FEAR OVER ASTROPHE
believe we are going to find these individuals alive. We are not going away, but we will transition into a different phase.’
Only two people were pulled from the river, with one in a ‘very serious condition’ in hospital. Police say there is no evidence anyone other than the workers fell in.
The building firm’s chief Jeffrey Pritzker said: ‘We take great pride in safety, and we have cones, signs, lights, barriers and flaggers. This was completely unforeseen. We don’t know what else to say. ’
Jesus Campos, who had worked on the bridge with the men, said: ‘I know what it feels like even when trucks pass. Imagine knowing it’s falling. It is so hard.’
Lives were saved because at night the four-lane I-695 across the bridge was quiet, and because Dali put out a mayday call.
Details also emerged of the desperate minutes between the call and impact.
A police dispatcher’s 12-second radio warning alerted officers the ship may hit the bridge. Within 90 seconds, officers replied they had stopped cars entering it from both directions. One said he was about to drive onto the bridge to alert a construction crew. But the sickening impact stopped him in his tracks.
‘The whole bridge just fell down,’ a frantic colleague says. ‘Start... whoever... everybody... the whole bridge just collapsed.’
Maryland governor Wes Moore said: ‘Literally by being able to stop cars from coming over the bridge, these people are heroes. They saved lives last night.’
The loss of the bridge – used by 11million vehicles last year – will snarl up the city and main east coast routes for months as well as halting one of the country’s busiest ports, where all shipping is suspended.
US president Joe Biden has said the government will cover the entire cost of rebuilding the bridge in Maryland, which opened in 1977 at a cost of $110million.
Baltimore mayor Brandon Scott had summed up the city’s shock a day earlier, insisting: ‘Never would you think that you would see, physically see, the Key Bridge tumble down like that.’