By Michael Hernandez
WASHINGTON (AA) - Six people are confirmed to be missing after a cargo ship plowed into a major bridge in the US city of Baltimore early Tuesday morning, sending the Francis Scott Key Bridge plummeting into the frigid Patapsco River below.
The six missing individuals are believed to have been part of a construction crew who were working on the bridge filling potholes when it was struck around 1:30 a.m. local time (0530 GMT), Maryland Transportation Secretary Paul Wiedefeld said.
It is unclear if any cars were transiting the bridge when it collapsed, but Maryland Governor Wes Moore said that the operators of the Dali container ship radioed in a mayday call that allowed officials at the bridge "to begin to stop the flow of traffic so more cars were not up on the bridge."
He did not say whether any vehicles were on the bridge at the time of impact, emphasizing that the investigation remains ongoing.
"Many of the vehicles were stopped before they got onto the bridge, which saved lives in a very, very heroic way," he added.
Water temperatures in the Patapsco River were sitting at a frigid 47 degrees Fahrenheit (8 degrees Celsius) Tuesday morning, according to federal tracking data.
The Key Bridge was one of three main arteries used to transit the Baltimore Harbor with roughly 35,000 people using it daily for their commutes, spanning the entryway to the harbor where the vital Port of Baltimore is located. All commercial ship traffic has been halted to allow for search and rescue efforts to continue.
Moore said authorities are solely working on finding the six people who are confirmed to have gone missing following the incident. He said that for Marylanders, the news that the bridge collapsed early Tuesday morning was "shocking and heartbreaking."
"For every single one of us who are Marylanders, the words that the Key Bridge is gone, it still shakes us because for 47 years that's all we've known, and so this is not just not just unprecedented from what we're seeing, and what we're looking at today, it's heartbreaking," he told reporters at a press conference.
Two people have been saved by rescuers so far, including one who was taken to a local hospital in serious condition. The other person declined medical treatment.
Video of the incident that has circulated on social media appears to show the Dali partially losing power at least twice as a plume of thick black smoke pours out of the container vessel. The ship then rams into one of the bridge's support pillars causing it collapse in dramatic fashion about a second later.