ANNAPOLIS, Md. – Two electrical blackouts, one caused by a loose wire and another by problems with a fuel pump, disabled the controls of a huge cargo ship before it crashed into Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge, causing it to collapse last year and kill six construction workers, National Transportation Safety Board officials said Tuesday.
The crew was able to get the power back on after the first blackout, but a second blackout shortly after the first was caused by a lack of fuel because the fuel flushing pump used to supply the generators doesn’t restart automatically the way the main pumps are designed to do. That flushing pump must be restarted manually by a crew member leaving the engine room and heading down two decks in complete darkness to reach that pump and restart it.
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NTSB investigator Todd Gianelloni said the crew did periodically inspect the wiring system on the 947-foot (289-meter) container ship called the Dali, but there were no instructions on how to check individual wire connections, and doing so would have been labor intensive and impractical on a ship with thousands of wires.
Gianelloni said the NTSB believes that if the crew had used infrared thermal imaging to inspect the connections, the loose critical wire might have been discovered ahead of time. Investigators noted that infrared thermal imaging, which can detect problems that aren't visible, is frequently used in the maritime industry.
“It is a widely used method,” said Bart Barnum, an NTSB investigator.
NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy noted during the hearing that there was no issue with the ship's fuel. That was something speculated about shortly after the crash.
NTSB investigator Bridget Quinn said the growth in container ships over the years presents a greater threat to bridges, but the Baltimore bridge wasn’t adequately fortified to protect against today’s massive cargo ships, even though stakeholders in the port first discussed improving bridge pier protections as early as two decades before the collapse.
“Staff found that larger vessels pose risks and challenges to maritime safety due to their reduced maneuverability and restricted waterways,” Quinn said.
Board members expressed frustration with the way several of the companies involved responded to the NTSB investigation.
Homendy questioned why the ship’s operator, Synergy, still hasn’t updated its policies to advise its crews not to use a backup maintenance pump to supply fuel to the generators the way the Dali crew was because it won’t restart automatically. Synergy and the other companies involved in manufacturing and operating the container ship have had access to all of NTSB’s findings as the investigation unfolded.
“It’s been 20 months, right? I mean, that’s the reason you’re a party to our investigation. So you should take that action,” Homendy said.
Homendy said she was also frustrated with Hyundai Heavy Industry declining to consider reconfiguring the engines of these ships. Instead the shipmaker argued that crews should just be trained better to use an emergency procedure that NTSB investigators already determined wouldn’t have helped in an emergency like this.
The board is scheduled to vote later Tuesday on its findings and safety recommendations on the crash.
The board's meeting was held a day after Maryland officials more than doubled the estimated cost to replace the bridge and added two years on to the projected completion date — to 2030. The new projected cost is between $4.3 billion and $5.2 billion, compared with the previous estimate of about $1.9 billion.
The Dali was leaving Baltimore bound for Sri Lanka when its steering failed because of the power loss. The ship then crashed into a supporting column of the bridge about 1:30 a.m. on March 26, 2024, causing the bridge to collapse into the Patapsco River.
Safety investigators released a preliminary report last year that documented a series of power issues on the ship before and after its departure from Baltimore.
Six men on a road crew, who were filling potholes during an overnight shift, fell to their deaths when the bridge collapsed. The collapse snarled commercial shipping traffic through the Port of Baltimore for months before the channel was fully opened that June.
The NTSB has criticized the Maryland Transportation Authority for failing to address the bridge’s vulnerability to ship strikes — despite major changes in maritime shipping since it opened to traffic in 1977. The board has called on other bridge owners to learn from the example.