Rescue underway after Baltimore bridge collapse

Bangkok Post Group

A container ship smashed into a four-lane bridge in the U.S. port of Baltimore in darkness on Tuesday (March 26), causing it to collapse and sending cars and people plunging into the river below. - REUTERS

Transcript

00:00 I went over there and sure as anything, it was gone.

00:04 The whole bridge was just like, there was nothing there.

00:08 Jamie Krause was working a night shift at an Amazon office in Baltimore when she and

00:13 her co-workers felt a hard rumbling in the early hours of Tuesday.

00:18 What she experienced was a container ship smashing into the four-lane Francis Scott

00:23 Key Bridge in darkness.

00:25 The bridge collapsed and sent cars and people plunging into the river below.

00:29 Paul Wiedefeld is the Secretary of Maryland Department of Transport.

00:33 At this time, this is an active search and rescue mission.

00:37 We know there were individuals on the bridge at the time of the collapse working on the

00:41 bridge, contractors for us.

00:43 ABC News citing an unclassified U.S. intelligence report said the ship lost propulsion as it

00:50 was leaving port and the crew on board notified Maryland officials they had lost control of

00:55 the vessel.

00:57 Tuesday's disaster may be the worst U.S. bridge collapse since 2007.

01:02 Maryland Governor Wes Moore declared a state of emergency to quickly deploy federal resources

01:08 to deal with emergency.

01:10 Baltimore Police Commissioner Richard Worley said there was no indication of terrorism.

01:16 Traffic was suspended at the Port of Baltimore until further notice, according to Maryland

01:20 Transportation Authorities.

01:22 It is the busiest U.S. port for car shipments, handling more than 750,000 vehicles in 2022,

01:30 according to PortData.

01:31 David Knight is a specialist advisor at the Institute of Civil Engineer in the UK.

01:37 It's extremely unusual to have a bridge collapse caused by a ship impact.

01:44 We do get instances of ship impact on piers, but normally piers are designed to accommodate

01:49 a certain level of impact from ships.

01:54 The ship was identified by LSEC ship tracking data as a Singapore-flagged container ship

02:00 the Dali.

02:01 Synergy Marine Group, which manages the ship, said all its crew members had been accounted

02:06 for and there were no reports of any injuries.

02:10 Musk said in a statement that the Dali was chartered by the shipping company at the time

02:15 of the incident.

02:17 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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