How a Graveyard Shift on Baltimore Bridge Turned Deadly
BALTIMORE—The crew of workers from Mexico and Central America were well into their graveyard shift, pouring concrete to fix the potholes that dotted the Francis Scott Key Bridge. The job could be dangerous in the daytime, let alone at night. The bridge, suspended up to 185 feet above the Patapsco River, would sway with passing tractor-trailers.
But the men needed to work. And Brawner Builders, the Maryland-based construction company that employed them, always seemed to have plenty of it. “They’re fathers with families.
They’re people who came to earn their bread each day," said Jesus Campos, who had worked on the bridge but wasn’t on shift Monday night. Through the darkness just before 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, the lights of a nearby 1,000-foot container cargo ship flickered on and off.
The Dali was less than half an hour into a 27-day journey to Sri Lanka under the direction of a pair of local harbor pilots when it lost power and went completely dead, according to an officer onboard. As it approached the 1.6-mile-long steel bridge, the ship didn’t slow down. The bridge workers didn’t know it, but the Dali’s crew didn’t have time to drop anchor and had issued a mayday call.
Officials stopped vehicles from driving onto the bridge, but weren’t able to evacuate the maintenance workers before the Dali plowed headlong into a pillar near where the repair crew was stationed. Almost instantly the bridge crumpled. Eight men fell into the Patapsco.
Two were rescued. The other six are presumed dead, the Coast Guard said Tuesday night. Some 50 divers who spent the day frantically trying to find them in murky water as deep as 100 feet, amid sunken masses of unstable steel from the bridge, called off their search.
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