Baltimore Bridge Collapses After Cargo Ship Collision: Rescuers Search for Survivors in ‘Mass Casualty’ Incident

In a trag­ic inci­dent, the Fran­cis Scott Key Bridge in Bal­ti­more col­lapsed into the Pat­ap­sco Riv­er after being hit by a car­go ship. The event occurred in the ear­ly hours of Tues­day, leav­ing mul­ti­ple vehi­cles sub­merged in the water. Author­i­ties have labeled it a “mass casu­al­ty mul­ti-agency inci­dent” as res­cue efforts continue.

As report­ed by var­i­ous sources, res­cue teams are search­ing for up to 20 miss­ing indi­vid­u­als believed to have been involved in the inci­dent. Bal­ti­more Fire Depart­ment spokesper­son Kevin Cartwright expressed the urgency of the sit­u­a­tion, stat­ing, “This is a dire emer­gency. Our focus right now is try­ing to res­cue and recov­er these people.”

Bal­ti­more Fire Depart­ment Chief James Wal­lace pro­vid­ed an update, con­firm­ing that two indi­vid­u­als had been res­cued from the water. One of them was trans­ferred to a hos­pi­tal in “very seri­ous con­di­tion” while the oth­er appeared uninjured.

Accord­ing to CNN, at least sev­en vehi­cles have fall­en into the riv­er, prompt­ing the deploy­ment of a dive team for res­cue assis­tance. How­ev­er, res­cue efforts have been hin­dered by safe­ty con­cerns relat­ed to debris, includ­ing hang­ing car­go and retain­ers from the dam­aged bridge.

The car­go ship respon­si­ble for the inci­dent was report­ed­ly a Sin­ga­pore-flagged ves­sel des­tined for Sri Lan­ka. The col­li­sion occurred around 1:30 a.m. local time, ignit­ing a fire and caus­ing the ship to release black smoke.

Bal­ti­more May­or Bran­don M. Scott respond­ed on social media, assur­ing the pub­lic that emer­gency per­son­nel were on the scene and efforts were under­way. Mary­land Gov­er­nor Wes Moore declared a state of emer­gency, assert­ing that fed­er­al resources were being deployed and offer­ing grat­i­tude to those involved in the res­cue operations.

As author­i­ties con­tin­ue to nav­i­gate this trag­ic event, the focus remains on res­cu­ing sur­vivors and assess­ing the sever­i­ty of the bridge’s dam­age. Updates on the unfold­ing sit­u­a­tion are expect­ed as more infor­ma­tion becomes available.