Six months ago tonight, many of us woke up in the middle of a night's sleep to news that seemed impossible - a 900-plus ton ship had crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge, destroying it, and taking the lives of six Marylanders. There's still a lot we don't know about what happened that night, but we have learned a lot in the last six months. Investigators are piecing together what went wrong and who is to blame. Here's a breakdown of what they've discovered so far.
Just three days after the bridge collapse, as everyone was clamoring for answers, we spoke with Captain Jim Staples, a master mariner and consultant for maritime investigations. He told us ships like the DALI have emergency generators that should kick in automatically during a power outage, allowing a crew to maintain steering ability.
"So, you know, if they were doing the correct thing, they should have already been in the emergency steering condition," he said.
WMAR-2 News Reporter Elizabeth Worthington asked, "So you imagine that if they weren't…that must mean that they couldn't?"
Staples said, "Right. So to me, they've had a complete failure on that vessel for power, including the emergency generator."
Turns out he was right, based on what we know so far from investigators. There are at least three separate but parallel investigations happening - from the Department of Justice, the Maryland Attorney General, and the National Transportation Safety Board.
The NTSB has only released preliminary reports, so we know more from the DOJ and the State of Maryland, both of which summarized their findings in lawsuits announced over the last week against the two companies responsible for the DALI - Grace Ocean, the owner, and Synergy Marine, the manager.
Conducting their investigations on board the DALI in the months following the collapse, investigators for the state and the federal government accused those companies and the crew of cutting corners to save time and money. They found the ship had long-standing electrical and mechanical problems, dating back to at least the Spring of 2023. Handover notes show that the prior captain had reported those issues to Synergy that month.
Excessive vibrations were wearing on the ship’s electrical system, shaking loose important wires and cables.
"But instead of taking necessary precautions, they did the opposite,” Benjamin Mizer, principal deputy associate attorney general for the DOJ said on a phone call with reporters last week, announcing the federal government’s lawsuit. “Out of negligence, mismanagement, and, at times, a desire to cut costs, they configured the ship's electrical and mechanical systems in a way that prevented those systems from being able to quickly restore propulsion and steering after a power outage.”
And they say - that’s exactly what happened on March 26th. It was a domino effect.
When a transformer malfunctioned, and the ship lost power, it should've automatically switched to a backup source, but that safety feature had been "recklessly disabled" by the crew, the lawsuit alleges. Engineers wasted time manually resetting the system, time they could have spent steering away from the key bridge. Power was restored, but only for a minute.
"The DALI lost power a second time, likely because the vessel had been using an inadequate temporary fuel pump that could not restart after a blackout. This was another legal safety requirement that the Dali failed to follow in order to cut costs and save time,” Chetan Patil, acting deputy assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s civil division, said.
“Ships like the DALI are supposed to be equipped with backup systems, backup systems that make sure the vessel don’t lose power or steering capabilities in critical moments like when they’re approaching a bridge,” Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown said during a press conference on Tuesday, announcing the state’s suit. “But because of the stunning mismanagement, disinterest, or incompetence of the owner and operator of the Dali, those backup systems failed.”
At that point, it was too late. The ship was heading straight towards one of the bridge's piers.
Attorneys also argue that dropping an anchor at this stage could have either blunted the impact, or even helped steer the ship away from the bridge’s supports. But since the crew was either improperly trained or incompetent, they allege, the anchors weren’t readily available when the pilot asked for them.
They say neither the captain nor the two companies responsible for the DALI reported any of these prior issues to the Coast Guard, including power outages experienced just the day before, as required by federal regulations. The captain also failed to inform the local pilot, licensed by the state of Maryland, who boarded the ship that morning.
You can see in the master-pilot exchange document below, released by the NTSB, that the pilot was informed all equipment was in "good working order."
"This is information you should be passing on to the pilot so the pilot can make a good judgment, whether the ship is safe to go or not, because that's his main concern, he's getting on a ship that he may never have been around before. He wants to know if the ship is safe to be put to sea,” Captain Staples told us.
The DOJ and state’s findings jibe with what the NTSB has released so far from its investigation. Documents released earlier this month show Hyundai engineers inspecting the ship. Hyundai is the manufacturer of the ship.
A loose cable was found, and engineers performed a simulation to demonstrate how it could cause a blackout if that cable became disconnected.
The NTSB did not draw conclusions from this finding. The full report isn’t expected for at least another 6 months - one year after the bridge collapse.
