Six Workers Presumed Dead as Efforts Shift to Removing Debris of Collapsed Baltimore Bridge

The container ship Dali collided with one of the central pylons of the Francis Scott Bridge Mar. 26, leading to the collapse of the bridge. 

Photo Courtesy U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Six construction workers were still missing and presumed dead March 27 in the aftermath of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore, while the Army Corps of Engineers and U.S. Coast Guard mobilized to form a marine salvage and pollution response plan.

The immediate goals, besides recovery operations, are to remove portions of the steel superstructure that came crashing down onto the bow of the ship Dali and reopen the Port of Baltimore.

“As this aspect of the response shifts to recovery operations and consistent with the President’s direction to get the port up and running as soon as possible, the Coast Guard’s highest priority is restoring waterway for shipping, stabilizing the motor vessel Dali and removing it from the site,” said Vice Admiral Peter Gautier at a press conference.

Also, investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board have retrieved the voyage data recorder, or black box of the ship. Marcel Muise, NTSB’s investigator in charge, said the VDR is far more basic than an airplane’s flight data recorder, but investigators had already been able to put together a timeline of events using its data.

Gautier added that under the Corps’ leadership, divers and unmanned remote vehicles are conducting underwater analysis to mitigate any pollution threats. “The vessel is stable, but still has 1.5 million gallons of oil” on board, he noted. The Dali was carrying 4,700 cargo containers, he said. Two went overboard, but are not considered hazardous, while 13 containers on the bow were damaged by the fallen bridge. The vessel’s manifest shows 56 containers holding a combined 764 tons of hazardous material, according to NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy.

“The real critical thing here is a portion of the bridge remains on the bow of that ship, and we will be coordinating very closely with the Army Corps of Engineers and their contractors to first affect the removal of that debris before the vessel can then be removed,” Gautier said.

The ship channel to the Port of Baltimore remains blocked by debris from the fallen bridge.
Drone image courtesy NTSB

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said it was too early to give estimates of cost or schedule regarding either the bridge or the port facilities. However, $100 million to $200 million worth of cargo typically passes through the Port of Baltimore every day, with 8,000 jobs and $2 million in wages affected by the closure.

Provisions in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act “allow us to begin releasing funding while the cost is being determined” for all recovery work, Buttigieg said, noting that an emergency relief funding request from the Maryland Transportation Authority had come in just before the press conference. “We are processing that immediately,” he said.

Buttigieg pointed out that the IIJA authorized an emergency relief account, of which $950 million was available, but had many applicants. “We are likely to turn to Congress to top up the funds, but that’s not a barrier to the next few days in getting the ball rolling.”

Noting that the bridge’s original construction took five years, he added that it would not necessarily take five years to rebuild it. “When we helped Pennsylvania and California swiftly reopen I-95 and I-10 respectively, there was terrific work done there—but that was addressing comparatively short spans of bridges over land relative to this span over water,” he said. “And of course, in the Baltimore case, we still don’t fully know the condition of the portions of the bridge that are still standing or have infrastructure that is below the surface of the water. So rebuilding will not be quick or easy or cheap, but we will get it done.”

Biden gave “clear direction to tear down any barriers, bureaucratic and financial, that would affect the timeline,” he added.

Investigation LaunchesThe National Transportation Safety Board is leading the investigation with support from the U.S. Coast Guard and other agencies, Homendy, the NTSB chair, told reporters. 

Investigators’ first priority while working at the scene is to gather all perishable evidence, document the scene with photographs and recover any recordings. The Dali had 21 crew and two pilots on board at the time of the incident, and Homendy said investigators began interviewing them on the afternoon of March 27. 

NTSB will then seek technical information like inspection and maintenance records from parties to the investigation, such as the Federal Highway Administration, U.S. Coast Guard, Maryland Transportation Authority and Association of Maryland Pilots, Homendy said. They have also invited the vessel’s owner, Grace Ocean Private Ltd., and its operator, Synergy Marine Private Ltd., to participate.

“These parties are part of the fact finding, but they do not conduct analysis with the NTSB,” Homendy told reporters at a press conference.

NTSB has a team of 24 people on scene, including Homendy and fellow NTSB board member Alvin Brown. “That’s a little larger than a typical NTSB investigation team,” said a former employee, an attorney involved in the Florida International University bridge collapse investigation who told ENR that that team had closer to a dozen or so investigators. But the presence of two NTSB board members may explain the size of the group, as they generally have staff that go with them. Baltimore’s proximity to Washington, D.C., also means it will be easy to bring in additional experts as needed.

Homendy said the team includes structural engineers and bridge experts who will be looking at the bridge’s structure and how it was built. NTSB has its own engineers on staff and while the agency’s staff numbers only around 400 people, it is able to bring in other federal resources as necessary. 

The team aims to release a preliminary report within four weeks and a full report and recommendations in 12-24 months, but would issue any urgent safety recommendations sooner if needed, Homendy said.

Depending on what the investigation finds, NTSB’s recommendations could relate to factors like bridge design, inspections or maintenance. And the agency could also make recommendations related to how ships are steered out of harbors, or what kind of pilings and safety measures are in the water leading up to bridges.

Examination of Fender SystemsIt is unclear what the bridge’s fender system was, but it was constructed before the collapse of Florida’s Sunshine Skyway Bridge in 1980 due to a freighter’s collision that prompted new design standards. 

“Every time there is a bridge failure, we gain more knowledge about the limits we have to consider,” says John Hillman, structures engineering director with Kiewit. The Sunshine Skyway “brought to the forefront a need for clear guidance of what’s required for vessel collisions.”

The Francis Scott Key bridge construction also predated the concept of designing against progressive collapse, in which the failure of one bridge member causes a domino effect, he notes. 

Moreover, ships have increased in size and weight over the decades, moving from post-Panamax to Neo-Panamax. Although the Dali was not carrying freight at full capacity, its total dead-weight metric tonnage is 116,851, of Neo-Panamax capacity, according to vesselfinder.com.

According to a finance committee report from fall 2023, the Maryland Transportation Authority had planned to install a fiberglass jacket protection system for the bridge columns, along with a deck replacement in late 2029, in a three-year project.

Buttigieg noted that “modern bridges around the world are designed with features to mitigate impacts and protect piers” but that “there is debate among [engineers] about whether those features could’ve had a role in a situation like this.” He added that the impact was “100,000 tons going into this pier at once.” 

“Whether any design feature would’ve made a difference—we will get more information as the investigation proceeds,” he said. 

The bridge’s most recent fracture critical inspection was last May, and the bridge was considered to be in satisfactory condition, Homendy said.

A U.S.-based major bridge construction manager cited an email from Ian Firth, a British structural engineer and bridge designer, to The Baltimore Sun: “Many similar bridges are protected by barriers designed to prevent or reduce the impact when a vessel collides with a pier, especially those crossing busy shipping channels where large vessels like this one come and go frequently. Such installations can take a number of forms,” Firth said, “including cable systems, pontoons, custom-destined caissons and submerged islands. But among the most widely used are dolphins—circular sheet pile cells filled with material such as sand or concrete that essentially serve as bumpers.”

The U.S. bridge expert added: “The river does not appear to be too deep from images, so a rock island around each pier would have absorbed the energy and prevented the ship from geometrically touching the structure. Most other types of pier protection would likely have been overwhelmed by the size of this ship. Regulations should be reviewed, just like overweight trucks must ask if they can have a special permit to utilize a bridge, with more scrutiny in evaluating. Regulations should be also be reviewed so that environmental issues of rock islands would not be discarded due solely to environmental issues in the case where no other protections work. We also need motion detectors to sirens and automatic roadway gates when a high ship approaches too close to piers.” 

Aileen Cho, ENR’s senior transportation editor, is a native of Los Angeles and recovering New Yorker. She studied English and theater at Occidental College, where a reporter teaching the one existing journalism course encouraged her to apply for the LA Times Minority Editing Training Program. Her journalism training led to her first stories about transportation, working as a cub reporter with the Greenwich Time. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and New York Times. Many of her experiences with engineers and contractors have inspired material for her alternative theater productions way, way off Broadway. For ENR, Aileen has traveled the world, clambering over bridges in China, touring an airport in Abu Dhabi and descending into dark subway tunnels in New York City. She is a regular at transportation conferences, where she finds that airport and mass transit engineers really know how to have fun. Aileen is always eager to hop on another flight because there are so many interesting projects and people, and she gets tired of throwing her cats off her computer in her home office in Long Beach, California. She is a very conflicted Mets/Dodgers fan.

James Leggate is an online news editor at ENR. He has reported on a variety of issues for more than 10 years and his work has contributed to several regional Associated Press Media Editors and Murrow award wins.