‘All hands on deck’: Recovery mission continues for missing workers after bridge collapse, Md. governor prepares for long-term recovery
Divers will plunge back into the Patapsco River around 6 a.m. Wednesday as part of the U.S. Coast Guard’s plan to recover the bodies of six construction workers who were on the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore early Tuesday morning when a cargo ship rammed into the bridge’s base, collapsing the structure.
The Coast Guard suspended its search and recovery operation for the workers at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, saying that due to the amount of time that had elapsed since the initial collapse and the cold water temperatures, they did not expect to find any of the workers alive.
“Our heart goes out to the families,” Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said Tuesday night. “I can’t imagine how painful today has been for these families, how painful these hours have been for these families.”
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Even though the operation has shifted away from search and rescue, Moore said there’s still a sense of urgency in the recovery mission.
“We will use every asset to make sure they find a sense of closure, and that’s a commitment that we will keep for these families,” Moore said.
Two other workers were rescued, with one of them remaining in serious condition Tuesday night, Moore said. The other was uninjured. Their crew was repairing potholes on the bridge when the container ship slammed into the bridge, Paul Wiedefeld, the state’s transportation secretary, said.
Reports came in around 1:40 a.m. Tuesday that a large vessel had crashed into a column in the central part of the bridge that carries north and southbound lanes of Interstate 695. It’s not clear what caused the actual crash, but the ship’s crew notified authorities of a power issue through a mayday call before it struck the bridge.
Because of the warning, Moore said port authority workers were able to stop traffic and prevent more vehicles from traveling onto the bridge.
“These people are heroes,” Moore said. “They saved lives last night.”
The National Transportation Safety Board is leading the investigation, with a spokesperson saying Tuesday that investigators hadn’t yet boarded the ship to make room for the Coast Guard’s search efforts. Once that happens and the NTSB accesses recorders on board, it will have more information on what went wrong.
“The preliminary investigation points to an accident,” Moore said.
Baltimore’s Key Bridge was built in 1977 and named for the writer of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It spans the Patapsco River, a vital artery that, along with the Port of Baltimore, is a hub for shipping on the East Coast.
President Joe Biden said the federal government should pay for rebuilding the bridge, and Moore said he’s discussing his legislative options to speed up the recovery with Maryland’s General Assembly and the Biden administration.
“We know that this is going to have to be all hands on deck when we’re talking about the long-term recovery and for what it’s going to mean, not just for elements of the Key Bridge, but all the other elements that this has impacted. We’re talking about a bridge and we’re talking about a harbor that’s responsible for over $191 million of economic activity daily,” Moore said.
“We know that there’s not one angle, one facet or one part of our society that we’re going to be leaning on to be able to address this. So, it will include conversations with the General Assembly, but it also will include conversations with our federal partners,” he added.
Moore said he’ll be back at the site of the collapse Wednesday morning.
“If there’s something that I know that has been on full display today, we are Maryland tough and we are Baltimore strong,” Moore said. “We are going to get through this together. We are committed to getting through it together, and we will be in consistent and constant communication with the people of this state to make sure that everybody understands our collective role in doing right.”
“It’s just unimaginable”
Pamela Wood, Maryland politics and government reporter for the Baltimore Banner, joined WTOP on Tuesday evening to discuss the effects this incident will have on people like her who live and work near the city.
The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity.
Dimitri Sotis: Welcome back, Pamela. Thank you for a few minutes of your time and sharing your reporting. What more would you add tonight to the very tragic turn that this catastrophe has taken?
Pamela Wood: It absolutely is a catastrophe. And I can tell you throughout the whole Baltimore region, this has really just shaken folks up. It’s just unimaginable. And as you reported, this is now going to be a recovery mission, that those missing workers are now presumed dead. There’s a lot of investigation still to come about what exactly happened to this ship. Why it veered off course? Did it lose power? What caused it to strike the support of the Key Bridge, which so many ships go through without a problem every single day? What caused this?
There’s going to be a big investigation, we’re asking a lot of questions. And could it be prevented in the future? And what’s going to happen to the future of that bridge, which is a key artery in the Baltimore region?
Dimitri Sotis: We were speaking with some other colleagues who grew up in Baltimore earlier. Can you romanticize a bridge to a certain extent and its meaning in the city? I’m not at all making light here. But even though it was in this gritty, industrial area, and was kind of a rust-belt type looking bridge, there was something about it that people in Baltimore really liked. And of course, you would expect to wake up every morning, knowing that the Key Bridge is still there. And we can’t say that tonight.
Pamela Wood: I live on one side of the bridge in Anne Arundel County. And I have family on the other side of the bridge of Baltimore County in the Dundalk area, and I drive over it regularly. I get over the bridge and I’m five minutes from my family’s house. One of my young relatives, when she graduated high school a couple of years ago, she was one of the editors of the yearbook; they put a picture of the Key Bridge on the cover of their yearbook because it is such an iconic point in that community.
Everybody goes back and forth, for work, school, shopping. Everybody knows it and sees it. You drive over it. It’s kind of high. It goes up and down pretty quick. It’s not a very long bridge, about a mile and a half. And when you drive over, you can look over and … you see some of the buildings of downtown Baltimore, it’s just absolutely part of the fabric of so many people’s lives, particularly in southeastern Baltimore County, northern Anne Arundel, people drive it all the time.
Dimitri Sotis: The whole idea of rebuilding here, getting the port going again, what is even one first step that you’re hearing about?
Pamela Wood: One first step: getting the ship out, clearing the debris, everything that fell down will take some time. We don’t know how long that will allow the port to reopen. And then they’ll talk about rebuilding and President Biden, who’s pledged that the federal government will pick up the cost of rebuilding a new bridge.
WTOP’s Ciara Wells and Jessica Kronzer contributed to this report.