Dali Leaves Baltimore

Escorted by a fleet of four tugboats and a Coast Guard cutter, the 984-foot-long container ship Dali left Baltimore on Monday, almost three months after it hit the Francis Scott Key Bridge there, killing six construction workers and closing the busy harbor.

The Coast Guard established a 500-yard safety zone around the Dali as it headed down to Norfolk. On board were a full crew of 22 and six salvage experts. The ship arrived in Norfolk the next day for repairs.

Last week a Federal judge oversaw an agreement where some members of the original 21-man crew were allowed to leave the U.S. to return home to India and Sri Lanka. They had been ordered to stay with the ship pending federal and state investigations. So far, eight of the ten crew who could leave have done so.

Earlier this month the normal 700-foot wide, 50-foot deep channel was reopened to ship traffic. Thousands of port workers, truckers, small business owners and others were affected by the port’s closure. Baltimore handles more imported vehicles than any other port in the U.S., and exports a significant amount of farm equipment.

And the National Transportation Safety Board issued an update about the loss of power that caused the Dali to hit the 1.6-mile-long bridge at 1:29 a.m. on March 26 as it was leaving Baltimore. NTSB investigators found an interruption in the control circuit for one of the breakers designed for an under-voltage release. The NTSB’s Materials Lab is now examining a terminal block with multiple wires from the control circuit to determine the probable cause of the accident.

Earlier the NTSB said the Dali had two power blackouts the day before the crash. The first was when a crew member mistakenly locked the generator’s exhaust gas stack. As a result, the crew manually restored power and switched to different breakers and transformers. The second was due to insufficient fuel pressure.