Two bodies have been recovered from the Patapsco River following the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore.
The two men, identified as 35-year-old Alejandro Hernandez Fuentez of Baltimore and 26-year-old Darlene Rania El Castillo Cabrera of Dundalk, were brought to shore Wednesday morning, police confirmed. The families of both men have been informed.
“Crews made a tragic discovery shortly before 10:00 ET with a red pickup truck near the bridge,” Ronald L. Butler of the Maryland State Police said at a briefing Wednesday night.
“Divers recovered two victims trapped inside the vehicle,” he told reporters.
“My heart, and the heart of the entire city of Baltimore, is with you and will be with you forever,” Mayor Brandon Scott said of the victims’ families.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said the ship’s crew notified officials that it had lost power moments before the collision.
The freighter Dali becomes trapped beneath part of the Francis Scott Key Bridge structure after the ship collided with the bridge.
Six construction workers who were repairing potholes on the bridge are presumed dead when a cargo container ship crashed into it. Two surviving workers were pulled from the water Tuesday.
The search for the remaining six began early Wednesday morning after the Coast Guard canceled its active search and rescue mission Tuesday declaring the missing people presumed dead.
However, divers are now unable to safely navigate the waters due to concrete and debris that fell into the water from the destroyed bridge, Maryland police said Wednesday night.
Police have used sonar scanners and believe the other vehicles are “encased in a superstructure and concrete.”
Details of the fatal incident are still emerging, but on Wednesday a dock worker claimed that the Dali freighter that crashed into the bridge suffered a “serious electrical problem” while docked in Baltimore days earlier.
Julie Mitchell, co-manager of Container Royalty, a company that tracks cargo, told CNN The ship was anchored in port for at least 48 hours before the fatal accident.
After the devastation, he said: ‘And those two days, they had serious power outages… they had a serious electrical problem. It was a total power failure, loss of engine power, everything.
Mitchell explained that the refrigerated boxes tripped circuit breakers on board the ship on several occasions and mechanics had been trying to fix the problem.
He said he didn’t know if the problem had been fixed when the ship sailed.
The 1.6-mile Key Bridge partially collapsed after the cargo container ship crashed into one of its support structures shortly before 1:30 a.m. Tuesday morning.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said the ship’s crew notified officials that it had lost power moments before the collision.
Mitchell told CNN that major power problems aboard large vessels like the Dali are “not that common at all,” and described the strange incident as “very rare.”
Six workers who were on the bridge pouring concrete to fix potholes as part of a night shift are still missing and presumed dead.
The Dali freighter that crashed into the Key Bridge suffered a “serious electrical problem” while docked in Baltimore days earlier, according to a dockworker.
The first of the six: Miguel Luna, 49, was the first missing construction worker identified after the collapse
“They shouldn’t have let the ship leave port until they had it under control,” he said.
It has been widely reported that the Dali suffered a loss of propulsion leading to steering problems in the run-up to the accident which caused the iconic bridge to collapse like a “house of cards”.
A Dali official also said that before the accident, the engines “coughed and then stopped.” There was not enough time before the ship hit the bridge to drop anchor, causing the ship to drift.
“The ship was left without steering, without electronic system… The smell of burning fuel was everywhere in the engine room and it was completely dark,” the officer said.
When a ship like the Dali runs out of power, backup generators kick in, but they don’t perform all the same functions as main power, Pagoulatos said.
In 2016, the Dali suffered an accident in the port of Antwerp.
Antwerp port authorities said the container ship Dali collided with a dock on July 11, 2016, while trying to leave the North Sea container terminal.
A 2016 inspection of the ship in Antwerp found it had a structural problem, which was described as “hull damage affecting its seaworthiness,” according to data published on Equasis, a public database for the shipping industry.
Maynor Suazo, 37, a native of Honduras, has been named as the other man missing and presumed dead.
Julie Mitchell, co-manager of Container Royalty, a company that tracks cargo, told CNN that the ship was anchored in port for at least 48 hours before the deadly accident.
Inspectors discovered a problem in the Dali’s machinery in June, but a more recent examination found no deficiencies, according to the Equasis shipping information system.
Port authorities said the ship remained at the dock for repairs for some time after the incident.
“As a general rule, these accidents are investigated and ships can only leave after experts have determined it is safe to do so,” a spokesperson for the port of Antwerp told Reuters.
Video footage on social media showed the ship crashing into the bridge in the dark, vehicle headlights visible along the stretch as it crashed into the water and the ship caught fire.
Paul Wiedefeld, secretary of the Maryland Department of Transportation, said at a news conference Wednesday that the state “intends to receive federal dollars very quickly” to begin rebuilding.
“We will come up with a design to replace that bridge as quickly as possible to get the port back up and running and the community back up and running,” he said.
The Port of Baltimore handles more auto cargo than any other U.S. port — more than 750,000 vehicles in 2022, according to port data.
He The collapsed bridge will now cause more chaos for an overloaded population supply chain and could increase prices in the coming months.
The port generates $2.6 billion in business revenue, $3.3 billion in wages and nearly $400 million in taxes annually, according to the Maryland government.
Photos showed at least a dozen large ships parked in the Chesapeake Bay awaiting instructions on which port they would be diverted to.
This aerial image shows container ships anchored in the Chesapeake Bay off Annapolis.
Each green dot is a large container ship or oil tanker stuck in the Chesapeake Bay, unable to enter the Port of Baltimore.
Experts estimated that more than $15 million in local economic activity would be lost for each day the port remains closed.
Over the next few weeks, 107 ships scheduled to dock in Baltimore will have to find another port, and many more the longer the port remains closed.
Baltimore handled 52.3 million tons of foreign cargo last year worth about $80.8 billion, ranking ninth in the United States in both metrics and records for the port.
It’s too early to estimate the cost to shipping, consumers and the U.S. economy, but every day the port is closed there is $217 million in cargo that doesn’t arrive.
The port supports more than 15,000 jobs, including 2,000 dock workers who lose $2 million a day in lost wages, and another 140,000 depend on port activity.