Central American and Mexican families mourn missing workers of Baltimore bridge collapse
- The governments of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras confirmed that their citizens were among the 6 people still missing
- White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said President Biden has instructed his team ‘to move heaven and earth’ to aid in recovery and rebuilding
The construction workers who went missing in the Baltimore bridge collapse all hailed from Mexico or Central America before they settled in the Maryland area.
Police managed to close bridge traffic seconds before a cargo ship slammed into one of the Francis Scott Key Bridge’s supports early on Tuesday, causing the span to fall into the frigid Patapsco River. There was no time for a maintenance crew filling potholes on the span to get to safety.
At least eight people fell into the water and two were rescued. The other six are missing and presumed dead, but the search continued on Wednesday.
The governments of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras confirmed that their citizens were among the missing.
Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval, 39, was the youngest of eight siblings from Azacualpa, a rural mountainous area in northwestern Honduras along the border with Guatemala.
Eighteen years ago, he set out on his own for the US looking for opportunities. He entered illegally and settled in Maryland, where he eventually started a business, one of his brothers, Martin Suazo Sandoval, said on Wednesday. He said his brother was entrepreneurial and hard-working.
Other siblings and relatives followed him north.
“He was the fundamental pillar, the bastion so that other members of the family could also travel there and later get visas and everything,” Martin Suazo Sandoval said. “He was really the driving force so that most of the family could travel.”
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Six presumed dead after Singapore-flagged cargo ship topples Baltimore bridge
The Covid-19 pandemic forced Maynor to find other work, and he joined Brawner Builders, the company that was performing maintenance on the bridge when it collapsed.
Things had been going well for him until the collapse. He was moving through the steps to get legal residency and planned to return to Honduras this year to complete the process, his brother said.
In Mexico, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said three Mexicans were on the bridge when it fell, including one who was injured but rescued and two who were still missing. He said he would not share their names, to maintain the families’ privacy.
The tragedy illustrated the contributions that migrants make to the US economy, Lopez Obrador said.
“This demonstrates that migrants go out and do risky jobs at midnight. And for this reason, they do not deserve to be treated as they are by certain insensitive, irresponsible politicians in the United States,” he said.
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Guatemala’s Foreign Affairs Ministry confirmed that two of its citizens were among the missing. And El Salvador’s foreign minister, Alexandra Hill Tinoco, posted on Wednesday on X, formerly Twitter, that one Salvadoran citizen, Miguel Luna, was among the missing workers.
Federal and state investigators have said the crash appears to have been an accident.
US Transport Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on Wednesday at a White House news briefing that it is too soon to say if regulations would be waived to rebuild the bridge and reopen the port.
But he said President Joe Biden has said the federal government should “tear down any barriers, bureaucratic as well as financial” that could affect the timeline of any rebuild.
Buttigieg also had a message for Republicans in Congress who might oppose having the federal government pay for the effort. Infrastructure should be a bipartisan issue, he said.
“Today this is happening in Baltimore, tomorrow it could be their districts,” he said. “We really need to stand together, red blue and purple, to get these things done.”
Buttigieg noted that the bridge took five years to construct.
“That does not necessarily mean it will take five years to replace,” he said.
US Coast Guard Vice-Admiral Peter Gautier said hazardous materials aboard the damaged ship pose no threat to public safety.
Gautier said at the briefing that the ship is holding more than 1.5 million of fuel, and that more than 50 of the cargo containers on board contain hazardous material. But he said the ship is stable and that authorities have determined there is no safety risk.
Buttigieg said he will meet shipping and supply chain officials on Thursday.
“We are going to help to get it open as soon as possible,” he said.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden has instructed his team “to move heaven and earth” to aid in recovery and rebuilding.
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Maryland lawmakers are drafting emergency legislation to help workers affected by the bridge collapse.
State Senator Bill Ferguson, the Senate president, said he and a fellow Democratic lawmaker, Luke Clippinger, are proposing income replacement for the thousands of workers who rely on daily operations at the Port of Baltimore. He said he spent hours on Tuesday talking to dock workers, business owners and others.
“The human cost of lives lost yesterday is overwhelming and tragic,” Ferguson posted Wednesday on X. “The economic and stability loss to the thousands impacted in the days ahead cannot be understated.”
Officials in Singapore say they will conduct their own investigation into the bridge collapse, in addition to supporting US authorities.
The ship that struck the bridge, the Dali, was travelling under a Singaporean flag. The Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore said on Wednesday it was working with the ship’s management company, Synergy Marine Group, to get information to the US Coast Guard for its investigation.
The agency also said Singapore’s Transport Safety Investigation Bureau will independently investigate, not to determine liability, but to identify lessons for the future.
A 2023 inspection of the ship in a Chilean port turned up a problem with the fuel heater’s pressure gauges, but it was corrected before the ship left the port, the Maritime Authority of the Chilean Navy says.
Previous reports had indicated the June inspection of the Dali in Chile identified a problem with the ship’s “propulsion and auxiliary machinery”, according to the shipping information website Equasis, but the records did not elaborate.
The Dali was most recently inspected by the US Coast Guard in New York in September, and no deficiencies were detected, according to Equasis.
