What to watch as investigators probe the bridge collapse in Baltimore

Federal investigators are just starting to examine what caused a container ship to crash into Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge. But clues are already emerging – if you know how to read them.

Early Wednesday morning, divers were able to recover data recorders from the ship. On the scene in Baltimore, Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, said her team would be gathering any components, electronic logs, paperwork, pictures and other perishable items needed for its investigation, which must be collected before any clean-up operations can begin.

Those are just the first steps in a probe that could take a year or longer.

Here’s POLITICO’s guide to what happens next, and what to watch.

How does the investigation work? 

The NTSB, an independent federal agency whose mission is probing accidents and recommending how to avoid them, will lead the effort.

The NTSB will look a range of factors, from the ship’s and bridge’s maintenance history, the ship’s data recorder, the crew’s actions, the bridge’s design, emergency response and a host of other considerations as it drafts a final report.

Jeff Guzzetti, a former NTSB investigator who is now a safety consultant, said the NTSB initially focuses on collecting “perishable evidence” — in other words, evidence that disappears when the scene is cleaned up.

That “includes peoples’ memories,” Guzzetti said in an interview, “so they’re going to want to conduct interviews of the crew of the Dali as well as the people that perhaps did recent maintenance on the engines and electrical systems."

Guzzetti said the NTSB will break up into expertise groups to examine different factors — such as operations, the weather, engineering, recorded data, the people involved and “other disciplines that are germane to shipping accidents like this."

“The collection of the information takes time,” said Homendy. “We’re here right now to collect data and get information, the perishable evidence that we need.”

Are there any early indications about what went wrong? 

In short, yes — though most transportation accidents of this magnitude are caused by multiple, cascading failures.

“I am certain it’s not something simple,” Guzzetti said.

The ship appears to have lost power, and, with it, propulsion, at a catastrophically bad moment.

Multiple videos taken of the harbor the night of the accident show the ship Dali as it careened toward the bridge and eventually hit it with a sickening shower of sparks. The ship’s lights can be seen turning off and back on again, and a plume of thick smoke jetting from one of its stacks, right before it hit the bridge.

“It appears that they lost control of the steering of the vessel … that something mechanically went wrong,” Guzzetti said. “I’ve been hearing that it could be bad fuel — if the fuel wasn’t operating the engines, the engine doesn’t generate electrical power, you lose your steering because of that.”

Guzzetti said he expects that will be a key focus of the investigation — mechanical failure, possibly several, on the ship itself.

“With the lights flickering on and off before the impact and that black acrid smoke spewing out of the stack, and with the way the vessel suddenly lost its steering and moved … leads me to believe that there was definitely some sort of malfunction with the vessel,” he said. “Investigators are going to hone in on exactly what happened and why they lost the steering.”

Indeed, the Singapore Maritime & Port Authority said the ship had reported to them that it “experienced momentary loss of propulsion” directly prior to the incident.

The Francis Scott Key bridge doesn’t seem to have been in poor repair — though there are questions about its design. 

So far, it doesn’t appear that the bridge itself was an issue in the disaster. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said in a press conference earlier this week that the bridge was “fully up to code.”

However, there are questions about whether the bridge, which was built in 1977, could have been equipped with “fenders” (sometimes called “dolphins”) around its support beams. These fenders are intended to help shunt errant ships away from those beams, but were not in use when the Key bridge was built in 1977.

Even so, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Tuesday that no bridge could have withstood the impact.

“I do not know of a bridge that has been constructed to withstand a direct impact from a vessel of this size,” he said. On Wednesday, Buttigieg compared the ship to a “Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, going directly into the key support beam of that bridge.”

On Wednesday morning, Homendy said her agency would have a “highway safety team on board to begin to look at the structure and identify any components that they need to send back to our lab.”

The crew’s mayday — and quick police response — saved many lives. 

At some point shortly before the ship hit the bridge, the crew or harbor pilot on board knew the ship was in dire trouble, and radioed a “mayday” to authorities that it was headed toward disaster.

That was just enough time for police to close off both lanes of the bridge to traffic, averting what could have been a much higher death toll.

The police on the scene had discussed radioing the construction crew working on the bridge to evacuate next, but just moments after, the bridge fell. Six of the workers who fell with the bridge are presumed dead.

Peder Schaefer contributed to this report.