Six laborers are thought to have died when a damaged cargo ship destroyed the Baltimore Bridge.



March 26, Baltimore, MD (Reuters) - One of the busiest ports on the U.S. Eastern Seaboard was forced to close when a big cargo ship disabled by a power outage plowed into the bridge in Baltimore Harbor early on Tuesday, leaving six workers missing and believed dead.


About 18 hours after the accident, active search and rescue activities were halted due to the increasingly dangerous conditions that dive teams were encountering in the dark, wreckage-filled waters, according to officials from the Maryland State Police and U.S. Coast Guard


Because of the cold water and the amount of time that had passed since the accident, Coast Guard Rear Admiral Shannon Gilreath stated that there was no chance of locating the missing workers alive.Colonel Roland Butler of the State Police stated that, in an attempt to locate the workers' remains, authorities planned to send divers back into the river on Wednesday morning.At 1:30 a.m. (0530 GMT), the container ship Dali, flying the flag of Singapore, struck a support pylon of the Francis Scott Key Bridge across the mouth of the Patapsco River as it was leaving Baltimore Harbor for Sri Lanka.