First victim of Baltimore Bridge collapse is named with six presumed dead
The rescue operation has been called off.
Hope has faded to find survivors after the 1.6-mile long Francis Scott Key Bridge crashed in pieces into the Patapsco River.
More than 24 hours have passed since a 289 metre-long cargo ship, headed to Sri Lanka, collided with the construction in Baltimore, Maryland.
Six people are missing and now presumed dead after the catastrophe in the early hours of Tuesday morning, which saw an unknown number of vehicles plunged in the murky water.
Miguel Luna, from El Salvador, was one of the construction workers who had been fixing potholes on the bridge.
The dad-of-three was named as one of the victims of the collapse, but his body is yet to be recovered.
Among the crew were people from Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico, diplomats from those countries confirmed. The Honduran man was named as Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandova.
Emergency services were deployed to the scene yesterday; helicopters were seen circling over the stretch of the river after what is one of the biggest bridge crashes in almost 50 years.
Only two people were pulled out from the Patapsco River, with one hospitalised in a ‘very serious condition’.
Police said there is no evidence that anyone went into the water other than the workers, though they had not discounted the possibility.
By the evening, the Coast Guard said the mission had transitioned from search and rescue to recovery.
Search divers are expected to return near dawn today to the waters surrounding the twisted metal ruins, where the Singapore-flagged container vessel Dali is still lodged.
State police colonel Roland Butler told reporters late on Tuesday that this is now a recovery operation to retrieve the bodies of the victims of the disaster.
Coast Guard rear admiral Shannon Gilreath added during the briefing: ‘Based on the length of time that we’ve gone in this search the extensive search efforts that have gone into it, the water temperature, at this point we do not believe we are going to find these individuals alive.
‘The coast guard’s not going away, none of our partners are going away, but we are just going to transition into a different phase.’
Maryland governor Wes Moore said with the ship barrelling towards the bridge at ‘a very, very rapid speed’, authorities had just enough time to stop more cars from coming over the bridge.
He said: ‘These people are heroes. They saved lives last night.’
The collapse happened mere seconds after the collision, but long before the busy morning commute in what one official called a ‘developing mass casualty event’.
Brandon Scott, mayor of Baltimore, said: ‘Never would you think that you would see, physically see, the Key Bridge tumble down like that.’
