Taken from UNIVISIÓN
The attack of the cargo ship that collapsed the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore early Tuesday morning left at least six victims who have been identified as Hispanic workers.
The six were part of a construction crew working to repair the asphalt of the bridge, a major communication artery in the Baltimore area.
The first to be identified were: Miguel Luna, who according to Casa, an NGO that helps immigrant communities, was a Salvadoran father of three who worked on the bridge and never returned. And Maynor Suazo, a 39-year-old Honduran, originally from Azacualpa, department of Santa Bárbara, in the west of the country, and had been living in the United States for 18 years, García said.
Also this morning, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador indicated that two of the victims are Mexicans.
They were all presumed dead due to the cold and the time that had passed since they fell into the water. Col. Roland L. Butler Jr. of the Maryland State Police said late Tuesday that they were abandoning the rescue mission and moving on to recovering the bodies.
The 985-foot-long vessel crashed into one of the bridge supports of 1.6 miles, causing the span to collapse and fall into the water in a matter of seconds.
In this graphic we tell you how the huge cargo ship collided with one of the pillars of the bridge, triggering its collapse:
According to the first information from the authorities, the operators of the Dali freighter They issued an emergency call saying that the ship had lost power moments before the crash, but the ship was still heading toward the span at “a very, very fast speed,” Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said.
Guatemala confirms that two of its compatriots are among the missing
The Guatemalan Foreign Ministry confirmed that two of its compatriots were among the group that fell from the bridge at the time of the collapse.
«The Guatemalans were part of a total of eight workers who were repairing the asphalt on the bridge at the time of the accident. Two were rescued,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
The Guatemalans are two men aged 26 and 35, originally from the departments of Petén and Chiquimula, in the north and west of Guatemalarespectively, according to the text, cited by AFP.
The statement added that the consul had gone to the scene of the events to “assist the families” of the victims and follow up “on the search and rescue actions being carried out.”
The ship’s notice allowed authorities to limit vehicle traffic on the stretch. Furthermore, the accident occurred at 1:30 am, well before the busy morning. It is estimated that an average of 30,800 vehicles per day circulated on the bridge in 2019.
The ship is owned by Singapore-based Grace Ocean Private Ltd. and had already had a serious incident in 2016, when it crashed into a dock in a port in Belgium.
An inspection of the Dali last June at a port in Chile identified a problem with the ship’s “propulsion and auxiliary machinery,” according to Equasis, a maritime information system. The deficiency It involved gauges and thermometers, but the website’s online records gave no further details.
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