The reason a Dali cargo ship crashed into Baltimore’s Key Bridge and caused a catastrophic collapse may be revealed later today.
Officials say they have recovered the doomed freight’s black box from the wreckage, as National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chair Jennifer Homendy said it might provide answers.
‘From the data, we hope to develop a timeline of events that led up to the striking of the bridge,’ she told CBS Good Morning. ‘We hope to have that later today.’
It comes as rescue teams admitted their efforts have become a search for bodies, with six construction crewmembers believed to have been killed in the horror wreckage overnight Monday.
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chair Jennifer Homendy said she hopes the cargo ship’s black box will provide answers to the catastrophe
Investigations into how the vessel didn’t avoid the bridge are ongoing, with an initial report citing ‘propulsion’ fault as a potential cause
The ship, a 948-foot-long DALI operated by Singaporean company Synergy Group, collided with the 1.7-mile bridge shortly after it departed the Port of Baltimore
Homendy said the black box may be the key to understanding the accident, which had bewildered experts and led to slew of conspiracy theories online.
‘(The data) will provide us with a number of parameters, everything from location to positioning of the ship to speed, you name it,’ she said.
‘We’ll pull that together to make sure we have a very accurate timeline of what occurred. We’ll be able to see any sort of power loss, and will be able to report that later today.’
Officials were quick to rule out the catastrophe as intentional or an act of terrorism, and an early Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) report found the container ship ‘lost propulsion’ as it was leaving port.
‘The vessel notified MD Department of Transportation (MDOT) that they had lost control of the vessel and an allision with the bridge was possible,’ the report said. ‘The vessel struck the bridge causing a complete collapse.’
Horrifying footage captured the moment the ship careened into the bridge’s support beam, resulting in the huge structure crumbling into the Patapsco River within a matter of seconds.
Observers were quick to note that the ship’s exterior lights went out twice in the moments before impact, suggesting the vessel may have suffered some form of mechanical failure.
Homendy was questioned over this possibility on Wednesday morning, as she also dismissed reports that officials were looking into contaminated fuel as a culprit.
‘We’ve heard the reports, but that’s way too early for us, we have a lot of information we are gathering,’ she said. ‘We’ll certainly look at that as part of our investigation.’
Stunning images show the mangled wreckage of the bridge sitting in the Patapsco River on Wednesday morning, surrounded by police vessels
Rescue personnel gather on the shore of the Patapsco River after a container ship ran into the Francis Scott Key Bridge causing its collapse
Officials said they are searching for at least six construction workers who were on the bridge at the time of the collapse, who are now presumed dead
Questions have swirled since the catastrophe as to how the ship was allowed to cause such an accident, and why the bridge collapsed as easily as it appeared to.
Homendy noted that the NTSB will work to provide recommendations as to how to avoid a similar incident happening again in the future.
‘That’s exactly what our highway team will look at,’ she said, as they will probe questions including: ‘What work was being done on the bridge?’
Hours after the bridge’s collapse, it emerged that the cargo ship was being piloted by a specialized crew trained to avoid obstacles at ports.
When asked why the pilots didn’t navigate the ship until it was clear in open waters, Homendy said that it would be taken into account in the NTSB assessment as she vowed to ‘look at everything.’
‘We will conduct a very thorough, comprehensive, holistic investigation, everything from maintenance to even fire rescue operations,’ she said, adding that protocols for bodies such as the US Coast Guard will also come under scrutiny.
‘Our sole goal here on scene is to collect the perishable evidence and identify person who we will want to interview as part of our investigation.’
Officials have repeatedly said rebuilding the bridge – which was used by over 30,000 vehicles every day – will take hundreds of millions of dollars and take a significant amount of time.
A Coast Guard cutter patrols in front of a cargo ship that is stuck under the part of the structure of the Francis Scott Key Bridge on Wednesday morning
The bridge spans 9,000 feet across the Patapsco River and is 180 feet above the water
As the ship falls under federal scrutiny, a CNN review of records from the Electronic Quality Shipping Information System (Equasis) found it had previously been found to be faulty by inspectors.
The Dali container ship had undergone 27 inspections since 2015, and it had been found to have two ‘deficiencies.’
Notably, this included a June 2023 inspection in San Antonio, Chile, where a deficiency was found in the ‘propulsion and auxiliary machinery’ – with propulsion faults also noted in the early CISA report.
The Dali was also involved in a 2016 incident at the Port of Antwerp. A review in November of that year in Antwerp, Belgium found another ‘deficiency’ in its ‘structural conditions.’
No deficiencies were found when the vessel was last inspected on September 9, 2023 by the US Coast Guard in New York.