‘The Key Bridge is down': Newly released transcript captures the moments before and after the ship's impact
As the National Transportation Safety Board continues to investigate the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, a newly released transcript of the audio recording from the Dali container ship shows routine conversation then panic.
The transcript reveals the moments directly before and after the Dali cargo ship collided with the Key Bridge in the early morning hours of March 26, 2024, as it was leaving the Port of Baltimore.
At the beginning of the trip, there was no indication of what was to come.
As the ship was still alongside Seagirt Marine Terminal, the ship's crew on the bridge was 'having casual conversation.' Once two local pilots from the Association of Maryland Pilots boarded the DALI to guide its departure from the Port of Baltimore, one asked the master of the Dali, 'Captain, everything's working?'
The master replied, 'yeah, everything is in order.'
The conversation between the pilot and the training pilot was ordinary. They were talking about where the training pilot lived and when they started the job. The pilot mentioned he had stepped on a staple at home. There was conversation about people wanting sugar in coffee.
However, around 1:24 a.m., there were signs of trouble.
Around that time alarms began going off, and the Dali lost power. The training pilot then said, 'uh oh.' The pilot began asking if the ship had steering. Over the next minute, there was chaos on the cargo ship as crew members and the pilots worked to respond to the loss of power.
Around 1:26 a.m., the pilot began warning to close the Key Bridge.
At 1:27 a.m., the training pilot said, 'Security call. Security call. Container ship Dali has lost power. Approaching the Key Bridge — I repeat: The container ship Dali has lost all power approaching the Key Bridge, Dali.'
While the crew members unsuccessfully tried to anchor the ship, around 1:29 a.m. the audio recording picked up an 'enormous rumble,' when the Dali hit the Key Bridge. At that point the pilot and training Pilot shouted expletives, saying 'the Key Bridge is down.'
Immediately, the pilots were in contact with the Coast Guard, as the quick response from first responders began.
Six men, working for a construction company performing routine maintenance work on the bridge, were killed.
In the minutes after the bridge collapsed, the pilots on the ship were trying to figure out what went wrong.
'I called [the pilot dispatcher] when we started to drift,' the pilot said.
'But we had good speed,' he added. 'We weren't going crazy… everything was under control.'
Lawsuits filed after the collapse accuse Grace Ocean and Synergy, the owners and operators of the Dali, of negligence. In court documents, state officials argued the disaster was preventable and said the operators failed to address issues with the ship prior to leaving the port. The transcript released by the NTSB seems to back up claims in some of the lawsuits filed against the owners and operators of the Dali.
'Investigation has established that the ship experienced two electrical power failures on March 25, hours before she departed from her berth. The ship's owner and operator did not diagnose or correct these electrical system failures. Nor were these failures reported to the United States Coast Guard, as required by law,' court documents said.
'Similarly, these failures were not divulged to the two local pilots from the Association of Maryland Pilots who boarded the DALI to guide its departure from the Port of Baltimore, which was also required by law. In fact, the DALI's master falsely reported to the Pilots that everything was in good working order,' the lawsuit filed by the State of Maryland continued to say.
While Grace Ocean and Synergy have reached a settlement with the Department of Justice, in a statement the companies said they 'are prepared to vigorously defend themselves in the limitation of liability proceedings pending before the Federal Court in Baltimore and to establish that they were not responsible for the incident.'
Earlier this year, the NTSB said that the Key Bridge was almost 30 times above the acceptable risk or threshold for critical bridges.
Have a news tip? Contact Jessica Babb at jessicababb@sbgtv.com.
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