Washington:

The biggest operational crane on the U.S. Eastern Seaboard towered over Baltimore’s port on Friday, ready to begin clearing the wreckage of the Francis Scott Key Bridge days after a cargo ship crashed into it, sending the span crashing into the harbour.

Crews were still surveying the damage as of midday Friday. The crane, which can lift up to 1,000 tons, arrived late Thursday night and will probably start hauling debris out of the water on Saturday morning, according to U.S. Coast Guard spokesperson Carmen Carver.

A second crane is en route and expected to arrive soon to assist the effort, she said.

State and federal authorities are focused on clearing the busy port and rebuilding the bridge after the Dali, a massive container ship that had lost power, plowed into a support column early on Tuesday, toppling the structure and leaving six workers presumed dead.

Divers have recovered two bodies of the missing construction workers, who were repairing the bridge at the time of the collision. The remaining four are believed to be trapped beneath the water. All were immigrants from Mexico and Central America.

Finding the remaining bodies is the top priority, Maryland Governor Wes Moore told a press conference on Thursday. Crews must also assess how to remove the stuck vessel, loaded with thousands of containers and trapped by bridge debris.

“The Dali is almost as long as the Eiffel Tower, and the Dali has the Key Bridge on top of it. We’re talking 3,000 or 4,000 tons of steel that’s sitting on top of that ship, so we’ve got work to do,” Moore said at Thursday’s press conference.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Divers recovered the remains of two of the six missing workers more than a day after a cargo ship smashed into Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge. The bodies of two men were found in a red pickup truck submerged in the icy waters of the Patapsco River. Rescuers pulled two workers from the water alive on Tuesday, and one was hospitalized.

Six workers on the bridge are presumed dead. The two men whose bodies were recovered on Wednesday were identified as Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, 35, of Baltimore, originally from Mexico, and Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, 26, of nearby Dundalk, originally from Guatemala.

The workers came from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, according to a press conference.

Authorities have suspended efforts to recover bodies in the 50-foot-deep (15 m) waters surrounding the twisted ruins due to treacherous conditions.

At the time of the crash, a construction crew was fixing potholes on the bridge and eight people fell 185 feet (56 m) into the river where water temperatures were 47 degrees Fahrenheit (8 degrees Celsius). Two workers were rescued, one unharmed and one injured.

Authorities saved lives by stopping vehicles from using the bridge after the ship sent out a mayday call.

The ship also dropped its anchors to slow down, buying time to clear the bridge.

When did the Baltimore bridge collapse?

Shortly after 1 a.m. EDT (0500 GMT) on Tuesday, a container ship named the Dali was sailing down the Patapsco River on its way to Sri Lanka. At 1:24 a.m., it suffered a total power failure and all its lights went out.

Three minutes later, at 1:27 a.m., the container ship struck a pylon of the bridge, crumpling almost the entire structure into the water.

Less than a minute before impact, a first responder on emergency radio responded to the crew’s mayday call by sending officers to halt traffic onto the bridge.

Without their fast work, the scale of the disaster may have been far greater, even during the early morning hours when vehicular traffic is relatively light.

Tuesday’s disaster may be the worst U.S. bridge collapse since 2007, when a design error caused the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis to plunge into the Mississippi River, killing 13 people.

Why did the bridge collapse?

Bridges such as the one in Baltimore are classified as “fracture critical” by the federal government – meaning that if one portion of the bridge collapses, the rest of the structure falls. There are more than 16,800 such spans in the U.S., according to the Federal Highway Administration.

The head of the National Transportation Safety Board said the bridge lacked structural engineering redundancies common to newer spans, making it more vulnerable to catastrophic collapse.

The Key Bridge opened in 1977 – three years before a similar vessel collision of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Tampa Bay, Florida, killed 35 people, and prompted bridge designers to implement better protections for foundation piers.

Who will pay for the damage and how much will it cost?

President Joe Biden promised to visit Baltimore soon and said he wanted the federal government to pay to rebuild the bridge.

The Transportation Department on Thursday awarded $60 million in “quick release” emergency relief funds to aid in clearing debris and begin the process of rebuilding. To replace the bridge, Congress would need to approve funding. After the bridge collapse in 2007 in Minnesota, Congress allocated $250 million.

Initial estimates put the cost of rebuilding the bridge at $600 million, according to economic analysis company IMPLAN.

Federal officials have told Maryland lawmakers the final cost of rebuilding the bridge could soar to at least $2 billion, Roll Call reported, citing a source familiar with the discussions.

Insurers could face billions of dollars in claims, analysts said, with one putting the cost at as much as $4 billion, which would make the tragedy a record shipping insurance loss.

How long will it take to rebuild?

Rebuilding could be a lengthy process and will depend on whether any of the remaining structure can be salvaged. It took five years to construct the original bridge from 1972-1977.

The closure of the port for just one month would cost Maryland $28 million in lost business, according to IMPLAN.

What ship hit the Baltimore Bridge?

The Dali was leaving Baltimore en route to Colombo, Sri Lanka, with 21 crew and two pilots on board.

The ship measures 948 feet (289 m) – as long as three football fields. It was stacked high with containers but was capable of carrying twice as much cargo. Safety investigators recovered the ship’s black box, which can give them the vessel’s position, speed, heading, radar, bridge audio, and radio communications as well as alarms.

The same ship was involved in an incident in the port of Antwerp, Belgium, in 2016, when it hit a quay as it tried to exit the North Sea container terminal.

A later inspection in June 2023 carried out in San Antonio, Chile, found the vessel had “propulsion and auxiliary machinery” deficiencies, according to data on the public Equasis website, which provides information on ships.

The registered owner of the Singapore-flagged ship is Grace Ocean Pte Ltd, LSEG data show. Synergy Marine Group managed the ship, and Maersk chartered the vessel.

What do we know about the bridge that collapsed?

The Francis Scott Key Bridge was one of three ways to cross the Baltimore Harbor and handled 31,000 cars per day or 11.3 million vehicles a year.

The steel structure was four lanes wide and rose 185 feet (56 m) above the river.    

It opened in 1977 and crosses the Patapsco River, where U.S. national anthem author Francis Scott Key wrote the “Star Spangled Banner” in 1814 after witnessing the British defeat at the Battle of Baltimore and the British bombing of Fort McHenry.

How will the bridge collapse impact the Baltimore port?

Traffic was suspended at the port, the 17th largest in the country.

The flow of containers to Baltimore can likely be redistributed to bigger ports. However, there could be major disruptions in shipping cars, coal and sugar.

It is the busiest U.S. port for car shipments, handling at least 750,000 vehicles in 2023, according to data from the Maryland Port Administration.

In 2023, the port was the second busiest for coal exports.

It is also the largest U.S. port by volume for handling farm and construction machinery, as well as agricultural products such as sugar and salt.     

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Singapore:

Singapore’s port authority said Wednesday that a cargo ship that slammed into a Baltimore bridge, causing it to collapse and block one of the busiest US commercial harbours, had passed two overseas inspections in 2023.

“The vessel’s required classification society and statutory certificates covering the structural integrity of the vessel and functionality of the vessel’s equipment, were valid at the time of the incident,” the port authority said.

It added that a faulty monitor gauge for fuel pressure was rectified in June.

Late Tuesday, the port authority said its investigators and those from the Transport Safety Investigation Bureau were heading to Baltimore, offering assistance to the US Coast Guard.

The Singapore-flagged ship had “experienced momentary loss of propulsion” just before it ran into the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which collapsed and blocked the commercial harbour.

The Port of Baltimore is the ninth-busiest major US port in terms of both foreign cargo handled and foreign cargo value, and is directly responsible for more than 15,000 jobs, supporting almost 140,000 more.

US authorities on Tuesday suspended their search for six people missing after the incident, taking into consideration the cold water temperatures and time passed.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)