The bodies of two of the six missing construction workers were recovered from a red truck that had sunk into the Baltimore Harbor on Wednesday, according to the Maryland State Police.
The two men have been identified as 35-year-old Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes from Mexico and 26-year-old Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera from Guatemala, according to Col. Roland L. Butler Jr., Maryland police superintendent. The families of Fuentes and Cabrera have been notified.
The other four construction workers are also presumed dead, and other vehicles believed to be in the water are probably surrounded by rubble from the collapse, Butler said.
“Because of the superstructure surrounding what we believe were the vehicles and the amount of concrete and debris, divers are no longer able to safely navigate and operate around that,” he said. “We have exhausted all search efforts.”
The six construction workers are all immigrants from Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, and El Salvador.
The recovery of the red truck, which was found 25 feet in the water, comes after a large cargo ship crashed into one of the support columns of the Francis Scott Key Bridge early Tuesday morning. The ship had sent out a distress “mayday” signal prior to the crash that brought down the bridge.
The Coast Guard on Wednesday warned that 56 of the containers onboard the ship contained hazardous materials, but the containers do not pose a current threat to the public because they are located far away from the bow of the ship where the most damage was done.
“The majority of those containers are closer to the pilot house and are completely unaffected by the damage to the bow of the ship, and we have not determined that there’s any kind of release at this time,” Coast Guard Vice Adm. Peter Gautier said during a White House press briefing.
“The real critical thing here is that, as you know, a portion of the bridge remains on the bow on that ship, and we will be coordinating very closely with the Army Corps of Engineers and their contractors to first effect the removal of that debris before the vessel can then be removed. The vessel bow is sitting on the bottom because of the weight of that bridge debris on there,” he said.
Gautier did not reveal what kind of hazardous material was in those containers, but it was only in 56 of the 4,700 containers on board the vessel.
The Coast Guard will also be working with the Army Corps of Engineers to clean up the harbor so it can resume port operations as quickly as possible, according to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. But the recovery period is not expected to be quick or easy.
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The reconstruction of the bridge is also not expected to be cheap. President Joe Biden said it was his plan that the federal government would foot the bill for the bridge’s reconstruction, but such a project would need to be approved by Congress.
“It’s my intention that the federal government will pay for the entire cost of reconstructing the bridge,” Biden said Tuesday. “And I expect the Congress to support my effort. It’s going to take some time. The people of Baltimore can count on us, though, to stick with them every step of the way.”
