The National Transportation Safety Board has identified 56 containers of hazardous materials that were on board the Dali when it struck the Francis Scott Key bridge — an as yet unknown number of those containers are currently in the water.

That news came during a late Wednesday media briefing in Linthicum, Maryland where NTSB officials shared an update on the most immediate result of the investigation.

“We are collecting. We will not provide any sort of findings, conclusions or any safety recommendations while on scene,” said NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy. “Our entire focus on scene is to collect the perishable evidence: that's documenting the scene, it's taking photographs, it's taking any sort of electronics or components… Whatever goes away once the scene is cleaned up.”

While there has been reporting in various media outlets on maintenance records and inspection reports, Homendy says those things will be examined but can be done later and off scene.

Six construction workers who were filling potholes at the time of the accident are all presumed dead by the U.S. Coast Guard after the bridge collapsed in the pre-dawn hours of Tuesday morning. Officials announced today that they recovered the bodies of Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, 35, of Baltimore and Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, 26, of Dundalk in a red pickup truck submerged in 25-feet deep water. Four more people have yet to be recovered although divers have ceased recovery efforts for the time being after determining that there was no safe way to access the other submerged vehicles.

Homendy did say that the entire investigation could take anywhere from 12-24 months although an initial investigative report could come out within the next 2-4 weeks.

Homendy reported that in total there were about 764 tons of hazardous materials composed of mostly corrosives, flammables, and mostly other miscellaneous hazardous “class 9” materials including lithium ion batteries.

The contents of the submerged cargo are unknown. Homendy said that right now it would be “dangerous” to recover those containers from the wreckage. She said a “sheen” can be seen on the water right now and that local and federal authorities are addressing that matter.

Homendy reports that there were 21 crew members on board and two pilots at the time of the accident. The Dali is a Singaporean vessel owned by Grace Ocean Limited and operated by Synergy Marine Private, both of Singapore.

The NTSB confirmed early Wednesday morning with reporters that they were able to recover the Voyage Data Recorder (VDR) during a dive search during the late night hours on Tuesday where it was then sent to their lab to review. That recorder would have audio from the bridge and recordings from the ship’s VHF radio, officials said. Those recordings are taken from the bridge. NTSB said it is not a shipwide system record and does not include engineering details like temperatures of cylinder power or distribution sensors.

“The quality of that audio varies widely because of the high levels of background noise and alarms. Additional analysis will be performed at the NTSB's lab to filter out the audio and improve its quality,” said Marcel Muise, a marine casualty investigator at the NTSB. Beyond that, the agency was not able to give additional details about the content of those recordings. Language translation is also another factor.

Conspiracies theories have abounded as to how the bridge collapsed nearly instantaneously. Homendy explained that the bridge, which opened to the public in 1977, is called a “fracture critical” bridge. “That means if a member fails, that would likely cause a portion of or the entire bridge to collapse. There's no redundancy.”

Nowadays, she says bridges are meant to have “redundancy” and that fracture critical bridges are not the preferred build. There are 17, 468 fracture critical bridges in the country out of over 600,000 bridges in the country, according to the Federal Highway Administration.

Homendy reported that the Key Bridge received a “satisfactory” grade on its most recent May 2023 fracture critical inspection from the Federal Highway Administration. Fracture critical bridges are inspected more often than other bridges, she said.

Officials also laid out the following preliminary timeline. All time stamps are for Tuesday morning, March 26th, 2024.

12:39:00 AM: The Dali leaves the Seagirt Marine Terminal traveling outbound for the Fort McHenry channel.

1:07: 00 AM: The ship enters the channel, traveling at approximately 8 knots (around 9.2 miles per hour)

1:24:59 AM: Numerous audible alarms were recorded on the ships by bridge audio. Steering and runner orders can be heard in recordings.

1:26:39 AM: Ship’s pilot made a general call for tugs in the area to assist. A dispatcher from the Pilot’s Association phoned an emergency dispatcher about the blackout. 1:27:04 AM: The pilot ordered the Dali to drop the anchor and ordered additional steering commands.

1:27:25 AM: The pilot issued a radio call over VHF radio reporting the Dali had lost all power and was approaching the bridge. Around the same time, data from the Maryland Transportation Authority shows that a dispatcher radioed two units that were already on scene due to construction on the bridge. There was a unit on each side of the bridge and they were ordered to close traffic immediately.

1:29:00 AM: The ship speed is recorded at just under 7 knots (8 mph)

1:29:00-1:29:35 AM The ship audio records sound consistent with the collision of the bridge. MDTA dash camera footage shows the bridge lights extinguishing.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Homendy as Homenday. The story has been updated with the correct spelling.