The largest crane on the Eastern Seaboard was being transported to Baltimore so crews on March 29 can begin removing the wreckage of a collapsed highway bridge that has halted a search for four workers still missing days after the disaster and blocked the city’s vital port from operating.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said the crane, which was arriving by barge and can lift up to 1,000 tons, will be one of at least two used to clear the channel of the twisted metal and concrete remains of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, and the cargo ship that hit it this week.

“The best minds in the world” are working on the plans for removal, Moore said. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for the Baltimore District told the governor that it and the Navy were mobilizing major resources from around the country at record speed to clear the channel.

“This is not just about Maryland,” Mr. Moore said. “This is about the nation’s economy. The port handles more cars and more farm equipment than any other port in America.”

Mr. Moore warned of a “very long road ahead” to recover from the loss of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge as the Biden administration approved $60 million in immediate federal aid after the deadly collapse.

“Meanwhile the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was moving the largest crane on the Eastern Seaboard to help remove the wreckage of the bridge,” Mr. Moore said, so work to clear the channel and reopen the key shipping route can begin. The machine, which can lift up to 1,000 tonnes, was expected to arrive on Thursday evening, and U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen said a second crane with a 400-tonne capacity could arrive on Saturday.

“The State is “deeply grateful” for the federal funds and support,” Mr. Moore said at an evening news conference.

Mr. Moore promised on Thursday that “the best minds in the world” were working on plans to clear the debris, move the cargo ship that rammed into the bridge from the channel, recover the bodies of the four remaining workers presumed dead and investigate what went wrong.

“Government is working hand in hand with industry to investigate the area, including the wreck, and remove the ship,” said Mr. Moore, a Democrat, who said the quick aid is needed to “lay the foundation for a rapid recovery.” President Joe Biden has pledged the federal government would pay the full cost of rebuilding the bridge.

“This work is not going to take hours. This work is not going to take days. This work is not going to take weeks,” Mr. Moore said. “We have a very long road ahead of us.”

Van Hollen said 32 members of the Army Corps of Engineers are surveying the scene of the collapse and 38 Navy contractors are working on the salvage operation.

The devastation left behind after the powerless cargo ship struck a support pillar on Tuesday is extensive. Divers recovered the bodies of two men from a pickup truck in the Patapsco River near the bridge’s middle span on Wednesday, but officials said they have to start clearing the wreckage before anyone could reach the bodies of four other missing workers.

Crew of cargo ship that lost power and collided with bridge in Baltimore, U.S. are all Indian

State police have said that based on sonar scans, the vehicles appear to be encased in a “superstructure” of concrete and other debris.

National Transportation Safety Board officials boarded the ship, the Dali, to recover information from its electronics and paperwork and to interview the captain and crew members. Investigators shared a preliminary timeline of events before the crash, which federal and state officials have said appeared to be an accident.

“The best minds in the world are coming together to collect the information that we need to move forward with speed and safety in our response to this collapse,” Mr. Moore said on March 28.

Of the 21 crew members on the ship, 20 are from India, Randhir Jaiswal, the nation’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, told reporters. One was slightly injured and needed stitches, but “all are in good shape and good health,” Mr. Jaiswal said.

“The victims, who were part of a construction crew fixing potholes on the bridge, were from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador,” he said. “At least eight people initially went into the water when the ship struck the bridge column, and two of them were rescued Tuesday,” officials said.

The crash caused the bridge to break and fall into the water within seconds. Authorities had just enough time to stop vehicle traffic, but didn’t get a chance to alert the construction crew.

During the Baltimore Orioles’ opening day game on Thursday, Sgt. Paul Pastorek, Cpl. Jeremy Herbert and Officer Garry Kirts of the Maryland Transportation Authority were honoured for their actions in halting bridge traffic and preventing further loss of life.

The three said in a statement that they were “proud to carry out our duties as officers of this state to save the lives that we could.”

The Dali, which is managed by Synergy Marine Group, was headed from Baltimore to Sri Lanka. It is owned by Grace Ocean Private Limited and was chartered by Danish shipping giant Maersk. Synergy extended sympathies to the victims’ families in a statement on Thursday.

“We deeply regret this incident and the problems it has caused for the people of Baltimore and the region’s economy that relies on this vitally important port,” Synergy said, noting that it would continue to cooperate with investigators.

Scott Cowan, president of the International Longshoremen’s Association Local 333, said the union is scrambling to help its roughly 2,400 members whose jobs are at risk of drying up until shipping can resume in the Port of Baltimore. “If there’s no ships, there’s no work,” he said. “We’re doing everything we can.”

“The huge vessel, nearly as long as the Eiffel Tower is tall, was carrying nearly 4,700 shipping containers, 56 of them with hazardous materials inside. Fourteen of those were destroyed,” officials said. However, industrial hygienists who evaluated the contents identified them as perfumes and soaps, according to the Key Bridge Joint Information Center.

“There was no immediate threat to the environment,” the centre said. About 21 gallons (80 litres) of oil from a bow thruster on the ship is believed to have caused a sheen in the waterway, Coast Guard Rear Adm. Shannon Gilreath said on Thursday.

Booms were placed to prevent any spreading, and state environmental officials were sampling the water. At the moment there are also cargo containers hanging dangerously off the side of the ship, Gilreath said, adding, “We’re trying to keep our first responders … as safe as possible.”

Divers sent to work beneath the bridge debris and container ship will encounter challenging conditions, including limited visibility and moving currents, according to officials and expert observers.

“Debris can be dangerous, especially when you can’t see what’s right in front of you,” said Donald Gibbons, an instructor with the Eastern Atlantic States Carpenters Technical Centers.

The sudden loss of a highway that carries 30,000 vehicles a day and the port disruption will affect not only thousands of dockworkers and commuters but also U.S. consumers, who are likely to feel the impact of shipping delays.

The governors of New York and New Jersey offered to take on cargo shipments that have been disrupted, to try to minimise supply chain problems.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who met on Thursday with supply chain officials, has said the Biden administration was focussed on reopening the port and rebuilding the bridge, but he did not put a timeline on those efforts. From 1960 to 2015, there were 35 major bridge collapses worldwide due to ship or barge collisions, according to the World Association for Waterborne Transport Infrastructure.

A view of the vessel MV Dali under a collapsed portion of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, March 27, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AFP

The story so far: On March 26, a container vessel ran into the pillar of a bridge on the Patapsco River in Baltimore, bringing a part of the structure crashing down together with some people and cars on the bridge. By late March 27, the U.S. Coast Guard had concluded its search in the river for the bodies of the six people who fell. The vessel had an all-Indian crew.

What is the timeline of events?

After departing from the port of Baltimore at 12.28 am local time, the 300-metre-long vessel Dali was headed for Colombo, Sri Lanka, with several containers of oil and some hazardous material. Less than an hour after its departure, people nearby reported the Dali’s lights flickering. Two minutes later, the ship’s course also started to angle towards two of the bridge’s pillars in the river. At 1.27 am local time, the Dali mowed into the pillar and brought down a segment of the bridge.

Shortly before the collision, a U.S. Coast Guard report said, the Dali’s crew had broadcast a mayday signal seeking help to control the vessel. This signal had alerted the Coast Guard as well as prompted local authorities to close the bridge for further traffic. A part of the bridge’s superstructure also fell on the vessel, smashing some containers and leaving them balanced precariously on the vessel.

Maryland governor Wes Moore later declared a state of emergency. The emergency response to the collision and collapse included fire service personnel, police officers, and officers of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). According to deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, they were present to ascertain whether the collision was accidental or deliberate. As of March 28, federal officials had virtually ruled out deliberate intent.

The Dali belongs to the Danish shipping giant Maersk, flies a Singapore flag, and is managed by the Synergy Marine Group, headed by Rajesh Unni. It had two pilots at the time of the collision.

What were the casualties?

The Synergy Marine Group said in statements that all the 22 crew members were safe, that one had suffered minor injuries, and that he had since been treated.

The bridge’s collapse dropped eight people through 15 metres into the Patapsco River, which at the time had a temperature of around 8 degrees C. While two people were fished out soon after, the Coast Guard postponed the search for six others because of the river’s depth, temperature, lack of light, the presence of sharp objects in the water, and the risk of more parts of the bridge and/or the containers falling in.

Late on March 27, the Coast Guard called the search off altogether. Read Admiral Shannon Gilreath told reporters the team no longer expected to find the six persons alive given the ambient conditions and the time lapsed since the incident.

What happened to the ship?

The Dali is propelled by a nine-cylinder two-stroke diesel engine. In the two-stroke cycle, fuel is pumped into the combustion chamber, where a spark plug causes the fuel-air mixture to explode. The energy release pushes a piston up, rotating a crankshaft attached to a propeller. The explosion’s residue (exhaust) is then pumped out of the engine to bring the piston down in the second stroke.

According to the Coast Guard, just before the collision, the Dali lost all mechanical power, electronics, and the ability to steer the ship, pointing to an engine failure. Onlookers reported the vessel’s lights coming back on shortly after, which experts have attributed to a backup generator. The Coast Guard also recorded a statement that at least one of the ship’s engines “coughed” and that “the smell of burned fuel was everywhere in the engine room”.

In 2016, the Dali had collided with and damaged a container terminal berth in Antwerp. In 2023, Chilean authorities reported issues with Dali’s propulsion system, although according to Singaporean authorities the vessel had cleared two inspections at foreign ports in June and September that year. As it got started on its preliminary investigation, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said it will also be checking whether the fuel used in the Dali’s engine was contaminated.

Could the collision have been prevented?

The Francis Scott Key Bridge – the structure in question – was built in the mid-1970s. Colin Caprani, a civil engineer at Monash University, Melbourne, wrote that the protective shielding around the pillars into which the ship moved weren’t designed to withstand the impact of such a large vessel. Together with the vessel’s speed at the time of collision, around 15 km/hr, he estimated the impact force to be equivalent to 20,000 tonnes.

In 2016, Panama Canal authorities upgraded its locks to allow larger ships to pass through. The Dali‘s design was subsequently modified to increase its container capacity by 10%. Before 2016, such large ships had seldom made port on the U.S. west coast, including Baltimore, for this reason – nor did bridges over waterways here have to contend with them.

According to a 2018 article from the World Association for Waterborne Transport Infrastructure, there were 35 “major bridge collapses” after a ship or barge collision between 1960 and 2015, in all killing 342 people. In the deadliest incident, a passenger vessel slammed into a bridge on the Volga river in Russia in 1983, killing 176 people, most of them on the ship. The same article said most of the bridge collapses had happened in the U.S.