Baltimore Bridge Collapse Death Toll as Victims Revealed

Authorities suspended searches late Tuesday for the six workers who were on the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland, when it collapsed after being hit by a cargo ship in the early hours of the morning.

The Coast Guard said that the six workers, who were fixing potholes on the bridge at the time of the collision with the Dali cargo ship, were missing for too long to be found alive and they should be presumed dead. Two other workers who had plunged into the river’s waters were rescued on Tuesday.

“At this point, we do not believe we are going to find any of these individuals still alive,” Rear Admiral Shannon Gilreath said at a news conference late on Tuesday.

The presumed death of the six was echoed by Jeffrey Pritzker, executive vice president at Brawner Builders, the company that employed the construction workers. On Tuesday afternoon, Pritzker said that given the depth of the water and the length of time since the collapse of the bridge, there was no longer hope of rescuing the workers.

“This was so completely unforeseen,” Pritzker said. “We don’t know what else to say. We take such great pride in safety, and we have cones and signs and lights and barriers and flaggers. But we never foresaw that the bridge would collapse.”

The bodies of the six workers have not yet been recovered. Attempts to find them are going to start again after sunrise on Wednesday, State Police Colonel Roland Butler said.

The Baltimore Banner reported that the workers were from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico and they lived in Dundalk and Highlandtown. According to Jesus Campos, an employee of Brawner Builders who talked to the newspaper, the men were in their 30s and 40s and had spouses and children.

“They are all hard-working, humble men,” the man said, adding that the workers had all come to Baltimore for a better life.

CASA for All, a grassroots advocacy group supporting immigrant families in the U.S., wrote in a press release that one of its members was among the dead.

“In the aftermath of the tragic collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, our hearts ache for the families of the victims and all those impacted by this horrific accident,” CASA executive director Gustavo Torres said. “Sadly, we discovered that one of the construction workers involved was a longtime member of our CASA family, adding an even deeper layer of sorrow to this already grievous situation.”

The construction worker was identified as Miguel Luna, from El Salvador. He left at 6:30 p.m. Monday for work “and since, has not come home,” CASA wrote. Luna was a husband, a father of three, “and has called Maryland his home for over 19 years,” the advocacy group added.

According to officials, at least 20 people and several vehicles were on the bridge at the time of its collapse and fall into the water. The bridge crumbled in a matter of a few seconds after the massive cargo ship Dali. leaving the Port of Baltimore in the early hours of Tuesday, hit one of its pillars.

The nearly 1,000-foot-long Singapore-flagged vessel, bound for Sri Lanka, lost power and issued a mayday call shortly before the collision, leaving officials a brief timeframe to keep more cars from getting on the bridge and stop traffic on both ends of the bridge. All crew members of the cargo ship were uninjured and accounted for.

In a public briefing on Tuesday, President Joe Biden said that the collapse of the bridge was a “terrible accident” rather than an “intentional act.” Baltimore’s mayor Brandon M. Scott also ruled out the possibility the accident was a terrorist attack, calling it an “unthinkable tragedy.”