Baltimore bridge collapse: White House says ‘our hearts go out to families’ of victims amid recovery operation – as it happened

Authorities are continuing their investigation into the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore after the Singaporean-flagged container ship Dali crashed into it on early Tuesday morning.

Here’s a recap of the latest developments:

• Six members of a construction crew filling potholes on the bridge who were missing following the incident are now presumed dead. Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg shared his condolences with the victims’ families, saying: “Tragically, six people did lose their lives and a seventh was badly injured. These were workers who went out to work on a night shift, repairing the road service while most of us slept.”

• The named victims include 49-year-old Miguel Luna from El Salvador, a husband and father of three who lived in Maryland for over 19 years, and 38-year-old Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval, originally from Azacualpa in Honduras, a married father of two who had lived in the US for 18 years and launched his own maintenance business.

• The foreign affairs ministry of Guatemala confirmed that two of the workers were nationals, though it did not name them. The ministry said the two people were 26 and 35, originally from San Luis, Petén, and Camotán, Chiquimula, respectively.

• Three Mexican nationals were working on the bridge when it collapsed, Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador said on Wednesday. One was rescued while alive while two others remain missing, he said. The two Mexican nationals who remain missing are originally from the states of Veracruz and Michoacán, Mexico’s foreign affairs ministry has said. A third who was rescued on Tuesday is also originally from Michoacán.

• Two other construction workers were rescued. One was hospitalized at the Cowley shock trauma center in Baltimore before being later discharged.

• A truck was recovered from the Patapsco River on Wednesday morning, and a memo from the Department of Homeland Security confirmed that at least one vehicle remained hanging from the metal.

• Investigators with the US national transportation safety board will examine whether “dirty fuel” played a role in the giant cargo vessel losing power and crashing into the span. One reason for the blackout is contaminated fuel that can create problems with the ship’s main power generators, according to a report.

• Maryland’s governor, Wes Moore, said it was “imperative” to get the port of Baltimore up and running as quickly as possible, saying its closure would have an economic impact on everyone from car dealers to farmers. Moore warned that the economic consequences of the bridge collapse “cannot be overstated and not just for the state of Maryland … we’re talking about what this means for the entire country.”

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• The transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, urged bipartisan support for federal funding to rebuild the bridge and reopen the port. Infrastructure should be a bipartisan issue, Buttigieg said at a news conference on Wednesday. He added that it was too soon to say how long it will take to reopen the Port of Baltimore or replace the destroyed bridge. Buttigieg said officials are focused on reopening the port, dealing with supply chain issues, rebuilding the bridge and addressing surface transportation.

• The Coast Guard vice-admiral, Peter Gautier, said there is no threat to the public from any materials on board the Dali ship. Gautier, at a White House briefing on Wednesday, said the vessel is holding over 1.5m gallons of fuel, and that more than 50 of the cargo containers on board contain hazardous material, but that the ship is stable and that authorities have determined there is no safety risk.

• Lawmakers in Maryland drafted an emergency bill to cover the salaries of workers who have been affected by the shutdown of the port. Details about the bill have not been disclosed yet. Bill Ferguson, the state senate president, said more 15,000 people in the region rely on daily port operations “to put food on the table”.

• Singapore officials announced that they will lead their own investigation on the Key Bridge collapse. The Dali ship, which crashed into the bridge on Tuesday, was a Singapore-flagged ship traveling to Sri Lanka.

• Audio has revealed dispatchers telling police to close the Francis Scott Key Bridge to all traffic because a ship had “just lost their steering”. Responders can be heard asking whether construction workers were on the bridge as police tried to halt traffic moments before the structure collapsed.

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• Far-right commentators have declared Tuesday’s dramatic collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge a “black swan event”, a niche phrase that has recently captured the imaginations of “deep state” conspiracy theorists who posit that a clandestine network of powerful individuals are secretly running the US government.

27 Mar 202415.37 EDT

Oliver Milman

More than a third of US bridges are in need of repair, according to the American Road & Transportation Builders Association.

The state of US bridges has slowly improved in recent years, the association said, but more than 43,000 are still considered to be in poor condition and classed as “structurally deficient”, risking potential collapse.

The dangerous state of American bridges was singled out by the Biden administration as a motivator for the $1.2tn bipartisan infrastructure law signed by the US president in 2021.

The bill includes $110bn to upgrade roads and bridges, with Biden recently visiting a deteriorating bridge in Wisconsin to tout its repair via the funding.

“For decades, people talked about replacing this bridge, but it never got done. Until today,” Joe Biden said at January event. “This bridge is important, but the story we’re writing is much bigger than that.”

A certain amount of risk will remain for the foreseeable future – each day, around 167m trips are taken across structurally deficient bridges in the US.

27 Mar 202415.31 EDT

Oliver Milman

The collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore has revived scrutiny not just of this specific structure but also the overall health of bridges across the US, many of which are considered to be in poor condition.

Some experts have pointed out that the span, completed in 1977, was conceived before an age of supersized container ships.

Andrew Barr, an expert in civil and structural engineering at the University of Sheffield, said that the bridge will “not have been designed to survive a head-on collision with such a large vessel”. He added that the Francis Scott Key Bridge did not appear to have additional protective infrastructure to buffer it from ship strikes, which have become more risky as the size and design of cargo vessels has changed over the years.

In the last decade alone, the average capacity of container ships has increased by about 50%.

President Joe Biden has met with the secretary of transportation, Pete Buttigieg, and US Coast Guard vice-admiral Peter Gautier and spoken to Gen Scott Spellmon about the coordinated federal, state and local response to the collapse of the bridge, the White House said.

Biden also spoke with Maryland’s governor, Wes Moore, and “reiterated that his administration will be with the people of Baltimore every step of the way, a statement from the White House reads.

The collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge could cost insurers billions of dollars in claims, according to analysts.

With little clarity on when the Port of Baltimore will reopen, insurers and analysts are assessing the likely losses borne by underwriters across several product lines including property, cargo, marine, liability, trade credit and contingent business interruption, Reuters reported.

Marcos Álvarez, managing director for global insurance ratings at Morningstar DBRS, told the agency:

Depending on the length of the blockage and the nature of the business interruption coverage for the Port of Baltimore, insured losses could total between $2bn and $4bn.

Mathilde Jakobsen, senior director of analytics at insurance ratings agency AM Best, also said the claims would likely run into “billions of dollars”.

The two Mexican nationals who remain missing are originally from the states of Veracruz and Michoacán, Mexico’s foreign affairs ministry has said.

A third Mexican worker who was rescued on Tuesday is also originally from Michoacán and is “recovering satisfactorily from his injuries”, a statement from the ministry said.

Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, earlier today confirmed that two Mexican nationals are missing and that their families have requested privacy.

Audio has revealed dispatchers telling police to close the Francis Scott Key Bridge to all traffic because a ship had “just lost their steering”.

Responders can be heard asking whether construction workers were on the bridge as police tried to halt traffic moments before the structure collapsed. A police officer is heard saying seconds later:

The whole bridge just fell down.

Here’s the audio clip:

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Statehouse and senate leaders in Maryland have drawn up plans for emergency legislation to cover the salaries of port workers hit by shutdowns in the wake of Tuesday’s collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, as we reported earlier.

Details about the bill, such as the extent of the aid and how it will be disbursed, have not been disclosed yet.

Bill Ferguson, president of the Maryland senate, said more than 15,000 people in the region rely on the Port of Baltimore “to put food on the table”. He stressed that time was of the essence. Until the channel to the port is cleared, “there is enormous cost to families”, he said.

An estimated 140,000 workers in the region are indirectly supported by activities at the Port of Baltimore, which is the ninth busiest port in the US, which had more than $80bn in imports and exports in 2023. It is a major port for coal exports, automobiles and parts.

Carnival Cruise Line said it was temporarily moving their Baltimore operations to Norfolk, Virginia, for the duration of rescue efforts and cleanup.

The US secretary of transportation Pete Buttigieg responded to a question about whether Republicans could hold up attempts to fund bridge reconstruction if Biden were to tap Congress for assistance:

“Infrastructure is, or at least ought to be, a bipartisan priority. I know that partisanship has gotten in the way of some important functions and expenditures, but I would also note that the infrastructure package that was passed is known as the bipartisan infrastructure law for a reason,” Buttigieg said.

Buttigieg added that some Republicans “crossed the aisle” to support the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

Buttigieg noted that a private company could be held financially “accountable” for the bridge collapse, though did not expand on how much that could mean.

“Any private party that is found responsible and liable will be held accountable,” Buttigieg said, though did not detail what possible consequences could look like.

Buttigieg added that Biden’s commitment to funding the bridge is to prevent Baltimore and Maryland more broadly from having to wait for financial resources needed for bridge reconstruction.

The crew remains on board the Dali ship, the Coast Guard vice-admiral Peter Gautier said.

“The crew is cooperating with what we need,” he said.

The crew is predominately made up of Indian nationals with one person from Sri Lanka, Gautier added.

Buttigieg said that he was unsure of how long it would take to rebuild the Key bridge or how much it would cost to rebuild, noting that the original bridge took five years to construct.

“We need to get a sense of the conditions … we just don’t know yet, especially in terms of their foundational infrastructure,” he said of the extent of damage to the bridge.

Buttigieg also added that he is unsure when the Port of Baltimore may be able to reopen.

“The vast majority of the port is inside of that bridge, which means most of it cannot operate,” Buttigieg said.

The Coast Guard vice-admiral Peter Gautier confirmed that authorities are attempting to remove the vessel from the area, but said it has crude oil and other hazardous materials on board.

Gautier said during the White House press briefing that 1.5m gallons of oil are on the Dali ship as are at least 56 cargo containers of “hazardous materials”.

The cargo containers are not a threat to the public or in the water, the US Coast Guard representative said.

Buttigieg added that the death toll from the Key Bridge accident could have been much higher, if not for several factors.

Buttigieg highlighted the efforts of emergency responders, the mayday call from the ship, and other factors as preventing the death toll from increasing “in the dozens”.

“If not for several factors, including those responders’ efforts, the mayday call, the maintenance closure that was already underway, and the time of day of this impact, the loss of life might have been in the dozens,” Buttigieg said.

Buttigieg did not speculate about what any investigation might find, but added that the bridge was not meant to withstand a direct hit from a vast cargo ship.

“What we do know is a bridge like this one, completed in the 1970s, was simply not made to withstand a direct impact … from a vessel that weighs about 200m pounds,” he said.