Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said divers were battling “treacherous” conditions as they continued their search Wednesday for the six construction workers still missing after Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed.
“We’re talking about frigid temperatures, we’re talking about a moving tide, we’re talking about darkness and mangled metal, that’s still very much in the middle of this water,” Moore told CBS News.
Search teams and rescue crews have been combing the Patapsco River since the early hours of Tuesday morning. A container ship called Dali slammed into one of the Key Bridge’s support pillars around 1:30 a.m., causing it to crumble into the chilly waters swirling below.
Just seconds earlier, crew aboard the ship issued a mayday call, explaining they’d lost power not long after leaving the Port of Baltimore and could no longer steer the 987-foot vessel.
While first responders managed to stop traffic, they were unable to reach a construction crew working on the 1.6-mile bridge before impact. Officials said all eight workers were plunged into the water alongside several cars and other vehicles, sparking a desperate search for survivors.
Two of them were almost immediately pulled from the river, but efforts to locate the rest of the crew have so far been unsuccessful.
By Tuesday’s end, officials confirmed the search had shifted from a rescue mission to a recovery operation. The efforts were suspended for the night shortly thereafter due to dangerous conditions, including “very unstable” sections of the steel bridge and shipping containers hanging from the cargo ship, Baltimore City Fire Chief James Wallace told CNN.
“At this point, we do not believe that we’re going to find any of these individuals still alive,” Coast Guard Rear Admiral Shannon N. Gilreath said.
So far, only two of the workers — Miguel Luna from El Salvador and Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval from Honduras — have been identified, according to CNN.
“These were fathers, and these were sons, and these were husbands, and these were people that their families relied on,” Moore said Wednesday.
Suazo leaves behind a son and a daughter wile Luna was a father of three.
