Baltimore Key Bridge collapse updates: Bodies of two victims recovered as disaster timeline revealed

Three of the six victims of Tuesday’s tragedy, all construction workers repairing the bridge at the time it fell, have been identified as Miguel Luna, Dorlian Castillo Cabrera and Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval.

Luna was a husband and father of three originally from El Salvador, Cabrera a Guatemalan immigrant working to support his family and Sandoval a married father of two from Honduras who worked multiple jobs and had founded his own maintenance business, according to CNN.

Federal investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) have unveiled a more precise timeline of exactly what happened in the runup to the cargo ship’s brutal collision with the Francis Scott Key Bridge in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Here’s the NTSB’s revised timeline of the disaster, given in hours, minutes and seconds after experts’ first full day examining the scene on Wednesday:

12.39am: Dali container ship departs from Seagirt Marine Terminal.

1.07am: It enters Fort McHenry Channel.

1.24.59am: Numerous audible alarms recorded on ship’s bridge audio. Voyage data recorder (VDR) stops recording the vessel’s system data, although it is able to continue taping audio from alternative power source.

1.26.02am: VDR resumes recording ship’s system data after glitch. Steering commands and orders regarding its rudder captured on audio.

1.26.39am: Pilot issues very high frequency (VHF) radio call to nearby tugboats requesting assistance for the stricken vessel. Pilot association dispatcher also notifies Maryland Transportation Authority (MDTA) duty officer regarding blackout, according to data from latter organisation.

1.27.04am: Pilot orders ship’s port anchor to be dropped and issues additional steering commands.

1.27.25am: Pilot issues radio call over VHF radio, reports that vessel has lost all power and is approaching bridge. Transit authority duty officer radios two of its units — one on each side of bridge — that are already on scene and orders them to close traffic. All lanes shut down.

1.29am: Ship’s speed recorded at just under 8 miles per hour. VDR records 33 seconds of sound consistent with vessel’s smash with bridge. MDTA dash cameras meanwhile capture bridge lights going out.

01.29.39am: Pilot radios US Coast Guard to report bridge is down.

Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval, 37, was identified by his family as one of the construction workers who was on the bridge fixing potholes when it collapsed in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Mr Suazo Sandoval’s brother, Martin Suazo, told CNN his brother had lived in the United States for 18 years and was originally from Azacualpa in Honduras. He was a married father of an 18-year-old son and a five-year-old daughter.

He added that his brother was also an entrepreneur who had started his own maintenance company.

Miguel Luna, a 49-year-old father of three from El Salvador who has called Maryland home for 19 years, is also among the six people missing.

“[We feel] devastated, devastated because our heart is broken, because we don’t know if they’ve rescued them yet. We’re just waiting to hear any news,’ his wife, Maria del Carmen Castellon told Telemundo 44.

The other victims have not been named, but Guatemala’s foreign ministry confirmed that two Guatemalan nationals are among those unaccounted for after the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore.

Those missing include a 26-year-old from San Luis, Peten, and a 35-year-old from Camotan, Chiquimula. The ministry did not name the men.

Multiple Mexican nationals are also missing, a Mexican Embassy official said, although it is not clear how many.

US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said that a “main area of concern” was the livlihoods of port workers, telling a press conference that thousands of jobs could be affected by the incident.

At a White House press briefing on Wednesday, Mr Buttigieg adressed the impact of the crash on the local economy, saying that some 8,000 jobs were directly associated with port activities.

“Last I checked… about $2 million in wages are at stake every day and that’s one of the areas was concerned about,” he said.“It’s one thing for a container or vehicle or a shipment to be absorbed or accommodated somewhere else, but these longshore workers – if goods aren’t moving, they’re not working.

“Right now there is work taking place even inside of that bridge because of the work that has to be done to offload some of the vehicles that are that are stuck there and get that back on the surface transportation to go out to other sites, so they’re likely working right now, but that work won’t last long and that’s one of our main areas of concern.”

Rescue operations were called off on Tuesday night when Coast Guard Rear Admiral Shannon Gilreath said there was no hope of finding the men, who were working on the bridge at the time of the collision, alive due to the frigid water and the length of time since the accident.

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“This demonstrates that migrants go out and do risky jobs at midnight, and for this reason they do not deserve to be treated as they are by certain insensitive, irresponsible politicians in the United States,” Mexico President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said during a news briefing on Wednesday, adding that “insensitive, irresponsible” politicians do not understand the contributions migrants make to the country.

Mexico’s foreign affairs ministry told The Telegraph that the two missing Mexican workers are from the states of Veracruz and Michoacán.

Two two agencies will work of making the port fully operational again, officials said during a White House press briefing that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Vice Admiral Peter Gautier attended.

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 last night.

The bodies were pulled from the mouth of the Patapsco River a day after the massive container ship lost power and its ability to manoeuvre before ploughing into a support pylon of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, knocking most of it into the water below.

The cargo ship Dali that crashed into Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge can reach almost to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris if stood upright, and about two-thirds of the way up the Empire State Building in New York.

It can carry the equivalent of almost 10,000 standard-sized metal shipping containers, and at the time of the accident was carrying nearly 4,700 containers. But while those figures are impressive, the Dali pales in comparison to the world’s largest container ships, which can carry more than 24,000 containers.

There are environmental and economic advantages to operating giant container ships, but their sheer size and weight make them difficult to manoeuvre and stop — especially when something goes wrong.

Dali’s length is measured to be around 984 feet (300 metres) and it weighed 95,000 tons when empty.

Here’s what you should know about the mid-sized ocean monster: