The cargo ship that crashed into a 1.6-mile long bridge in Baltimore, sending it crashing into a river, lost power minutes before the collision, is has been reported.
Rescuers are mounting a desperate search for six construction workers who plunged into the Patapsco River after the 95,000-tonne Dali slammed into Francis Scott Key Bridge.
A Mayday signal sent by the crew when they lost power allowed authorities to stop more cars from driving onto the bridge in the minutes before it collapsed, it has emerged.
Maryland Governor Wes Moore, said: “Those people are heroes, they saved lives.”
The Singapore-flagged Dali, which was carrying more than 4,600 containers, careered into one of the main support columns of the bridge at about 1.30am local time, causing the whole structure to buckle and collapse immediately.
Rescuers have pulled out two survivors, one of whom is said to be in a critical condition, out of the water with at least six still unaccounted for.
Video footage shows the 948ft vessel’s lights going out seconds before the impact. Smoke is also seen billowing from the ship, which was bound for Colombo, Sri Lanka, prior to the crash.
It “lost propulsion” as it was leaving port and crew on board notified Maryland state officials they had lost control, ABC News reported, citing an unclassified US intelligence report.
The vessel experienced a momentary loss of propulsion and dropped anchors as part of emergency procedures before impact, its management company, Synergy Marine Pte Ltd reported, according to the Singapore Port Authority.
At a press conference, Governor Moore said preliminary investigations pointed to an accident, adding that the bridge was fully up to code (meeting safety regulations), and that no structural issues had been reported.
The Dali was travelling at a speed of eight knots (about 10mph), he said, but with limited time, it sent a distress call that allowed workers to stop vehicles coming on to the bridge.
All 22 of the ship’s crew, from India, including two pilots, have been accounted for and there were no reports of pollution in the water.
The vessel was previously involved in a crash while leaving Antwerp, Belgium, in 2016. Antwerp port authorities said the container ship hit a quay on July 11, 2016, as it tried to exit the North Sea container terminal.
According to the Vessel Finder website, the crash was caused by a mistake from the master and pilot on board.
Ian Firth, a structural engineering consultant with more than 40 years’ experience, said he was not surprised the Francis Scott Key Bridge.had collapsed following the collision.
The supports in place to prevent a disaster from happening were not strong enough to prevent the impact, he suggested.
He told i: “It’s a relatively lightweight bridge support clearly not designed for any kind of significant impact. Those vessels impart massive forces, several thousands of tonnes, those supports are clearly not designed to withstand it.
“The strategy has to be preventing such an impact from happening, so by using some kind of protection device around the bridge support to stop the ship, deflect it, slow it down sufficiently but obviously, that didn’t do the job.”
The bridge supports were “quite small”, he said. “For them to be really effective as a vessel deflector or arrestor, they need to be big enough that there is no trajectory, no route, there’s no angle of attack that the vessel could take that it could actually hit the bridge.”
Mr Firth added that following the collapse of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Florida in 1980, designers across the world became more “alert” to the risk of very large ships hitting bridges. Thirty-five people were killed when six cars, a truck, and a bus plunged 150 feet into Tampa Bay after a freighter collided with a support column.
The closure of one of the U.S. East Coast’s major ports threatens to disrupt supplies of goods from cars, to coal and other commodities like sugar. It could create bottlenecks and increase delays and costs on the Eastern seaboard, experts say. The port handles the most car imports and is among the largest for coal exports.
US President Joe Biden said in a press conference today that the federal government will cover the “full cost” of rebuilding the bridge.
He said it may emerge a private company was responsible for the disaster, but his government is “not going to wait” to begin the rebuilding process.
The New York Times reported that Francis Scott Key Bridge had $14m of work carried out in 1986 to repair damage, improve safety and restore appearance.
David MacKenzie, a senior director at engineering consultancy COWI, said that if the Dali had suffered a power failure, there was not much that could have been done to prevent the crash.
Mr MacKenzie highlighted structures known as dolphins, which are designed to protect the bridge from being struck, and placed in the water near the support columns.
He told i: “Normally they [the dolphins] would be sufficient to guide the ship to show them where they are and if a ship hits one of those, it will tear a hole in the ship and cause it to sink.
“But in this instance, when you look at the video, if it’s a loss of power, and an inability to navigate, they can’t do much about it. What appears to have happened is that it bypassed those dolphins.
“These are big ships… they go faster and with the amount of energy that comes out the impact for some one of those is very, very high.
“Normally you design the bridge so that a ship impact protection system deals with it. It’s a huge force coming from these ships, so that’s why a ship impact protection system is the most important thing.
“To try and design the bridge to resist a force like that is very difficult, that would require a huge substructure to do that. So you put the money into the ship impact protection system, and that’s what appears to have failed in this instance.”
Julian Carter, a structural and civil engineering expert, said bridges known as continuous structures, where “every little piece is connected to another”, were “very weak” at certain points.
“If you look at container ships today they are behemoths. If the design was suitable and sufficient in its day I would certainly imagine that container ships today are probably in the order of twice the size,” he told Sky News.
“I would expect now that many ports, many bridge piers, will require a form of assessment for collisions from this kind of traffic.”
The closure of one of the U.S. East Coast’s major ports threatens to disrupt supplies of goods from cars, to coal and other commodities like sugar.
It could create bottlenecks and increase delays and costs on the Eastern seaboard, experts say.
The port handles the most car imports and is among the largest for coal exports.
Tuesday’s crash is the second in a month involving a container ship ramming into a major road bridge, raising questions about how they are built to sustain hits from huge vessels.
On 22 February, in the southern China port of Guangzhou, a ship carrying containers ploughed into a two-lane bridge, causing it to snap in half. Five people were killed after vehicles tumbled into the Pearl River.
Francis Scott Key Bridge opened in 1977 after five years of construction and at an estimated cost of $110m.
The Dalia was also involved in an accident in the port of Antwerp, Belgium, in 2016.
Authorities in the city said the container ship hit a quay on July 11, 2016, as it tried to exit the North Sea container terminal.
Baltimore authorities had originally planned to build a tunnel instead, but a bridge carried lower operating and maintenance costs.
The bridge leads to the Port of Baltimore, the deepest harbour in Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay. It is the busiest US port for car shipments, handling more than 750,000 vehicles in 2023.
A 2016 inspection of the vessel found it had a structural issue, describe as “hull damage impairing its seaworthiness,” according to data published on Equasis, a public database for the shipping industry.
The port authorities said the ship had remained at the dock for repairs for some time after the incident.
Discussing the incident, a spokesman for the port said: “As a general rule, these accidents are investigated and ships are only allowed to leave after experts have determined it is safe for them to do so.”
The Belgian nautical committee, which investigates these types of collisions, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A spokesperson representing the ship’s owner could not immediately be reached.
Between 1960 and 2015, there were 35 major bridge collapses worldwide due to ship or barge collisions, with 342 people killed, according to a 2018 report from the World Association for Waterborne Transport Infrastructure.
Eighteen of those collapses were in the US.
Impact on global shipping ‘limited’
The Baltimore bridge disaster is expected to create significant disruption for US importers and exports but impact on global routes should be minimal, experts have said.
The crash left a number of merchant vessels trapped in the Port of Baltimore, while other units of cargo were diverted to alternative routes in the region.
However, while the issue is expected to bring delays and added costs to firms on the US East Coast, the route is not considered significant enough in global terms to have an impact further afield.
Container shipping expert Lars Jensen said: “This is a major disaster and will create significant problems on the US East Coast for US importers and exporters.”
It is estimated that around 800,000 vehicles passed through the port in 2023. The port also handles farm and construction machinery, sugar and coal, according to a Maryland government website.
Emily Stausbøll, market analyst at Xeneta, an ocean freight shipping rate platform said the impact could be felt throughout the US.
She said: “While Baltimore is not one of the largest US East Coast ports, it still imports and exports more than one million containers each year, so there is the potential for this to cause significant disruption to supply chains.”
