DIVERS RECOVER 2 BODIES
Divers on Wednesday recovered the remains of two of the six workers missing since they were tossed into Baltimore Harbor from a highway bridge that collapsed into shipping lanes when a faltering cargo freighter rammed into the structure, officials said on Wednesday. The bodies were pulled from the mouth of the Patapsco River a day after the massive container ship lost power and its ability to maneuver before plowing into a support pylon of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, knocking most it into the water below.
Maryland State Police Colonel Roland Butler said a red pickup truck containing the bodies of the two men was found in about 25 feet (7.62 m) of water near the mid-section of the fallen bridge.
He also said that authorities had suspended efforts to locate and retrieve more bodies from the depths because of increasingly treacherous conditions in the wreckagestrewn river.
Butler said sonar images showed additional submerged vehicles
“encased” in fallen bridge debris and superstructure, making them difficult to reach.
The two men whose bodies were recovered on Wednesday were identified as Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, 35, of Baltimore, a native of Mexico, and Dorlian Ronial Castillo
Cabrera, 26, of nearby Dundalk, originally from Guatemala. Four more workers who were part of a crew filling potholes on the bridge’s road surface remained missing and presumed dead.
The six workers also included immigrants from Honduras and El Salvador, officials said.
Rescuers pulled two workers from the water alive on Tuesday, and one was hospitalized.
INTERVIEWING SURVIVORS
The collapse of the bridge, a major highway artery across the harbor, forced an indefinite closure of the Port of Baltimore, one of the busiest on the U.S. Eastern Seaboard, handling more automobile and farm equipment freight than any other in the country.
Earlier on Wednesday a team of federal investigators boarded the idled freighter, still anchored in the harbor channel with part of the mangled bridge splayed over its bow, to begin interviewing the ship’s 22 crew members, who remained aboard the vessel.