M. Scott of Baltimore said rescue workers from federal, state and city agencies were still searching the waters for the missing construction workers who were on the bridge when it collapsed. Speaking to the local television station WJZ-TV early Wednesday, the mayor said the rescue workers were hoping to find the victims so their families could have “closure,” adding: “We know that they know they will not be coming back alive.”
Image Credit...Roberto Schmidt/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Mike Baker March 26, 2024, 9:22 p.m. ETMarch 26, 2024 March 26, 2024 Mike Baker
The vessel had a ‘complete blackout’ and could not restore engine power.
A helicopter in the skies above a container ship entangled in bridge debris.
A helicopter flying over the site of the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge,
part of Interstate 695, on Tuesday.Credit...Pete Kiehart for The New York Times
A few minutes before the cargo ship Dali crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge early Tuesday, the vessel had a “complete blackout” that knocked out power to the engine and navigation equipment, an industry official said.
The official, Clay Diamond, the executive director of the American Pilots Association, said Tuesday that he had been speaking regularly with the Association of Maryland Pilots and that the cause of the system failure was unclear. Though the ship’s backup generators had kicked on, restoring some power, the propulsion system remained offline.
As the vessel lost power, Mr. Diamond said, the pilot in command of the vessel ordered that the ship be turned as much as possible to the left and that the port anchor be dropped to try to halt or slow the vessel’s drift toward the bridge. Mr. Diamond said that the pilot’s order protected people on the bridge who could have been affected by a collision.
“As soon as he lost power, he realized what could happen,” Mr. Diamond said. “He immediately asked that the bridge be closed to traffic.”
Mr. Diamond said that the pilot in command of the ship had more than 10 years of experience in the job. An apprentice training to be a pilot was also onboard.
Before the failure, the ship had been following standard practices for vessels leaving Baltimore’s harbor.
About an hour before the collision, according to vessel-tracking data from the maritime data platform Marine Traffic, tugboats began guiding the Dali from its berth and then helped it turn southward toward the bridge. As the ship began moving on its course, the tugboats departed, leaving the Dali to continue on its own, as is common practice in the port.
The cargo ship Singelgracht was led by a tugboat on the Chesapeake Bay in 2020.
At the Baltimore port, it is common for tugboats to guide ships from their berths
and then leave them to continue on their own.Credit...Julio Cortez/Associated Press
The region uses local harbor pilots who specialize in operating in the Baltimore area. To ensure safety in waters that might be unfamiliar to ship captains from elsewhere, the pilots go through years of training, learning the harbor’s rules, currents, routes, traffic patterns and areas of danger, before they are tasked with bringing vessels in and out of the area. The most experienced pilots advance to managing larger vessels.
Vessels departing the harbor were to follow a specific channel of deep water going toward and then under the Key Bridge. Vessel data showed that the Dali initially stayed within that channel and was traveling at about 8.5 knots before the boat started showing signs of trouble.
The Port of Baltimore is the nation’s largest port by volume for deliveries of cars and light trucks, according to a statement by Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland last month. Marine traffic has now halted, with some cargo ships stranded in the harbor.
John Ismay March 26, 2024, 9:18 p.m. ETMarch 26, 2024 March 26, 2024
John IsmayPentagon reporter
The cargo ship did not have a tugboat connected to it when it hit the bridge, according to Petty Officer Third Class Carmen Carver, a Coast Guard spokeswoman. The ship was connected to a tug earlier in its transit of the harbor, Carver said, but at some point it was released.
John Ismay March 26, 2024, 9:19 p.m. ETMarch 26, 2024 March 26, 2024
John IsmayPentagon reporter
One or more tugboats are typically used to help large vessels like the Dali get underway from their berths, or to moor them.
Mike Baker March 26, 2024, 8:12 p.m. ETMarch 26, 2024 March 26, 2024 Mike Baker
A harbor pilot and an apprentice were on the cargo ship as it navigated out of the Port of Baltimore, said Clay Diamond, the executive director of the American Pilots Association. He was told by the Maryland pilots' group that the vessel had a “complete blackout” a few minutes before the crash and never regained propulsion power.
Mike Baker March 26, 2024, 8:13 p.m. ETMarch 26, 2024 March 26, 2024 Mike Baker
Diamond said the pilot in command of the ship, who had more than 10 years of experience, ordered that the vessel be turned as much as possible to the left and that the port anchor be dropped in an unsuccessful effort to halt or slow the vessel’s drift toward the bridge.
Sean Plambeck March 26, 2024, 7:44 p.m. ETMarch 26, 2024 March 26, 2024 Sean Plambeck
Col. Roland L. Butler of the Maryland State Police said divers would return to the water at 6 a.m. Wednesday to try to recover the bodies of the six missing construction workers.
Patricia Mazzei March 26, 2024, 7:45 p.m. ETMarch 26, 2024 March 26, 2024 Patricia Mazzei “At this point, we do not know where they are,” Butler said, “but we intend to give it our best effort to help these families find closure.”
Sean Plambeck March 26, 2024, 7:32 p.m. ETMarch 26, 2024 March 26, 2024 Sean Plambeck
A Coast Guard official said Tuesday night that officials were suspending the active search-and-rescue effort, with the six people missing after the bridge collapse presumed dead.
Video Based on the length of time that we’ve gone in the search,
CreditCredit...Associated Press Sean Plambeck March 26, 2024, 7:44 p.m. ETMarch 26, 2024 March 26, 2024 Sean Plambeck
Rear Admiral Shannon Gilreath said, “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.”
March 26, 2024, 7:25 p.m. ET March 26, 2024 March 26, 2024
Michael Forsythe, Peter Eavis and Jenny Gross
Vessels belonging to the cargo ship’s owner were cited for labor violations.
A large blue cargo ship with collapsed portions of the Francis Scott Key Bridge atop it.
Grace Ocean owns 55 ships, including the Dali, the container ship that caused the collapse
of the Key Bridge early Tuesday morning.Credit...Roberto Schmidt/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Ships belonging to the company whose container vessel crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore on Tuesday have been cited in recent years for labor violations, which include underpaying ship crews and holding crew members onboard for months past their contracts, according to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority.
In 2021, the authority detained the Western Callao, another ship formerly owned by the company, the Singapore-based Grace Ocean Private Ltd., after it found that the management was in arrears paying 13 crew members and had kept them on the ship for more than 12 months, well beyond their nine-month contracts. In 2020, an inspection of the same ship in Australia found that eight sailors had been aboard it for more than 11 months.
Another ship owned by Grace Ocean, the Furness Southern Cross, had 10 seafarers aboard for more than 14 months. The infractions were “serious and shameful” violations of an international convention on maritime labor, Michael Drake, the executive director of operations for the authority, said at the time, in October 2021.
“This type of behavior is unethical and in complete contravention to the Maritime Labor Convention,” Mr. Drake said. “The international conventions that protect seafarers’ rights are very clear.”
Any factors about the crew of the Dali, the Grace-owned container ship that crashed into the Key Bridge, including fatigue, will likely be among the many items the National Transportation Safety Board examines as it looks for the cause or causes of the crash.
Grace Ocean owns 55 ships, according to Equasis, a public database of ship information. While global companies such as Maersk charter the vessels, the owners and the ship managers are generally responsible for managing the crew and maintaining the ships. The management company for the Dali, Synergy Marine, was not the company managing the two vessels cited by Australia.
The extremely opaque nature of global ship-owning makes finding the ultimate owners and holding them accountable for any violations difficult. According to Singapore company records, Grace Ocean is owned by the British Virgin Islands-based Grace Ocean Investment Limited. Lloyds List, which first reported Grace Ocean’s infractions in 2021, reported that Grace Ocean Investment is based in Hong Kong. But the company matching the name and address in Lloyd’s database dissolved in 2015, according to Hong Kong company records.
The Singapore company has four directors — two Filipino citizens, a Singaporean and a Japanese person — with all listing addresses in Singapore, records show.
Alexandra Wrage, the president and founder of Trace, a group focused on anti-bribery, compliance and good governance, said that ship ownership structures were designed to maximize opacity and minimize accountability.
“There are some good actors in this space, but shipping is the Wild West from a compliance and accountability perspective,” Ms. Wrage said. “And when compliance and accountability aren’t priorities, issues like environmental standards, labor practices and health and safety often aren’t either.”
The Dali had 22 crew members from India onboard, according to a statement from Grace Ocean and Synergy Marine. None were injured.
An inspection of the Dali last year at a port in Chile found that the vessel had a deficiency related to “propulsion and auxiliary machinery.” The inspection, conducted on June 27 at the port of San Antonio, specified that the problem concerned gauges and thermometers.
The Dali has had 27 inspections since 2015, according to Equasis. The only other deficiency, a damaged hull “impairing seaworthiness,” was found in 2016, at the port of Antwerp, in Belgium. The vessel hit a berth at the port that year. A spokesman representing Grace Ocean and Synergy did not immediately have a comment on the labor violations or on the deficiency reported last year.
Show more Campbell Robertson JoAnna Daemmrich March 26, 2024, 6:58 p.m. ETMarch 26, 2024 March 26, 2024 Campbell Robertson and JoAnna Daemmrich
For many in Baltimore, the Key was the city’s ‘blue collar’ bridge.
A row of people holding phones near a tree and tripods.
People taking photos of the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge.Credit...Pete Kiehart for The New York Times
There are more heavily trafficked routes across the Baltimore Harbor than the Francis Scott Key Bridge. The Harbor Tunnel carries double the daily traffic of the Key Bridge and the Fort McHenry Tunnel much more than that.
But the Key, with its gently sloping arch and views that no tunnel could match, had become an emblem of Baltimore’s identity as a working port city.
On Tuesday, from vantage points across the harbor, people stood in disbelief at the sight of parts of the 1.6-mile span jutting jaggedly out of the water, the result of a catastrophic cargo ship crash that toppled the bridge and left six workers missing.
“It’s the blue-collar bridge,” said Kurt L. Schmoke, Baltimore’s mayor in the 1990s and now president of University of Baltimore. The Chesapeake Bay Bridge, 22 miles away, the only bridge in Maryland that was longer, is all about leisure, a gateway to the beach. The tunnels are all function, a way of all but bypassing Baltimore on the way from Washington, D.C., to New York City.
“The Key Bridge,” Mr. Schmoke said, “was definitely for work.”
When the Key Bridge opened in 1977, the Harbor Tunnel was constantly clogged with traffic, reflecting the increased commuting among the fast-growing suburbs of Baltimore and along the I-95 corridor. The bridge was a release valve for the traffic and a godsend for the working-class communities that sat on either end of it. They now had a direct route to the jobs at the plants and distribution centers that line the Harbor.
“The bridge spanned working Baltimore, both metaphorically and literally,” said Rafael Alvarez, 65, the son of a harbor tugboat engineer who has written more than a dozen books about Baltimore’s working class.
On the northern end was Sparrows Point, once home to the massive Bethlehem Steel Plant, which was once the largest working mill in the world and is now the site of distribution centers for Amazon, Home Depot and Under Armour. On the other end, Curtis Bay, long home to chemical plants, including a paint company that Mr. Alvarez remembers emitting white clouds so thick they had to close the bridge.
Tens of thousands of Baltimoreans lived and worked in these areas, Mr. Alvarez said.
The six men who are missing were part of this tradition of working Baltimore: members of a construction crew, working overnight hours filling potholes on the bridge.
As the morning unfolded, and cars and trucks from a legion of government agencies went to and from the collapse site, some of the people who knew the bridge best were forced, this time, to take it in at a distance.
They gathered on a highway embankment across from a Dollar General to get a look at the broken bridge. There were whispered conspiracy theories among the crowd, pointed concerns about getting to work and doctor’s appointments and bafflement at how this could have happened.
Others just recollected.
“When I got my license in ’75, the only way to get back and forth was the tunnel,” said James Metzger, 66, retired from the automotive industry.
From the windows at his high school, not far from where he was standing, Mr. Metzger would look out and watch the bridge being built, he said. Around that time he was seeing a girl who lived on the other side; a bridge had romantic implications along with everything else.
One day in 1977, Mr. Metzger said, his father, a truck driver, was coming back home from his route and happened upon the bridge’s ribbon cutting. His father had seen the governor, he said, and even kept a piece of the ribbon. The bridge had been a part of their lives ever since.
Until Tuesday morning, when Mr. Metzger’s current girlfriend had called. “She was on the way to work,” he said. “She said, ‘I’m seeing police cars and helicopters. And the Key Bridge is gone.’”
Show more Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs March 26, 2024, 6:41 p.m. ETMarch 26, 2024 March 26, 2024
Nicholas Bogel-BurroughsReporting from Baltimore
Victims of bridge collapse were construction workers supporting their families, a co-worker says.
A construction company employee who said he had labored alongside the six men missing after a Baltimore bridge collapse on Tuesday said that many of his co-workers were migrants working to support their relatives.
“We’re low-income families,” said Jesus Campos, who has worked at the construction company, Brawner Builders, for about eight months. “Our relatives are waiting for our help back in our home countries.”
The men worked for Brawner, a contractor based in Baltimore County, a senior executive at the company said on Tuesday. The executive, Jeffrey Pritzker, and the Coast Guard said that all of the missing workers were presumed dead, given how long it had been since the collapse.
“They were wonderful family people,” Mr. Pritzker said, before describing the victims’ survivors. “Spouses, children.” He added, “It’s just a very, very bad day.”
The company routinely does maintenance on bridges operated by the state. Its workers were repairing the bridge’s roadway when it was struck by the ship. Mr. Pritzker said that Brawner’s owner was distressed and had spent the early hours of Tuesday near the bridge hoping for a rescue, and had also since met with families of all of the missing workers.
Mr. Campos spent much of Tuesday afternoon at a gas station near where the police had blocked off the road to the Francis Scott Key Bridge. He wore a black sweatshirt bearing the construction company’s name and milled about, waiting for news and speaking on the phone.
“It’s tough,” he said. “This situation is very difficult.”
He told The Baltimore Banner that the employees who remained missing were from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico.
A nonprofit that provides services to immigrants in Baltimore confirmed that at least one of the missing men, Miguel Luna, was from El Salvador. Mr. Luna, 40, is married and has three children, said Gustavo Torres, the executive director of the nonprofit, We Are Casa. He said Mr. Luna had been living in Maryland for at least 19 years.
Guatemala’s foreign affairs ministry confirmed that two of the workers were Guatemalan nationals, from the regions of Petén and Chiquimula. The ministry, which did not release the names of its citizens, said that the country’s consul general in Maryland had spoken with the siblings of the two workers and was hoping to meet with their families.
The Mexican Consulate in Washington said in a statement that the nationalities of the missing people were still being determined. Embassies for the other two countries mentioned by Mr. Campos did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Officials said that in addition to the six missing workers, two people had been rescued from the water. One did not need medical treatment, and another was taken to a hospital and released later in the day.
State officials said the construction crew had been fixing potholes when the ship crashed into the bridge.
Brawner was founded in 1980, according to its website, and its employees work on schools, historic properties, bridges and other infrastructure.
Reporting was contributed by Jacey Fortin, Miriam Jordan, Patricia Mazzei and Emiliano Rodríguez Mega. Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
Show more Campbell Robertson JoAnna Daemmrich March 26, 2024, 3:22 p.m. ETMarch 26, 2024 March 26, 2024
Campbell Robertson and JoAnna DaemmrichReporting from Baltimore and Annapolis, Md.
The collapse will upend commercial traffic in a busy industrial area.
Two trucks, going in opposite directions, cross a bridge.
Freight trucks crossing the Key Bridge in 2021.
Credit...Brendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
As the shock of the Key Bridge collapse settled over Baltimore, the new traffic realities came not far behind. The Key, a four-lane-bridge that collapsed after being hit by a container ship, was not the most heavily trafficked route across the Baltimore Harbor, but without the crossing, about 34,000 cars and trucks now have to find alternative routes.
The collapse severs the southern stretch of Interstate 695, the portion of the Baltimore Beltway that runs through the heavily industrial areas around the port. On Tuesday, as I-695 closed around the bridge, the Maryland Transportation Authority was advising commuters to take one of the two tunnels that also span the harbor.
When the Key Bridge opened in 1977, it was intended to relieve traffic at the heavily congested Harbor Tunnel. But the bridge was also built to serve as a critical third link for north-south traffic on I-95 and for commercial traffic from the port and distribution warehouses.
Not only will the bridge collapse increase pressure on the tunnels, which were already carrying far more daily traffic than the Key Bridge, but it will also present a major headache to trucks that long relied on the bridge to transport goods.
“Nearly 4,900 trucks travel the bridge each day, with $28 billion in goods crossing every year,” said Sean McNally, a spokesman for the American Trucking Associations, in an email.
William Washington, who works at a plant that makes cement board right on the southern end of the bridge, said his work depended on a constant delivery of supplies. It is not clear what the scale of the disruption to the plant will be, but it will not be business as usual for some time.
Perhaps most affected will be trucks carrying hazardous materials, such as petroleum or natural gas, which are prohibited in the tunnels.
According to Mr. McNally, trucks carrying hazardous material will have to take about 30 miles of detours.