The bodies of two men, found inside a submerged red pickup truck, were found Wednesday morning in wreckage from the collapsed Baltimore bridge, officials said. And now the recovery mission has become a rescue operation.
The saga around the Francis Scott Key Bridge began early Tuesday with a distress alert issued by crew members of a 985-foot-long container ship en route to Sri Lanka.
“Numerous audible alarms” had begun to sound aboard the ship around 1:25 a.m. Tuesday, according to National Transportation Safety Board investigator Marcel Muise, who spoke at a news conference Wednesday evening.
At 1:27 a.m., the pilot ordered the freighter to drop anchor on the port side and issued “additional steering commands.” The pilot then made a radio call reporting that the ship “had lost all power and was approaching the bridge.”
A dispatch call to officers on the bridge followed shortly thereafter, at 1:28 a.m.
“I need one of you on the south side, one of you on the north side – to control all traffic on Key Bridge,” an emergency dispatcher told two Maryland Transportation Authority police officers , according to dispatch calls provided by Broadcastify. .
As the ship approached, at a speed of 8 knots – about 9 mph – the two officers quickly stationed themselves on either side of the historic Baltimore Bridge to prevent all vehicles from crossing the 1.6-mile span.
A construction crew was working on the bridge, repairing masonry and potholes. The dispatcher asks the officers to notify the foreman and see if the workers can be evacuated.
But it was too late. The ship struck one of the bridge’s support piers, sending parts of the span into the 50-foot-deep Patapsco River below.
At 1:29 a.m., the ship’s data recorder captured “sounds consistent with the bridge collision,” Muise said, while at the same time, Maryland Transportation Authority cameras captured the lights of the bridge which were extinguished.
“The whole bridge has fallen!” “” one of the officers shouted. “Start, whoever, everyone. The entire bridge collapsed! »
Eight construction workers plunged into the freezing waters below. Two were saved; one refused treatment and the other was hospitalized. Authorities had to call off the initial search for the rest of the crew about 18 hours after the bridge collapsed, saying debris and shifting currents were hampering rescue efforts.
The remains of two people were found Wednesday morning, said Col. Roland L. Butler Jr. of the Maryland State Police. The bodies were found shortly before 10 a.m. in a truck submerged in 25 feet of water near the middle of the bridge.
They were identified as Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, 35, of Baltimore, and Dorlian Castillo Cabrera, 26, of Dundalk, Maryland, Butler said. Fuentes came from Mexico and Castillo from Guatemala.
Divers are no longer able to safely search around the wreckage due to the amount of debris, according to Butler, who added that search efforts around the bridge itself have been exhausted.
Butler said efforts would now be focused on the rescue.
“Based on the sonar scans, we strongly believe the vehicles are encased in the superstructure and concrete that we tragically saw collapse,” he said.
NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said Wednesday that the Key Bridge was “critical to the divide.” With this type of construction, she explained, when a large section is fractured, the entire structure can be vulnerable to collapse.
The “preferred method of construction” today includes “redundancy” built into bridges, Homendy noted, which allows the structure to essentially transmit the load if one part is compromised.
The bridge was in “satisfactory condition”, with the last critical failure inspection taking place in May 2023, but investigators requested additional safety documentation. Homendy said there are 17,468 critical bridges in the country today out of a total of 615,000.
The investigation into the bridge could take up to two years, Homendy said, although the team will issue urgent safety recommendations in the meantime.
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott called the bridge collapse “something out of an action movie.” Since then, the region has grappled not only with the loss of a vital transportation link, but also with the closure of the Port of Baltimore, which experts say could seriously hamper the economy.
But Scott also praised the officers who responded to the Mayday alert and tried to keep everyone off the bridge before the crash.
“By being able to stop cars from crossing the bridge, these people are heroes,” Scott said at a news conference Tuesday. “They saved lives.”
About 30,000 vehicles cross the bridge daily, but the collapse happened well before the busy morning commute. At least five vehicles plunged into the water – a cement truck, three passenger vehicles and an unidentified vehicle – which rescue teams detected using sonar, the fire chief told CNN of Baltimore, James Wallace.
The six men presumed dead are from Latin American countries, according to multiple reports.
Miguel Luna, from El Salvador, left for work at 6:30 p.m. Monday and did not return, according to the immigrant services nonprofit We Are Casa. Luna was married with three children. He had lived in Maryland for 19 years.
“They only tell us that we have to wait, that for now they cannot give us information,” Luna’s wife, María del Carmen Castellón, told Telemundo 44. “Our hearts are broken because we don’t know if they’ve saved them yet. We’re just waiting for news.”
Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval, 38, was originally from Honduras and had lived in the United States for 18 years, her brother, Martin Suazo, told CNN. Sandoval was married with an 18-year-old son and a 5-year-old daughter.
One of Sandoval’s relatives, Marina Maldonado Villeda, described Sandoval in a Facebook post as “a warm, quality guy, an entrepreneur with a vision and mission to serve our community.”
“We sincerely hope that he is alive, our prayers that he will see you again and continue to enjoy your joy and enthusiasm. We embrace you with the Suazo Sandoval family,” Villeda wrote.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Guatemala confirmed that two of the alleged victims were Guatemalan nationals, but did not identify them by name, only specifying that they were 26 and 35 years old and were from San Luis, Petén and Camotán, Chiquimula.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador also confirmed to journalists that three Mexican nationals were victims of the bridge collapse. One of them was saved.
President Biden pledged Tuesday to use federal money to help rebuild the bridge and reopen the port, but Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told reporters at a press briefing Wednesday that this does not would be neither “quick, nor easy, nor cheap”, noting that the span initially took five hours. years to build.
Buttigieg also said that without the distress call, the quick actions of first responders and the timing of the collapse, the death toll could have been much higher.
“Without several factors, the loss of human life could have been counted in the dozens,” he added.
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