Key Bridge collapses into Patapsco River in Baltimore after vessel hits support column

BALTIMORE — Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed early Tuesday morning after a support column was struck by a container ship, sending at least seven cars into the Patapsco River, launching a search-and-rescue operation and prompting Gov. Wes Moore to declare a state of emergency.

In a Tuesday morning news conference, just a few hours after the incident, Baltimore Fire Department Chief James Wallace said authorities are “still very much in an active search and rescue posture,” noting they are searching for “upwards of seven individuals” and that sonar has detected the presence of vehicles in the water. There is no indication that the event was intentional, Wallace said.

“This is a tragedy that you could never imagine … It looked like something out of an action movie,” Mayor Brandon Scott said.

Video from the incident shows the container ship, billowing smoke, colliding with a support beam and quickly causing much of the bridge to collapse. Just before the collision, the ship’s lights appear to turn off, then on, then off again.

The ship had been under the operation of a pilot.

All traffic has been rerouted from the 1.6-mile steel bridge that is part of Interstate 695.

“We know that we have a long road ahead, not just in search and rescue, but in the fallout from this,” Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr. said in the news conference.

Priscilla Thompson, who lives on the water in Dundalk facing the Key Bridge, was awoken in the middle of the night by the horrible sound of crashing steel.

“I really thought it was an earthquake or something because it shook this house so bad,” she said. “It shook it — it really rattled it — for four or five seconds.”

“And then, it got real quiet,” she said.

Moore said in a statement that he has declared a state of emergency and will work to “quickly deploy federal resources.”

“We are thankful for the brave men and women who are carrying out efforts to rescue those involved and pray for everyone’s safety,” Moore said in the statement. “We will remain in close contact with federal, state, and local entities that are carrying out rescue efforts as we continue to assess and respond to this tragedy.”

A spokesman for the U.S. Coast Guard said the 948-foot, Singapore-flagged cargo ship Dali struck the bridge at approximately 1:20 a.m.

“We are deploying assets in response,” said Petty Officer First Class Matthew West, including two response boats from Curtis Bay and one from Annapolis. A helicopter was also deployed to assist in the “search and rescue” and several police helicopters were seen circling the area Tuesday morning.

The ship was built in 2015 and arriving from Norfolk, Virginia, according to Vessel Finder, a ship tracking website. It departed from the Port of Baltimore around 1:00 a.m., according to MarineTraffic, a separate tracking website.

The cause of the incident is yet to be determined, according to a statement from Dali’s owners and managers. Two pilots were aboard the ship and they, as well as all 22 Indian crew members, have “been accounted for and there are no reports of any injuries.”

There has been no pollution, the ship’s manager, Synergy Marine Group, said. Wallace said authorities had not confirmed if any fuel spilled into the water, but said there had been an odor of “diesel fuel.”

The National Data Buoy Center reported water temperatures in that area of the Patapsco were about 49 degrees at 4 a.m. The air temperature was 41 and winds were light.

Chadonne Grant, an overnight security officer at the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore, said Tuesday morning that the hospital had admitted several patients involved with the collapse. She didn’t know how many — “not a lot” — but said they were brought in by helicopter about 2:30 a.m. or 3 a.m.

On X, the site formerly known as Twitter, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said he’d been in contact with Moore and Scott and had offered the U.S. Department of Transportation’s “support following the vessel strike and collapse of the Francis Scott Key bridge.”

The Maryland Department of Emergency Management has staff on-site, and is coordinating with the governor’s office, the state police and the traffic authority in response to the bridge collapse. Agency spokesman Travis Brown said that the department has raised its emergency operation center’s status to advanced, and that the state joint operations center is “in full swing.”

The Maryland Transportation Authority noted on social media that Interstate 95 and I-895 tunnels are alternative ways to travel across the harbor. Vehicles transporting hazardous materials, however, are prohibited in tunnels and “should use the western section of I-695 around tunnels,” the authority posted.

A White House official said in a statement to The Baltimore Sun that “there is no indication of any nefarious intent.”

“Our hearts go out to the families of those who remain missing as a result of this horrific incident,” the statement said, in part.

The Key Bridge, which opened in March 1977 after five years of construction and cost an estimated $110 million, is named for the writer of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The bridge is one of the Baltimore harbor’s three toll crossings.

The bridge carried more than 12.4 million commercial and passenger vehicles in 2023 — roughly 34,000 a day — according to a Maryland state government report issued last November.

Tuesday morning before daybreak, 50-year-old Lupe Lucas and her son stood along the water’s edge in Dundalk, gazing at the area the Key Bridge once spanned.

The center of the bridge had disappeared, save for a section collapsed on top of the large ship.

“When the sun rises, and there’s nothing there, that’s going to be heartbreaking for a lot of people,” she said.

____

Baltimore Sun reporters Christine Condon, Natalie Jones, Hannah Gaskill, Sam Janesch, Jonathan Pitts and Lorraine Mirabella contributed to this article.