U.S. federal safety investigators recovered the black box from the freight ship that crashed into a Baltimore bridge, the agency chief said on Wednesday, as rescuers looked for the remains of six workers missing in the bridge collapse.
A highway team also will be looking at the twisted remains of the Francis Scott Key Bridge as they try to determine how and why a container ship smashed into a pillar of the 2.6-kilometre bridge in early morning darkness on Tuesday.
Investigators from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board recovered the data recorder after boarding the ship late on Tuesday, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said. They will interview the ship’s crew, she said.
Homendy said the Singapore-flagged container vessel Dali possessed one of the newer models of data recorder and that officials would be looking to gather information including “positioning of ship, the vessel itself, speed, you name it.”
“It’s gonna take some time,” she said. “We may be on scene five to 10 days.”
Experienced master mariner Alain Arsenault explains what likely led up to a massive container ship striking and destroying a major Baltimore bridge, temporarily closing one of America’s biggest ports.
Homendy said a preliminary fact-based report is typically available in two to four weeks, while an NTSB investigation report with analysis and recommendations can take anywhere from 12 to 24 months.
The disaster forced the indefinite closure of vessel traffic in the Port of Baltimore, one of the busiest on the U.S. Eastern seaboard, and created a traffic quagmire for Baltimore and the surrounding region.
Rescuers pulled two construction workers from the water alive on Tuesday. One was hospitalized. The six presumed to have perished included immigrants from Central America.
Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, told media on Wednesday that investigative teams will be looking at data from the ship’s recorders as well as speaking to witnesses as they work to build a ‘comprehensive timeline’ of the crash.
Maryland Gov. West Moore said Wednesday divers in the water faced dangerous conditions.
“They are down there in darkness where they can literally see about a foot in front of them. They are trying to navigate mangled metal, and they’re also in a place it is now presumed that people have lost their lives,” he said.
First casualty identified
Guatemala’s consulate in Maryland confirmed that two of the missing were Guatemalan citizens working on the bridge. Mexico’s Washington consulate also confirmed in a statement posted on X that Mexican citizens were among the missing, but did not say how many.
The Honduran man was identified as Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandova by that country’s deputy foreign affairs minister.
Officials said the eight were part of a work crew repairing potholes on the road surface when the Dali, leaving Baltimore bound for Sri Lanka, plowed into a support pylon.
The U.S. Coast Guard said it was looking for their bodies 18 hours after they were thrown from the bridge into the frigid waters at the mouth of the Patapsco River.
Divers resumed their search in the 50-foot-deep waters surrounding the twisted ruins.
“We do not believe that we’re going to find any of these individuals alive,” Coast Guard Rear Adm. Shannon Gilreath said at a briefing.
The 289-metre ship had reported a loss of propulsion shortly before impact and dropped anchor to slow the vessel, giving transportation authorities time to halt traffic on the bridge before the crash. That move likely prevented a higher death toll, authorities said.
It was unclear whether authorities also tried to alert the work crew ahead of the impact.
Moore said at a Tuesday news briefing the bridge was up to code with no known structural issues. There was no evidence of intentionality in the crash, officials in law enforcement at the state and federal level said.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore praises search-and-rescue crews early Wednesday as they resumed their efforts around a collapsed bridge. Investigators will probe what happened when a cargo ship hit the critical bridge, Moore said, as well as look at the immediate response and aftermath.
Precise supply chain impact unclear
An inspection of the ship carried out in Chile last year found “propulsion and auxiliary machinery” deficiencies, according to data on the public Equasis website, which provides information on ships.
But Singapore’s Maritime and Port Authority said in a statement that the vessel passed two separate foreign-port inspections in June and September 2023. It said a faulty fuel pressure gauge was rectified before the vessel departed the port following its June 2023 inspection.
The collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore has some experts questioning whether Canadian infrastructure could withstand such a devastating container ship crash.
Video footage on social media showed the vessel slamming into the 47-year-old Key Bridge in darkness, the headlights of vehicles visible on the span as it crashed into the water and the ship caught fire.
All 22 crew members on the ship, owned by Grace Ocean Pte Ltd, were accounted for, its management company, Synergy Marine Pte Ltd., reported.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said closure of the port would have a “major and protracted impact to supply chains.” The Port of Baltimore handles more automobile freight than any other U.S. port — more than 750,000 vehicles in 2022, according to port data, as well as container and bulk cargo, ranging from sugar to coal.
Still, economists and logistics experts said they doubted the port closure would unleash a major U.S. supply chain crisis or major spike in the price of goods, due to ample capacity at rival shipping hubs along the Eastern seaboard.
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott says the focus right now is on recovering those who were lost in the bridge collapse.