Early in the morning of March 26, a cargo ship called the Dali struck Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge.
The Dali is owned by Grace Ocean Private Ltd and was launched in 2014. At 985 feet long, the Dali was carrying nearly 4,700 metal shipping containers at the time of the accident. The Dali struck the Key Bridge at nine miles per hour, minutes into a 27 day journey to Sri Lanka. The ship reportedly suffered a total blackout including failure of the engines and steering systems.
The Dali’s crew and captain took all necessary precautions to minimize the damage from the collision, giving authorities enough time to evacuate the bridge and minimize casualties. The authorities were unable to evacuate the eight person maintenance crew working on the bridge at the time of the collapse. Two workers were rescued from the water after the bridge collapsed. The bodies of Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, 35, and Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, 26, were recovered by divers on Wednesday and the remaining four workers, Miguel Luna, 49; Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval, 38; Jose Mynor Lopez, 30s; and Carlos Hernandez are presumed dead.
The Port of Baltimore is a major asset for the East Coast shipping industry, and the collapse of the Key Bridge is creating huge problems already. Without the bridge, ship and commuter traffic was immediately impacted. Trade is being redirected to a temporary channel to avoid major economic losses. The collapse is not expected to widely affect world trade.
President Joe Biden, who is set to visit the site of the collapse this week, has approved $60 million of emergency federal aid to cover the initial cost of the clean up. The US Army Corps of Engineers is surveying for a salvage operation, and the US Navy is contributing cranes to the cleanup effort. The effort to rebuild the bridge is expected to be extremely long and expensive.
“This work is not going to take hours. This work is not going to take days. This work is not going to take weeks. We have a very long road ahead of us,” Maryland Governor Wes Moore said.
The collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge is a terrible tragedy that has devastated the Baltimore community. Efforts to recover the bodies of the remaining victims, rebuild the bridge, and resume activity in the port of Baltimore will continue for the foreseeable future.
