Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed in the early hours of Tuesday morning after the container ship, the DALI, collided with the bridge.
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Public affairs officer Kimberly Reaves of the US Coast Guard's 5th District provided an update on the incident on Tuesday morning, sharing that the collisions that caused the bridge to collapse happened at 1:27 a.m. EST.
“The 948-foot container ship, Dali, hit the Francis Scott Key bridge, and it subsequently collapsed,” Reaves said in a statement.
Kevin Cartwright, a Baltimore Fire Department spokesperson, told the AP that the ship collided with a column on the bridge.
Maryland's governor Wes Moore said during a press conference that a mayday call was issued by operators of the cargo ship prior to the crash.
Rescue crews were working to find victims who may have fallen into the Patapsco River. At one point, first responders were searching for as many as 20 people, but the search was dropped to seven, and two survivors have been found.
Officials added that six people were unaccounted and were believed to be part of a construction crew that had been repairing potholes on the bridge at the time of the crash.
However, in a Tuesday afternoon news conference, the Coast Guard in Baltimore announced that after exhaustive searching, the six reported missing individuals are now presumed dead, shifting the operation from search and rescue to recovery.
Investigators both locally and federally are looking into the incident, but Baltimore Police Chief Richard Worley shared during a news conference that no evidence shows the collision was intentional.
“There is absolutely no indication that there's any terrorism, that this was done on purpose,” Worley said.
Mayor Brandon M. Scott said in a news conference that the collapse “looked like something out of an action movie.”
“Never would you think that you would see, physically see, the Key Bridge tumble down like that,” Scott said.
President Biden said the federal government would pay for the bridge’s repairs.
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