A misplaced wire label on a container ship and other mishaps likely caused the Baltimore bridge collapse, NTSB says

Salvage crews continue to remove wreckage from the cargo ship Dali after it struck and collapsed the Francis Scott Key Bridge as seen in April in Baltimore Salvage crews continue to remove wreckage from the cargo ship Dali after it struck and collapsed the Francis Scott Key Bridge as seen in April in Baltimore CNN A misplaced wire label the vulnerability of a bridge and other mishaps in protocols likely caused the collapse of Baltimore s Francis Scott Key Bridge after a large vessel struck it in the spring last year according to the National Transportation Safety Board On Wednesday the NTSB published a -page final description on the March event which details the events that could have caused an electrical blackout that led to the -million-pound cargo vessel veering and smashing into the bridge killing six highway workers The container ship Dali was leaving the Port of Baltimore and struck a pillar of the Key Bridge Other contributing factors to the cause of the happening were the crew s inability to recover propulsion from the loss of electrical power and the limited time people could act due to the Dali s proximity to the bridge the record disclosed There was also a lack of effective and immediate communications to notify the highway workers on the bridge to evacuate The NTSB does not place blame but determines probable cause of transportation incidents The final record on the situation was revised and issued with more than recommendations finalized by the NTSB At a inhabitants meeting in November the NTSB mentioned it considered a wire label was put in the wrong place on a signal wire when the ship was built That wire label identifying the line kept the wire from getting a good connection in a circuit breaker which in turn ultimately caused the first blackout It s one of countless probable causes determined by the agency after about months of inquiry The NTSB will issue recommendations to certain groups involved or adjacent to the occurrence but the groups are not required to take on these recommendations just strongly encouraged The loose wire would have been hard to find The improperly placed wire label was one of the key talking points among investigators during a population meeting in November The wire label is a small silicone sheath made of thermoplastic material that was heat-shrunk around the wire As a product according to NTSB s investigator in charge Marcel Muise in November the vessel lost steering the ability to operate the bow thruster key water pumps and majority of the vessel s lighting and equipment essential for operations That first outage lasted seconds The crew onboard the Dali swiftly revealed the tripped breaker the NTSB noted Power came back within seconds but restarting a key pump that would have provided fuel to generators had to be done manually and that didn t happen When the generators ran out of gas in their lines the upshot was a second blackout However there were thousands of wires on the Dali and the one loose wire that caused this development would not have been easily detected by the crew In November NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy compared finding a loose wire in the Dali to finding a loose bolt in the Eiffel Tower The bridge had other risks The Francis Scott Key Bridge also had other risks that were never evaluated According to the NTSB the bridge had nearly times the acceptable level of peril for critical bridges of collapse if it were hit based on guidance established by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Administrators The Maryland Transportation Authority which maintains the bridge never evaluated that pitfall Earlier this year the NTSB also identified other bridges in states spanning waterways frequented by cargo ships that like the Key Bridge were built before and do not have a current vulnerability assessment Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy reported earlier this week he would meet with Maryland Governor Wes Moore to discuss the state s handling of key projects including the bridge for which costs have risen Duffy sent a letter in September to Moore raising concerns over the budget and timeline The Maryland Transportation Authority mentioned the updated cost estimate to replace the Key Bridge is now projected to be billion to billion with an expected opening in late a two-year delay from the earlier estimate The assessment on Wednesday ends an over -month inspection The-CNN-Wire Cable News Arrangement Inc a Warner Bros Discovery Company All rights reserved Source