The text of this article has been updated to reflect new information (3/28/24)
The bodies of two construction workers have been recovered and four are still missing and presumed dead following the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore on March 27, as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers United States and the US Coast Guard were mobilized to form a maritime rescue. and pollution response plan.
The workers, who have not all been officially identified, were part of an eight-person crew repairing a hole overnight on the bridge working for contractor Brawner Builders Inc., Hunt Valley Md., or the their subcontractors, Jennifer Homendy, president of the National Transportation Safety Board, had told reporters. Two members were rescued immediately after the collapse.
Col. Roland L. Butler Jr., superintendent of the Maryland State Police, said the bodies of two missing workers, whom he identified as Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, 35, and Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, 26 , were recovered in their pickup truck in about 25. feet of water in the Patapsco River. Further recovery has been suspended to allow more debris to be removed, officials said.
In a statement on its website, company owner Jack Murphy acknowledged the deaths and noted that “safety has always been a primary consideration for our workers, but this tragic event was completely unforeseen and not I could imagine what would happen.”
Rescuers’ immediate goals are to remove parts of the steel superstructure that crashed into the bow of the Dali container ship and reopen the Port of Baltimore.
“As this aspect of the response moves toward recovery operations and consistent with the president’s direction to get the port up and running as soon as possible, tThe Coast Guard’s top priority is to restore the waterway to shipping, stabilize the motorboat Dali and remove it from the site,Vice Admiral Peter Gautier said at a press conference.
Additionally, NTSB investigators have recovered the ship’s voyage data recorder, or black box. Lead researcher Marcel Muise said the recorder is much more basic than an airplane’s flight data recorder, but researchers had already been able to piece together a timeline of events using its data.
Gautier added that under the leadership of the Corps, divers and remote vehicles are conducting underwater analyzes to mitigate any threat of contamination. “The vessel is stable, but still has 1.5 million gallons of oil” on board, he noted. The Dalí was carrying 4,700 cargo containers, he said. Two went overboard but are not considered dangerous, while 13 bow containers were damaged by the fallen bridge. The ship’s manifest shows 56 containers containing a total of 764 tons of hazardous material, according to NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy.
“The real crux here is that a portion of the bridge remains on the bow of this ship, and we’re going to coordinate very closely with the Army Corps of Engineers and their contractors to first affect the removal of that debris before that the ship can be removed,” Gautier said.
The ship channel in Baltimore Harbor remains blocked by debris from the fallen bridge.Drone image courtesy of NTSB
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said it was too early to give cost estimates or timelines for the bridge or port facilities. However, the Port of Baltimore typically spends $100 million to $200 million each day, with 8,000 jobs and $2 million in wages affected by the shutdown.
Provisions in the Jobs and Infrastructure Investment Act “allow us to begin releasing funding while the cost is being determined” for all recovery work. shop he said, noting that a request for emergency aid funding from the Maryland Transportation Authority had come in just before the news conference. “We are processing it immediately,” he said.
shop he noted that the Act authorized an emergency relief account, of which $950 million was available, but had many applicants. “It is likely that we will turn to Congress to top up the funds, but this is not a barrier for the next few days to get the ball rolling,” he said.
Considering that the original construction of the bridge took five years, shop he added that it wouldn’t necessarily take that long to rebuild. “When we helped Pennsylvania and California quickly reopen I-95 and I-10, respectively, they did a great job, but those were relatively short overland bridge spans relative to that stretch on the water,” he said. “And, of course, in the case of Baltimore, we still don’t fully know the condition of the parts of the bridge that are still standing or that have infrastructure that’s under the surface of the water. So rebuilding doesn’t it won’t be quick or easy or cheap, but we’ll get there.”
Biden gave “clear direction to remove any barriers, bureaucratic and financial, that would affect the schedule,” he added.
In a statement, construction officials said it “stands ready to help rebuild this critical port at an appropriate time,” noting that members are working on rebuilding the collapsed I-95 bridge in Philadelphia. “Until then, we offer our deepest thoughts, prayers and solidarity as the Baltimore community recovers from this tragic incident.”
After the 2007 collapse of the 2,000-foot-long Interstate 35W Bridge, a continuous truss structure in Minneapolis, a new bridge was built in less than two years. The Francis Scott Key Bridge, also a continuous truss, was 8,636 feet long.
Research launches
Homendy told reporters at a news conference that NTSB is leading the investigation with support from the Coast Guard and other agencies.
Investigators’ first priority while working at a crime scene is to gather all perishable evidence, document the scene with photographs, and retrieve any recordings. The Dalí had 21 crew members 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, such as inspection and maintenance records, from parties to the investigation, including the Federal Highway Administration, the Coast Guard, the Maryland Transportation Authority and the Air Force Pilots Association. Maryland, he said, adding that the ship’s owner, Grace Ocean Private Ltd. ., and the operator, Synergy Marine Private Ltd., have also been invited to participate.
“Those parties are part of the fact-finding, but they don’t do analysis with the NTSB,” Homendy said.
NTSB has a 24-person team on the scene, including Homendy and agency board member Alvin Brown. “This is a little bit bigger than a typical NTSB investigative team,” said one former employee, an attorney involved in the Florida International University bridge collapse investigation who told ENR that this team he had more than a dozen researchers.
But the presence of two NTSB board members may explain the size of the group, as they generally have staff accompanying them. Baltimore’s proximity to Washington, DC 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 study the structure and construction of the bridge. NTSB has its own engineers on staff, and while the agency has only about 400 employees, it can bring in other federal resources as needed.
The team aims to release a preliminary report within four weeks and a full report and recommendations within 12 to 24 months, but will issue the urgent safety recommendations sooner if necessary, Homendy said.
Depending on what the investigation finds, the NTSB’s recommendations could relate to factors such as bridge design, inspections or maintenance. 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 place in the water leading to bridges.
Fender Systems Review
It is unclear what the bridge’s defense system was, but it was built before the 1980 collapse of Florida’s Sunshine Skyway Bridge that was due to a cargo ship collision and led to new standards of design
“Every time there’s a bridge failure, we gain more knowledge about the limits we need to consider,” says John Hillman, director of structural engineering at Kiewit. The Sunshine Skyway “brought to the fore the need for clear guidance on what is required for ship collisions.”
The construction of the Francis Scott Key Bridge also predated the design concept against progressive collapse, in which the failure of one bridge member causes a domino effect, he notes.
Ships have also increased in size and weight over the decades, moving from post-Panamax to Neo-Panamax. Although the Dali was not carrying cargo at full capacity, its total deadweight metric tonnage is 116,851 Neo-Panamax capacity, according to vesselfinder.com.
According to a fall 2023 finance committee report, the Maryland Transportation Authority had planned to install a fiberglass jacket protection system for the bridge columns, along with a deck replacement at end of 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 between [engineers] about whether these characteristics could have played a role in a situation like this.”
The impact was “100,000 tons coming into this dock at once,” he said. “Whether any design feature would have made a difference, we will learn more as the research progresses.”
The bridge’s most recent critical fracture inspection was in May 2023 and was deemed to be in satisfactory condition, Homendy said.
A U.S. bridge construction manager quoted comments by Ian Firth, a British structural engineer and bridge designer, in The Baltimore Sun: “Many similar bridges are protected by barriers designed to prevent or reduce impact when a ship crashes into with a wharf. especially those crossing busy shipping channels where large ships like this come in and out frequently.” he said “These installations can take many forms, including cable systems, pontoons, custom-made caissons and submerged islands. But among the most commonly used are dolphins: circular sheet pile cells filled with material such as sand or concrete that they essentially serve as bumpers.”
The American expert, who declined to be identified, added: “The river does not appear to be too deep from the images, so a rock island around each pier would have absorbed the energy and prevented the ship from geometrically touched the structure. Most other types of dock protection would probably have been overwhelmed by the size of this ship.”
The expert added that US regulations should be reviewed, “just as overweight trucks have to ask if they can have a special permit to use a bridge, with more scrutiny to assess that.” This review “should also take into account the current restrictions on the use of rock islands in the event that other protections do not work”, the expert said. “We also need motion detectors, sirens and automatic road gates when a tall ship gets too close to the docks.”
