Baltimore bridge collapse investigators gather black box from Dali ship

U.S. federal safety investigators recovered the black box from the freight ship that crashed into a Baltimore bridge, the agency chief said on Wednesday, as rescuers looked for the remains of six workers missing in the bridge collapse.

A highway team also will be looking at the twisted remains of the Francis Scott Key Bridge as they try to determine how and why a container ship smashed into a pillar of the 2.6-kilometre bridge in early morning darkness on Tuesday.

Investigators from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board recovered the data recorder after boarding the ship late on Tuesday, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said. They will interview the ship's crew, she said.

Homendy said the Singapore-flagged container vessel Dali possessed one of the newer models of data recorder and that officials would be looking to gather information including "positioning of ship, the vessel itself, speed, you name it."

"It's gonna take some time," she said. "We may be on scene five to 10 days."

Homendy said a preliminary fact-based report is typically available in two to four weeks, while an NTSB investigation report with analysis and recommendations can take anywhere from 12 to 24 months.

The disaster forced the indefinite closure of vessel traffic in the Port of Baltimore, one of the busiest on the U.S. Eastern seaboard, and created a traffic quagmire for Baltimore and the surrounding region.

Rescuers pulled two construction workers from the water alive on Tuesday. One was hospitalized. The six presumed to have perished included immigrants from Central America.

Maryland Gov. West Moore said Wednesday divers in the water faced dangerous conditions.

"They are down there in darkness where they can literally see about a foot in front of them. They are trying to navigate mangled metal, and they're also in a place it is now presumed that people have lost their lives," he said.

Guatemala's consulate in Maryland confirmed that two of the missing were Guatemalan citizens working on the bridge. Mexico's Washington consulate also confirmed in a statement posted on X that Mexican citizens were among the missing, but did not say how many.

The Honduran man was identified as Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandova by that country's deputy foreign affairs minister.

Officials said the eight were part of a work crew repairing potholes on the road surface when the Dali, leaving Baltimore bound for Sri Lanka, plowed into a support pylon.

The U.S. Coast Guard said it was looking for their bodies 18 hours after they were thrown from the bridge into the frigid waters at the mouth of the Patapsco River.