2 BRIDGE VICS FOUND
4 more missing men presumed dead
A car containing the bodies of two construction workers was pulled from the Patapsco River Wednesday morning, shortly before Baltimore officials suspended search and recovery efforts for victims of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse.
Divers located a red pick-up truck submerged 25 feet below the surface at around 10 a.m. near the middle span of the bridge, Col. Roland L. Butler Jr., superintendent for Maryland State Police, said at an evening press conference.
The two victims were identified as Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, 35, who was from Mexico and lived in Baltimore, and Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, 26, who was from Guatemala and lived in Dundalk. One of the men was identified by a driver’s license in his pocket and the other by fingerprints.
Both were among six Brawner Builders workers who were in cars on a lunch break from filling in potholes on the bridge when the container ship Dali struck the span over the Patapsco River.
Search-and-rescue efforts were suspended shortly after finding the pair, with officials saying the conditions were too dangerous to continue.
The remainder of the missing cars are likely trapped beneath the rubble in the river. Once the debris from the bridge is removed, divers will be deployed once again to locate the remaining cars and bodies.
Hardworking fathers
Loved ones remembered victims Miguel Luna, 49, Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval, 37, and Dorlian Cabrera as hardworking fathers and family men from Mexico and Central America.
Coworker Moises Diaz, 45, who avoided being on the bridge due to a shift change, told The Post that the crew is like a family, and now they’re all in shock after learning that their friends were enjoying their lunch break in their cars when the collision occurred.
“They were good people,” he said. “It’s tragic. I’m really appreciative that I wasn’t on the bridge.”
“They’re fathers with families. They’re people who came to earn their bread each day,” coworker Jesus Campos, who was not on the bridge, told The Wall Street Journal.
Sandoval, father of a 5-year-old girl, arrived from Honduras in 2003 and started working for Brawner last year.
His brother, Carlos, told the Journal that the family has yet to break the news to Sandoval’s daughter, Alexa.
“She was glued to her dad. Her dad was everything to her,” Carlos said. “They haven’t told her anything. Just that her dad hasn’t arrived.”
Luna, from El Salvador, worked at Brawner for 14 years. He was waiting to welcome a new grandchild and is seen in footage of a gender reveal event shared with NBC’s “Today.”
The cause of the disastrous collision is still unclear, but the Coast Guard revealed the ship had been undergoing “routine engine maintenance” in the port shortly before it lost power.
The National Transport Safety Board is investigating and has recovered the vessel’s black box data recorder.
NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy told reporters that the box will help investigators create a timeline of events outlining what occurred early Tuesday and provide information about the alleged power outage the ship suffered moments before the crash.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told reporters that the Biden administration was concerned with the economic impacts looming over the port’s closure, with billions of dollars in trade and about 8,000 jobs directly at risk.