An Inside Look at the Baltimore Bridge Collapse Investigation

On the morning of 26 March, before dawn, US transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg received a phone call, instantly recognizing the gravity of the situation. He recounted, “If my phone rings in the middle of the night, it’s not a good thing.” The Dali, a colossal 948ft (289m) cargo vessel, had collided with Baltimore’s renowned Francis Scott Key Bridge, causing the 1.5-mile (2.4km) structure to plunge into the frigid Patapsco River. Buttigieg stated in a BBC interview, “It wasn’t immediately clear what we were dealing with,” adding, “How many people had been impacted, and how much of the bridge had been destroyed.” The event resulted in the deaths of six men, all part of a road maintenance crew on the bridge, and left the Dali, which remained buoyant, trapped beneath substantial fragments of twisted metal and concrete. An additional individual was rescued from the freezing water, sustaining severe injuries. A forthcoming BBC One documentary, accessible on iPlayer starting 5 December, uncovers fresh insights from the crash inquiry, pointing to a potential reason: a loosened cable that interfered with the ship’s power and led to an initial power outage moments prior to impact. Subsequently, investigators suspect that insufficient fuel pressure to the generators might have generated power instability, triggering breakers and causing the vessel to lose power once more, leaving no opportunity to alter its trajectory before colliding with the bridge. Bodycam video, not previously made public, recorded following the collapse, depicts emergency personnel and authorities grappling with the immense scale of the situation during the chaotic period immediately after the incident. An officer’s voice is audible stating, “Key Bridge is down. It was last reported that there are at least several vehicles in the water,” and adding, “And several people still unaccounted for.” Following the collapse, approximately 45,000 tonnes of wreckage obstructed the Patapsco, a 700ft (213m) wide and 50ft (15m) deep waterway crucial for the economy. The task of retrieving bodies and clearing the contorted, fractured steel and concrete from the channel, along with relocating the Dali, was undertaken by an extensive group comprising personnel from the US Army, Navy, and Coast Guard, in addition to Maryland officials and specialized private companies. Colonel Estee Pinchasin, the Army Corps of Engineers Baltimore district commander, who directed this operation, remarked that she had “never seen anything of that magnitude before.” She observed, “Everything [was] mangled up on top and around,” and further questioned, “You had these big, large spans that were just laying in the water. You see four-inch steel that’s been bent… how can you even start to think about the force?” The perilous effort of exploring the wreckage and identifying which components could be safely extracted, and at what time, was partially assigned to diving teams. These teams examined both the vessel and the damage below the water’s surface. Exclusive footage acquired by the BBC illustrates the challenging environment encountered by the divers: sharp and potentially hazardous debris, coupled with murky, brown water that frequently limited their vision to only a foot or two. Robyn Bianchi, assistant salvage master for Donjon Marine, one of the participating companies, remembered, “There was no visibility. I kind of compared it to a metal jungle gym underwater.” She elaborated, “You turn off all the lights in the room and try tell me all the pieces of where they connect to that metal jungle gym. Oh, and by the way, the jungle gym is completely twisted and looks nothing like it did when it was built to perfection.” An initial report from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) indicated that two electrical failures incapacitated equipment before the incident, and observed that the ship experienced power loss twice within the 10 hours preceding the collision. Subsequently, NTSB investigators were assigned to ascertain the sequence of events. They ultimately identified a loose cable, which is thought to have potentially triggered a power surge, causing two breakers to trip and interrupting the electrical supply. While the crew attempted to restart the engine, a subsequent power failure occurred, probably due to a pump that feeds fuel to the generators shutting down and failing to restart automatically. The inconsistent generators might have generated further power fluctuations that tripped the ship’s breakers – a frequent issue for mariners, though typically encountered in open seas. Sal Mercogliano, a maritime historian and former merchant mariner, commented that the quiet experienced by the sailors during those instants represents “the worst sound you ever hear” on a vessel. He further stated, “At that moment, you realise you don’t have control of the ship anymore,” and described it as, “It is a nightmare… you have a very short period of time in which to restore power.” For the Dali, intervention came too late. The interval between the vessel’s power loss and its impact with the bridge was subsequently established to be approximately four minutes. Notwithstanding the devastation and fatalities, authorities expressed relief that the situation did not escalate further. On the night of the collapse, law enforcement successfully halted traffic, with the final vehicle exiting the bridge merely 40 seconds before its descent. Maryland Governor Wes Moore remarked, “Cars would have kept coming,” and continued, “By the time the people driving the vehicles realised the bridge was gone, it just would have been too late.” He concluded, “I can’t tell you how many lives they saved,” asserting, “Because the answer is countless.”