NTSB releases timeline of events aboard Dali leading to Baltimore bridge collision

The NTSB said its vessel operations, design and engineering group boarded the vessel on the evening of 27 March, conducting a walk-through survey. 

"They did a walk-through of the vessel, including the bridge and the engineroom. They were looking for other electronic components, any sort of downloadable recorders, any sort of cameras, any sort of CCTV. They did not find any of those things, but that search continues," NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said.

The team has made a request for documents related to the vessel, including maintenance and inspection history, she said, and is conducting interviews on board.

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NTSB said there were 21 crew members and two pilots on the vessel at the time of the accident. 

The NTSB has the vessel’s cargo manifest showing the ship is carrying 56 containers containing a total of 764 tonnes of hazardous materials including corrosives, flammables and other hazmats including lithium-ion batteries. Some of the containers were breached, and Chairwoman Homendy said the NTSB had reported seeing a "sheen on the waterway". She said federal state and local authorities were aware and in charge of addressing potential pollution issues. 

A Unified Command has been established, known as the Key Bridge Response 2024 Unified Command and includes the US Coast Guard (USCG), Maryland Department of the Environment, Maryland Transportation Authority, Maryland State Police, and ship operators Synergy Marine. 

In addition to expressing sympathies for those lost in the incident and citing efforts to attend to crew mental health, a joint statement from Synergy Marine Group and Grace Ocean said the companies "deeply regret this incident and the problems it has caused for the people of Baltimore and the region’s economy".

The NTSB is conducting its investigation independently but with support from other organisations. Along with the USCG, Maryland Transportation Authority and other local, state and federal organisations supporting the NTSB, the organisation said it had invited the vessel’s owners Grace Ocean Ltd and operators Synergy Marine Group to send representatives to attend and support the investigation. The vessel’s insurers, Britannia P&I, also said they are working closely with the vessel’s owner and manager and the relevant US authorities as part of the investigation into the casualty.

The full NTSB team boarded the vessel a second time to survey the damage, which included damage to the bridge structure.

The NTSB has a ’recorders group’ responsible for locating and retrieving any recordings related to the accident. Ms Homendy said the NTSB group has posession of the voyage data recorder (VDR). 

"They worked on that all day, to validate that information," she said, noting that the group also has a "print-out" of the alarms that sounded on board the vessel to review in conjunction with the VDR data "at a later time".

A "survival factors group" discussed a timeline of events that led up to the bridge strike, according to Chairwoman Homendy.

"The two sets of information, we’re putting together into a timeline that we will release through our social media channels," she said.

The NTSB’s dedicated news feed on social media platform X posted a series of timeline information, which is listed below, with all images taken from @NTSB_Newsroom.