Baltimore Key Bridge collapse latest news: Massive crane arrives to haul wreckage as clean-up plan revealed

Officials announced that the search efforts have concluded and they have now moved into the clean-up process.

“This is daunting. This is complicated,” Maryland Gov Wes Moore said about the start of the process. He did not provide a timeline for how long it would take, but warned: Our timeline will be long…People should rest assured we are going to get this done.”

The process could take “a few weeks,” James Bell, president of Chicago-based company ADCO Environmental Services, told the Washington Post.

“The hazmat crew always goes in after the emergency responders,” Mr Bell said.

“You have to remove the hazards, so that when you bring your new workers in to start removing the bridge, they’re not in harm’s way.”

Federal investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) have unveiled a more precise timeline of exactly what happened in the runup to the cargo ship’s brutal collision with the Francis Scott Key Bridge in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Here’s the NTSB’s revised timeline of the disaster, given in hours, minutes and seconds after experts’ first full day examining the scene on Wednesday:

12.39am: Dali container ship departs from Seagirt Marine Terminal.

1.07am: It enters Fort McHenry Channel.

1.24.59am: Numerous audible alarms recorded on ship’s bridge audio. Voyage data recorder (VDR) stops recording the vessel’s system data, although it is able to continue taping audio from alternative power source.

1.26.02am: VDR resumes recording ship’s system data after glitch. Steering commands and orders regarding its rudder captured on audio.

1.26.39am: Pilot issues very high frequency (VHF) radio call to nearby tugboats requesting assistance for the stricken vessel. Pilot association dispatcher also notifies Maryland Transportation Authority (MDTA) duty officer regarding blackout, according to data from latter organisation.

1.27.04am: Pilot orders ship’s port anchor to be dropped and issues additional steering commands.

1.27.25am: Pilot issues radio call over VHF radio, reports that vessel has lost all power and is approaching bridge. Transit authority duty officer radios two of its units — one on each side of bridge — that are already on scene and orders them to close traffic. All lanes shut down.

1.29am: Ship’s speed recorded at just under 8 miles per hour. VDR records 33 seconds of sound consistent with vessel’s smash with bridge. MDTA dash cameras meanwhile capture bridge lights going out.

01.29.39am: Pilot radios US Coast Guard to report bridge is down.

The largest crane on the US eastern seaboard has been called in to help clear the wreckage of Baltimore’s collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge.

Shipments in and out of one of America’s busiest ports are suspended while the wreckage hangs over the cargo ship that crashed into it.

Crews were still surveying the damage as of midday on Friday 29 March and a search for the bodies of four workers remains on hold because of the dangers of diving amongst the wreckage.

The crane, which can lift up to 1,000 tons, arrived late Thursday night and is expected to start hauling debris out of the water on Saturday morning.

A cargo ship crashed into the Key Bridge early on Tuesday, sending the structure tumbling into the Patapsco River.

A construction worker who was part of the team on the Francis Scott Key Bridge when it collapsed early on Tuesday morning in Baltimore, miraculously survived the incident despite not knowing how to swim.

Julio Cervantes’ and seven other workers from Mexico and Central America were taking a break inside their cars just moments before the bridge collapsed around 1:30am.

Mr Cervantes and another man were rescued the same day. The remains of Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, 35, and Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, 26, were recovered by searchers.

He was taken to the hospital with a chest wound and was released the same day

“My husband doesn’t know how to swim. It is a miracle he survived,” the wife of Cervantes, who did not wish to reveal her name, told NBC.

Four bodies are still missing after the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed on Tuesday morning.

Divers found the two victims trapped in a red pickup truck a little before 10 am on Wednesday in about 25 feet of water around the bridge’s middle span.

They were identified as construction workers Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, 35, of Baltimore and Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, 26, of Dundalk, Maryland.

Meanwhile, four other missing construction workers remain unaccounted for.

On Tuesday, officials said two people had been rescued alive from the water. One was uninjured while the other was in a serious condition.

Since Tuesday night when a cargo ship slammed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge, killing six people, all immigrants, Mr Trump has only posted one clip of Sean Hannity criticising President Joe Biden for making only a brief remark and “making it all about himself by mentioning his personal connection”.

Mr Trump, who is usually known for his consistent and repeated posts on social media on any topic in the national news, is being criticised for remaining largely silent.

Republican strategist Scott Reed said this silence from Mr Trump is “a little weird,” journalist Mike Sington shared on Twitter.

“It was a national tragedy, it’s going to cost $2 billion, it’s going to screw up a lot of people’s lives and impact goods travelling around the world,” Mr Reed said, according to Mr Sington’s post on X.

“At a minimum, express sympathy toward the poor six men that died that were doing their jobs on the midnight shift, keeping commerce flowing.”

Transport secretary Pete Buttigieg said the “misinformation or disinformation” spreading on social media following the deadly Baltimore bridge collapse has been “upsetting” for his department.

Speaking with Kaitlan Collins on CNN, the transport secretary said his department was not in the habit of dealing with rampant conspiracies or “that kind of wild thinking”.

“But unfortunately, it is a fact of life in America today,” he said.

“What’s really upsetting of course is that when misinformation or disinformation circulates that is not without victims.”

Speculations about how the bridge collapsed and what happened in the final hours have ranged from cyber attacks to the captain of the ship having side-effects from Covid vaccine, Ms Collins said.

Mr Buttigieg said what his department needs right now is “good and factual information”.

“We as a department need good factual information about how this happened so that we can include that in future decisions on everything from maritime and shipping policy to bridge design for the 2030 2040,” he told CNN.

“All of that requires being grounded in fact and that’s what we’re doing,” he said, adding that he respects independent work.

A huge shipping vessel that collided with a major bridge in Baltimore has left numerous people missing and could cause significant economic and social disruption, experts say.

Many questions remain about the collision, including why the ship hit with the bridge in the first place. But many of them are structural: how was the ship able to reach the bridge, why was it not protected against such collisions, and why the bridge collapsed so quickly once the collision had happened.

Experts say it may be too early to say exactly what happened during the collision and the collapse that resulted. But they caution that bridges of this kind are specifically built with protections against such crashes – and that it may have required a huge impact to make the bridge fall in this way.

Harrowing audio reveals authorities scrambled to stop vehicles crossing the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore moments before it collapsed.

Six construction workers who were on the bridge as it tumbled into the water are presumed dead, and a search for them has been suspended.

The incident happened after a cargo ship crashed into the structure in the early hours of Tuesday morning (26 March).

It had made a mayday call moments before the collision.

“We’ve got to stop all traffic,” an official is heard saying in dramatic audio released by the Maryland Transportation Authority, as the incident unfolds.