Federal officials are investigating whether electrical problems caused the 984-foot-long container ship Dali to lose power and crash into Baltimore’s Key Bridge at 1:30 a.m. on March 26, sending it falling into the Patapsco River and closing the harbor. The crash killed six construction workers filling pot holes on the bridge.
Meanwhile, FBI agents were on the ship last week, interviewing some of the 21 crew members, investigating whether any federal laws were broken. The City of Baltimore filed a suit against almost everyone involved, and the Dali’s owner and operator filed their own suit trying to limit their damage.
The human toll in the bridge collapse could have been catastrophic, but bridge officials heard the Dali’s radio calls saying it was heading for the 1.6-mile-long bridge and they managed to close it to traffic at both ends. The six construction workers were caught in the middle of the span, however, and fell into the river. The bodies of three of them had been recovered earlier; divers recovered a fourth body, trapped in a truck, this week.
The Associated Press reports the ship may have had electrical problems before it even left the dock in Baltimore. It says an investigator said that alarms were going off in the ship’s refrigerated containers, indicating a lack of electrical power. And Jennifer Homendy, the head of the National Transportation Safety Board, said its investigation was focusing on the Dali’s electrical system. The ship’s lights flickered off and then on again just before it hit the bridge.
The FBI opened a criminal investigation, focusing on whether the crew knew the ship had problems before it left the dock. Investigators recovered the Dali’s black box recorder, with data on the ship’s position, speed, heading, radar, and bridge audio and radio communications and alarms.
On the legal front, Baltimore Mayor Brendan Scott said the city was taking action against all the stakeholders in the Dali, and had hired two law firms “to hold the wrongdoers responsible” for the substantial financial and emotional losses caused by the accident. The suit named Grace Ocean, in Singapore, the ship’s owner; Synergy Marine Group, also in Singapore, that managed it; Maersk, the Danish company that chartered it, and Hyundai Heavy Industries in South Korea that built it in 2015.
For their part, Ocean Grace and Synergy filed a petition, citing an 1851 maritime law, to limit their liability to $43.6 million, which they say will be the Dali’s value after it is pried loose from the bridge.
The Unified Command is clearing the wreckage as fast as it can to restore traffic to the shipping channel and the Port of Baltimore, which handles more imported cars and trucks than any other port in the United States. Two small channels are open now, and the Army Corps of Engineers expects to open a larger one in two weeks. It hopes to have the regular channel operating again by the end of May.
Read more at https://apnews.com/article/baltimore-bridge-collapse-fbi-investiagation-58188d524035c756872603055f309c78 and see the video below:
