Maryland state police say the six people who were missing after the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed Tuesday in Baltimore , Maryland, have been presumed dead.
Authorities said the accident sent vehicles and eight construction workers into the Patapsco River. Two people were rescued on Tuesday, but Jeffrey Pritzker, a senior executive at Brawner Builders, the employer of the construction workers, said the other six were presumed dead, given the water’s depth and the length of time since the crash.
Maryland officials are in agreement and say that the recovery effort will continue tomorrow morning with a team of divers.
Pritzker said the crew had been working in the middle of the bridge when it came apart. No bodies have been recovered.
“This was so completely unforeseen,” Pritzker said. “We don’t know what else to say. We take such great pride in safety, and we have cones and signs and lights and barriers and flaggers. But we never foresaw that the bridge would collapse.”
All 22 crewmembers onboard the Dali, the ship that struck the bridge , were reported safe.
The White House said Joe Biden had spoken to federal, state and local officials as part of the continuing response to the collapse of the bridge.
Those officials included Pete Buttigieg, the US secretary of transportation; Wes Moore, the Democratic governor of Maryland; the two Democratic US senators from Maryland, Chris Van Hollen and Ben Cardin; and the mayor of Baltimore, Brandon Scott.
Moore told reporters the bridge, which was built in 1977, was “fully up to code” before being struck by the ship.
However, the same ship that struck the bridge was involved in an incident in the port of Antwerp, Belgium, in 2016, when it hit a quay as it tried to exit the North Sea container terminal.
A later inspection of the Dali on 27 June carried out in San Antonio, Chile, found the vessel had “propulsion and auxiliary machinery” deficiencies, according to data on the public Equasis website, which provides information on ships. The inspection specified that there was a deficiency related to gauges and thermometers. A spokesperson for the Dali’s owners declined to comment on the report.
Calls to 911 came in at about 1.30am, reporting a vessel travelling outbound from Baltimore that had struck a column on the bridge, causing it to collapse, said Kevin Cartwright, the director of communications for the Baltimore fire department. Several vehicles were on the bridge at the time, including one the size of a tractor-trailer.
Officials said the ship issued a mayday as it went off course and seemed to lose power, which Baltimore officials said allowed them to prevent more vehicles from coming on to the bridge. The ship then appeared to catch fire as part of the bridge collapsed over it, sending plumes of thick, black smoke into the air.
The temperature in the river was about 47F (8C) in the early hours of Tuesday, according to a buoy that collects data for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
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