BALTIMORE: With a huge, runaway cargo ship bearing down on one of Baltimore harbour’s busiest bridges, local police had just moments to react to a last-ditch Mayday call from its crew.
Stopping the drifting container ship Dali was impossible.
But officers could still try to prevent drivers from heading into what was about to become a death trap.
“Hold all traffic on the Key Bridge. There’s a ship approaching that’s just lost their steering, so until they get that under control, we’ve got to stop all traffic,” an officer can be heard saying in police radio excerpts published by Broadcastify.
As his colleagues shut down the highway, an officer can be heard referring to nighttime repair workers already on the Francis Scott Key bridge – six of whom were declared missing by officials after the disaster.
“If there’s a crew up there you might want to notify whoever the foreman is, see if we can get them off the bridge temporarily,” the officer says.
But it was too late.
“The whole bridge just fell down. Start, start – whoever – everybody. The whole bridge just collapsed,” comes the next panicked message as the Dali slams into the structure.
Another officer radios in: “I can’t get to the other side, sir, the bridge is down.”
CCTV images tell the story – showing much of the 47-year-old span crumpling and tumbling into the water, leaving the cargo ship with its piled containers wedged beneath crumpled steel.
