It was around midnight on March 26, 2024, when tragedy struck in Baltimore, Maryland.  A cargo ship rammed into one of the Francis Scott Key Bridge’s supports, causing the majority of the bridge to collapse into the Patapsco River. This devastating incident claimed six lives and economically impacted the Port of Baltimore.

The cargo ship involved in the collision incident was called the Dali. Owned by Grace Ocean Private Limited and operated by Synergy Group, this ship was 984 feet long and weighed 116,000 tons. The Dali, heading towards Sri Lanka during that time, crashed into the bridge while on its way out of the Port of Baltimore. This crash happened because the ship had suffered a power outage shortly before the impact, a technical complication that resulted in it crashing into the bridge supports.

The Francis Scott Key Bridge—the bridge that collapsed in this incident—was a truss bridge named after the famous American figure who composed the American national anthem. This structure was built in 1977 and was the second-longest truss bridge in the United States. The bridge was 1.6 miles long and was crossed by as many as 30,000 vehicles daily, with an average of 10.4 million vehicles passing through it yearly. This bridge was a part of Interstate 695 in Baltimore.

After the incident, rescue operations were carried out via sonar and diving teams in search of survivors. However, it soon transitioned into a recovery mission, with six missing victims presumed dead 18 hours after the bridge collapsed. In addition, clean-up efforts were made to recover the broken sections of the bridge that were mostly submerged in the river. The FBI also launched a criminal investigation on the crew of the cargo ship to investigate events that happened prior to the incident.

The six victims of the collision incident were construction workers, who were on the Francis Scott Key Bridge patching up potholes on the bridge road when the collision occurred. They were immigrants from Central America and Mexico. Only four of the six victim’s bodies were found after the incident. At the time of the incident, eight people were present on the bridge when it was struck by the cargo ship, with only two people managing to survive the collapse.

The incident caused the passageway to the Port of Baltimore—the 9th largest US port for international cargo in the US—to be closed off. This termination disrupted the steady income of imports and exports in the port, negatively impacting the economy with many ships being forced to change directions and head to other ports. In addition, the closing of the port threatened as many as 140,000 occupations associated with the port.

President Joe Biden declared that the government will fully fund the reconstruction of the bridge, albeit it will take many years for it to be completed.

Most recently as of April 24th, the city of Baltimore sued the companies that owned and operated the Dali and accused them of operating a cargo ship that was considered unseaworthy in the first place. They also claimed that the crew members on the Dali were not adequately trained.

The collapse of the Francis Scott Key bridge affected the city of Baltimore as a whole and shocked the entire nation of America. This devastating incident would be remembered as a tragic loss for the state and the people.