Divers were able to find the bodies of two people in the Patapsco River Wednesday morning, a day after the cargo container ship Dali struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, collapsing the 1.6-mile bridge in a matter of seconds.
The bodies of Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes of Baltimore and Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera of Dundalk were found in a red pickup truck in about 25-feet of water around 10 a.m. according to Maryland State Police Superintendent Roland Butler Jr. Fuentes was originally from Mexico, and Castillo from Guatemala. Further efforts to recover the bodies of four other missing construction workers had to be halted due to safety concerns. “We have exhausted all search efforts around this wreckage, and based on sonar scans, we firmly believe that the vehicles are encased in the superstructure and concrete that we tragically saw come down,” Butler said at a press conference. “Divers are no longer able to safely operate around that.”
Fuentes and Cabrera were two of eight construction workers who were on the bridge patching potholes when it collapsed. Two of those workers were recovered alive from the water, while four others remain missing. Immigrant services group CASA identified two of those missing workers as Miguel Sana, who emigrated to Maryland 19 years ago from El Salvador, and Maynor Suazo Sandoval of Owings Mills, who emigrated 17 years ago from Honduras. “We know that they were hard workers,” CASA executive director Gustavo Torres told reporters. “We know that they loved soccer. We know that they loved their families and their community. We know that they were both extraordinary human beings.”
Efforts have switched from recovery to salvage according to authorities. The plan is to start clearing out wreckage and debris where the remaining missing workers are believed to be. Then the goal is to get shipping in and out of the Port of Baltimore moving again, says U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral Shannon Gilreath. “Our number one priority…is to reopen the waterways so that we can safely move commerce in and out of the Port of Baltimore,” Gilreath said. While shipping is suspended, truck traffic in and out of the port is unaffected.
