Body of fourth construction worker killed in US bridge collapse recovered

WASHINGTON: The body of a fourth construction worker who died after a bridge collapsed when it was struck by a container ship in the US city of Baltimore last month has been recovered, officials said Monday.

The Francis Scott Key Bridge, a major transit route into the busy city and port of Baltimore, collapsed on March 26 when the Dali container ship lost power and collided into a support column, killing six roadway construction workers.

The Key Bridge response team’s Unified Command said it had recovered the body of the “fourth missing construction worker” on Sunday at the site of the bridge collapse.

“Unified Command salvage teams located what they believed to be one of the missing construction vehicles and promptly notified” Maryland state police, according to a statement.

Authorities “responded and located a deceased victim trapped inside the vehicle,” it added, without identifying the deceased.

Mexico’s Foreign Minister Alicia Barcena said Monday that the body of Mexican national Carlos Daniel Hernandez, who had worked on the bridge, was recovered.

The 300-metre Dali ship had managed to issue a Mayday call in the moments before the collision which gave police time to stop traffic on the bridge, likely saving lives.

But an eight-man construction crew repairing potholes on the bridge could not be reached in time, and plummeted with the tons of concrete and twisted steel into the Patapsco River.

Two workers were rescued alive, one briefly hospitalized and the other uninjured.

The FBI has launched a criminal probe targeting the container ship, US media reported on Monday.