A global disaster unfolds on a bridge over a river in Baltimore

The Francis Scott Key Bridge took five years to build and served Marylanders for nearly five decades. Yet it was gone in a matter of seconds, snapping under the night sky and collapsing into the river below on Tuesday.

When it opened 47 years and six days ago on “a spectacularly clear” March morning, the steel-arched Francis Scott Key Bridge was hailed as an engineering wonder offering “some of the most spectacular vistas in Maryland.” “You could almost see forever,” read an editorial in The Evening Sun newspaper, noting the breathtaking sights of Baltimore’s skyline, the bustling harbor, historic Fort McHenry and the old Bethlehem Steel mill in Sparrows Point. Despite construction delays and massive cost overruns, the editorial said “you can see it as a proud completing buckle in the Baltimore belt,” referring to the final link in the heavily traveled route that runs around the city. About 1:30 a.m. on Tuesday, under a nearly full moon and clear skies, large sections of a bridge that took five years to build disappeared in seconds when a 213-million-pound loaded cargo vessel nearly the length of the Eiffel Tower struck a crucial support column the Key Bridge could not stand without. The iconic span named for the author of the American national anthem snapped under the night sky and hurtled into the cold and murky waters of the Patapsco River, killing six overnight immigrant laborers fixing potholes on the bridge. Two people were pulled out alive from the water. “Every single day I would see the bridge. And I go out there … and the bridge is gone,” said Jayme Krause, 32, who was working at a nearby Amazon factory that shook when the ship hit the bridge. “You don’t want to think about … people who are dying literally hundreds of feet from you. It’s one of the most heartbreaking things.”