How Baltimore's Key Bridge collapse unfolded and where investigations stand 1 year later
For 47 years, the Francis Scott Key Bridge stood as the gateway to the Port of Baltimore and a landmark as one of the longest steel truss bridges in the world.
It collapsed in seconds just before 1:30 a.m. on March 26, 2024.
The Dali, a cargo ship bound for Sri Lanka, lost power and crashed into one of the main support piers, sending members of a construction crew filling potholes on the bridge into the frigid Patapsco River.
The Key Bridge victims
The victims of Baltimore's bridge collapse are 35-year-old Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, 26-year-old Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, 38-year-old Maynor Yasir Suazo-Sandoval, 24-year-old Carlos Hernandez, Miguel Angel Luna Gonzalez, 49, and Jose Mynor Lopez, 35.
Maria del Carmen Castellon called Luna Gonzalez "the best husband" and her "best friend." The two immigrants from El Salvador met in the U.S. and married in 2017 after spending more than a decade together.
Castellon said she still vividly remembers the last conversation she had with her husband in the hours before he left for his overnight shift on the Francis Scott Key Bridge on March 26.
"That Monday, my husband calls me and says, 'Mami, can you make me a tortilla?" Castellon recounted.
"He said goodbye with a kiss," Castellon added. "And when he said goodbye, all I remember is that he took his phone and he put it in the car, and I saw his wallpaper was a photo of us. It was the last time I saw him."
For Castellon, justice is a difficult concept: "Justice for me would be to have my husband at my side. Share all the dreams we had planned."
She implored people "not to forget" her husband and the other victims of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse.
"They were there," she noted, "so this country can have better streets. And those bridges, to have better conditions."
"The only thing I would love for people to know is that, for me, my husband is a hero, alongside his five coworkers," Castellon said in an interview with CBS News in September 2024.
Survivor of the Baltimore bridge collapse
Only one worker survived the fall after the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge.
Julio Cervantes Suarez clung to a piece of steel in the water after escaping his work truck, an escape possible because the truck had manual windows.
"He survived because his window was manual. He was able to roll down the window and escape. You can imagine how frightening that is," his lawyer, L. Chris Stewart, said at a news conference last year.
Body camera video shows Cervantes Suarez walking to safety after his rescue.
A road worker, Damon Davis, jumped to safety just before the bridge collapsed.
Unforgettable images, big clean up
In the light of day one year ago, it was hard to comprehend what happened.
"The video and the pictures that you saw really didn't do it justice. You really had to physically see it. You were just in awe of it. It didn't look real, but it was real," said Brian Retz with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. "It was part of the skyline. You came in and you didn't see it anymore—and it was shocking."
But crews wasted no time and developed a plan to map out and remove thousands of tons of debris and carefully retrieve the bodies of the victims. It was a dangerous job in the murky water.
"It was a huge task, removing all that debris and getting the channel back open," Retz said.
Unified Command, made up of multiple state and federal agencies, prioritized opening the channel and clearing the steel and asphalt piece by piece to get the Port of Baltimore open again.
For weeks, the Dali sat in the Patapsco, the lanes of the bridge draped across it.
The crew was forced to stay onboard.
It would be two months before controlled explosions removed the largest pieces of the bridge from the ship.
And yet another month would pass before the Dali left Baltimore.
Some Dali crew still in Baltimore
Some of Dali's crew members remain in Baltimore in legal limbo.
The group Apostleship of the Sea has helped the crew in Maryland who do not know when they will return home.
"The monotony of just sitting can wear on you, so that's why we're kind of trying to do baseball games and trips here and there just to keep them from becoming bored and then starting to ruminate on the incident and have that affect their mental health," said Andrew Middleton, from Apostleship of the Sea.
Lawsuits are on a slow march through the court system.
The federal government claimed the tragedy was avoidable and blamed cheap, quick fixes to the ship's electrical system.
NTSB says Maryland failed to assess bridge risk
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) continues its investigation into what went wrong. The NTSB said its final report would be issued in the fall.
Last week, the agency released a report blaming Maryland officials for failing to conduct a recommended assessment that would have shown the bridge was vulnerable to a strike. The state helped develop the assessment protocols in 1991.
"Frankly, we've been sounding the alarm on this since the tragedy occurred," NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said at a news conference.
Federal investigators found the chances of a vessel striking the Key Bridge were 30 times the recommended threshold and said the Chesapeake Bay Bridge is also at risk, along with 67 other bridges across the United States.
"We asked, 'had you done this vulnerability assessment on the Key Bridge?' The answer was no. We then asked, 'Are you doing this vulnerability assessment on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge?' The answer is no," Homendy said.
Governor Wes Moore pushed back in an interview with WJZ this week.
"There is not a bridge in this country that could have taken that kind of impact," Moore said. "We are going to make sure we are cooperating with the NTSB to get all the assessments done, but also, I'm going to make sure that those reckless operators are held to account for the tragedy that happened to our state."
In 2028, a new bridge will rise over the Patapsco River, but memories of Baltimore's landmark have not faded along with the pain of the families who lost their loved ones that fateful day.
"You want to see the new bridge come up, and you want to see things get back to normal even though it really won't in certain ways, especially for those who have lost loved ones," Retz said. "And it will change the landscape of Baltimore forever."
