'Developing mass casualty event' as ship strike collapses bridge in US

Some reports suggest as many as 20 people were in the river, with dive and rescue teams on site attempting to locate them. Baltimore Mayor Brandon M Scott and Baltimore County executive Johnny Olszewski confirmed teams were responding. Sky News reported the first vessel on the scene had been McAllister Towing’s tug Eric McAllister, which was joined shortly after by Bridget McAllister and a search and rescue vessel.

McAllister Towing said it has responded to requests for "support response operations associated with this morning‘s Frances Scott Key bridge incident". The company said that currently, Eric McAllister, Bridget McAllister and a third tugboat, Timothy McAllister are assisting search and rescue efforts.

The four-lane Francis Scott Key bridge serves as the outermost crossing over Baltimore Harbor and is an important link of Interstate-695 (I-695), known as the Baltimore Beltway.

Singapore-flagged Dali is a 9,962-TEU, 300-m container ship that was listed as leaving a Baltimore terminal laden with containers and heading to Colombo, Sri Lanka before the incident, according to automatic identification system data. 

Social media video shows the 48-m wide ship crashed bow-first into one of the supports beneath the main span of the steel, continuous through truss bridge. The support and span of the bridge appeared to collapse on to the fore of the ship and into the water, with another support and span collapsing immediately afterwards.

Expert view on Baltimore bridge collapse

UK-based structural engineering professor at Aston University Dr Marina Bock said the bridge was not designed to withstand collapse of one of its main support structures.

"The Francis Scott Key Bridge is a metal truss bridge with a suspended deck, and from videos shown by the media it seems that the vessel has hit a main pier of the bridge. The main piers rest on soil underwater and they are part of the foundations of the bridge. This type of bridge is not designed to redistribute loads in the event of a main pier collapsing," she said. 

Noting that video footage of the incident shows a "progressive collapse" of the bridge, with multiple bridge elements failing successively, Dr Bock said "Maybe if the vessel had hit a small section of the suspended deck the bridge would have been able to survive the collision but not a main pier.
"I am assuming the first line of investigation will be to understand why the vessel could not avoid the pier when there were no other vessels around."

Shipboard power loss 

The cause of the incident is not yet known, but video of Dali on its approach to the bridge appears to show the ship losing power twice. 

American broadcast news company CBS said it had reviewed an unclassified memo from the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in which the agency said the ship lost power before the collision and had the information confirmed as accurate by an unspecified US law enforcement official. 

During a press conference, officials confirmed the vessel had issued a mayday call before the collision, which allowed authorities to stop traffic onto the bridge. 

According to CBS, Maryland Governor Moore said that he could "confirm that the crew notified authorities of a power issue," and said that the decision to stop traffic from crossing the bridge "saved lives last night". 

It remains unknown how many vehicles were on the bridge at the time of its collapse. 

Theories about the cause of Dali striking the Francis Scott Key bridge quickly began to surface on social media, with at least one post showing the vessel had appeared to lose power twice as it approached the bridge. BBC news editors have looked at the vessel’s transit path and noted a sudden turn and slowing at the same time the vessel’s lights dimmed on the video, indicating power loss could have played a role in the vessel striking the bridge. The AIS tracking and satellite imagery provided by VesselsValue above offers a view of the vessel’s course. However, satellite data and video footage can not indicate or confirm any particular cause for the incident.

The US National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates transport-related incidents, said it will be investigating this incident.

"NTSB is launching a go-team to investigate the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore."

The ship strike and bridge collapse in Baltimore comes two years after an Evergreen container ship grounded outside Baltimore and remained stuck on a mud bank for a month following errors by a Baltimore maritime pilot and three years after sister ship Ever Given disrupted global trade by grounding in and blocking traffic through the Suez Canal. 

*Editor’s note: Martyn Wingrove and Jamey Bergman have contributed to this story, with additional reporting by John Snyder and Keshav Hrishikesh.

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