The 2.5 km-long Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed in Baltimore overnight Monday to Tuesday after being hit by a cargo ship. Two workers reported missing following the tragedy were found lifeless.
While six people were still missing since the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, two bodies were recovered. They were found in a red pickup truck at a depth of approximately 7.6 meters, as the Maryland police announced during a press briefing. The victims were identified as two men, aged 26 and 35, from Guatemala and Mexico. They belonged to the team of workers who were repairing potholes in the building at the time of the tragedy.
Four of their colleagues are still missing. Tuesday evening, the American authorities decided to interrupt the search, estimating that the victims were “presumed dead” given the “duration of the search” and the “water temperature”. Initially, eight workers fell into the water. Two were quickly identified.
The authorities also fear disastrous economic consequences, the bridge being part of a major highway in the region. More than 34,000 vehicles circulated there every day. After addressing his “prayers” to the victims, Joe Biden, the American president, expressed his “intention to see the federal state assume the entire cost of the reconstruction of this bridge”, even estimating on that “the Francis Scott Key Bridge is essential to [l’]economy [américaine]”. This process is nevertheless expected to take a long time. Hota GangaRao, director of the Constructed Facilities Center in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at West Virginia University, estimated with USA Today that reconstruction could take between “two and four years” and cost nearly “$350 million.”
Impressive images
In a matter of seconds, Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge was literally collapsed. In the early morningn Tuesday March 26, the images of the Dali, the freight ship involved in this incident, hitting the 2.5 km bridge had already goes around the world. If the material damage is undeniable, the human toll may have been limited. The Singapore-flagged ship had issued an SOS before hitting the bridge head-on. The cause was “a power supply problem,” said Maryland State Governor Wes Moore on Tuesday afternoon.
It appears that the vessel in question hit one of the bridge’s piers. The images are spectacular. A portion of the metal structure fell into the water. This bridge was built in 1977. It was 2.5 kilometers long and had four lanes of traffic.
In the images below, we can clearly identify the cargo ship colliding with the bridge. Many vehicles passed over the bridge a few seconds before the impact, their drivers escaped the worst.
Looks like the ship lost power twice before impact. Note the lights going out each time. If this power loss was complete, many of the ship’s systems would certainly have been affected. pic.twitter.com/wzmzmeR1vp
— Brick Suit (@Brick_Suit) March 26, 2024
According to the site Marinetraffic, an online platform that tracks the movements of cargo ships around the world, the vessel involved is the Dali, a container ship that had just left Baltimore for the port of Colombo, Sri Lanka. This merchant cargo ship would measure 300 meters long and 48 meters wide. Since the incident, all traffic on the waterways has been stopped.
After the tragedy, the governor of the State of Maryland declared a state of emergency. An investigation has since been entrusted to a team of 24 people from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which is none other than a government agency responsible for working on accidents, whether maritime, air or rail.