Down in that metal nightmare: Untold stories of the Key Bridge disaster

Six months ago, while the city was sleeping, the cargo ship Dali eased off a pier at the Port of Baltimore and made a wide, slow turn for the deep-water channel heading out.

The night was cold and clear. The Patapsco River was calm and moonlit. Ahead rose the Francis Scott Key Bridge. Then, the Dali went dark. It was 1:24 a.m.

The world would see what came next.

This is the story of the disaster as told by people who lived it. A husband’s last kiss as he left for work. A phone ringing and ringing in the dark. The snow of concrete dust on the river and the groan of broken steel in the current.

Ten seconds, that’s it. Steel and concrete that marked the Baltimore skyline for almost half a century crumpled like a child’s toy.

‘At 12:15 a.m. we’re alongside the Dali’

Mariela, wife of bridge worker Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes: We had talked many times about that bridge, and he joked because I was afraid of going over it. He would tell me, “My love, don’t worry. Nothing will happen here. If one day this bridge fell, they would be in big trouble.” He knew a lot about history. So he told me this bridge is very important because of the shipping vessels.

McAllister tugboat Capt. Bob Dempsey: The main thing we do in Baltimore is ship assist. … We put a line up to the ship so that we can push against the hull or back away from the hull as they’re coming in, making their turns, all the maneuvers they have to do to get a ship up to pier safely, without hitting dock or damaging anything. In all weather conditions, 24/7, year-round, we’re out there in anything and everything, docking and undocking ships.

Gov. Wes Moore: I was up in Boston. … We’re working to recruit a couple of businesses that we’re trying to get them to come to Maryland, then for an event at the Kennedy Institute later on that night.

Catholic Seafarers’ Center Director Andrew Middleton: I took the [Dali] captain and one of the other officers, I don’t remember if it was Arundel Mills or Glen Burnie, but I took them shopping for a few hours. Then I took them back to the vessel, sometime in the afternoon. They were sailing later that evening.

Mariela, Alejandro’s wife: He had a habit of always saying goodbye to everyone, to the kids and to me with a kiss and a hug. … He left just like it was any other day. Confident.

Dempsey, tugboat: The call comes through dispatch. You have time to have a coffee or do whatever you got to do. Then the boat’s started up. It warms up for 30 minutes before we shove off and we head out to the job. This particular job was to sail the Dali.

Maria del Carmen Castellon Luna, wife of bridge worker Miguel Luna: It was around 9:30 p.m. that he sent me a video of the sunset in front of that bridge over the river. He sent it with a worship song.

EMS Lt. Andrew Ratajczak, North Point-Edgemere Volunteer Fire: I’m normally one of the top responders to come from home to the station. That night, I knew there was no crew there. So I said in our chat, we have a station group chat, I’ll be available from home tonight. Didn’t think I’d get anything. We’re sometimes a pretty slow station.

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg: The last thing I do before I go to bed is I put the cellphone across the room on my dresser so I’m not tempted. But then I turn the ringer on, just in case.

Sgt. Stephen Lepper, Baltimore Police dive team: I had just gotten promoted, so I worked my first night as a patrol supervisor. Got off at 11 o’clock, got home around midnight. Told my wife how my first day went, and I went to sleep.

Dempsey, tugboat: At 12:15 a.m. we’re alongside the Dali. At 12:20 a.m., we start the job. And at 1:05 a.m. we are finished and released by the pilot. We don’t make that decision. The pilot’s in charge of us. We are his tools to utilize his safe passage. “We’re all finished. Get your lines in. You’re released.” That’s the lingo.

Mariela, Alejandro’s wife: I thought about calling him to ask what time he was going to leave, but then I thought more and decided, “No, I’d rather wait to see if he texts me.” Normally when he’s done, he would say, “I’m on my way home, mi amor. Do you want me to get anything? A McDonald’s sandwich?”

Larry Desantis, Dundalk baker: When I get onto the bridge, they had one of the lanes blocked on the other side because there were workers. They’re always on there pretty much at night. It’s a normal thing. I believe it was 1:18 a.m.

Damon Davis, road work inspector: I had just finished inspecting the last of the deck repairs near the center span. Walking back to my car, I passed the members of the work crew who were in their vehicles on a break.

Dempsey, tugboat: We got a call on 14. That’s our working channel. Any ship that knows us, knows Mac stands by 14. We got a call, they call it a “harbor emergency.” It’s all vessels respond. Anybody that would hear it: Emergency, and start moving that way. They feared hitting the Key Bridge.

‘About 1:40 a.m., I woke up to the pager going off”

Desantis, baker: I saw a cop car, real quick, circle around to go up the other way. I’m sitting at the light, where the Amazon building is down there, and I didn’t see another vehicle come off the bridge. It was just really eerie.

Steve Taylor, truck driver: When I got to the base of the bridge, it was shut down. Like what happened? I had no clue what happened. There was probably 10 cars in front of me. It was all brake lights.

Dempsey, tugboat: We were exactly three miles away from them. At 12 knots, 15 minutes.

Middleton, Seafarers’ Center: I live like eight-tenths of a mile away. ... I was lying there, trying to go back to sleep, and I heard what I initially thought was thunder, which struck me as funny because there were no storms. Then as it persisted, I thought, OK, that’s no thunder because thunder won’t last this long. My next thought was, why is there a jet flying so low?

Davis, inspector: I heard a thunderous noise behind me. I felt the bridge begin to vibrate violently. I didn’t know the Dali had just struck the bridge, and I immediately started running for my life.

Taylor, truck driver: You saw all the police coming down the right side, and like attempting to go under the bridge. Then they would turn around and come back. Like they had no clue what to do.

Davis, inspector: I lunged forward, making it onto the first section of the bridge that survived the collapse. As I was turning to run the rest of the way down the bridge, I saw one of the crew members escape from a sinking vehicle.

Ratajczak, North Point firefighter: About 1:40 a.m., I woke up to the pager going off, and I looked at it. It said Baltimore City requesting all available units for an open-water rescue at the Key Bridge. So I said, OK, we get these sometimes. A lot of these open-water rescues, they’re not really founded. Somebody sees a boat that may have drifted away.

Dempsey, tugboat: Our radar will reach out 40-some miles. As soon as we started going out, we punched her out. You’d normally see a line going across. There was no line. They call it “painting a target.” There’s no target. So all that metal that used to stand out on there going straight across was gone.

Lepper, city police diver: My phone’s ringing and when I finally found out why, that the Key Bridge had collapsed, I looked at the message like, no, this is a joke. It’s gonna sound like an exaggeration, but I had family in New York during 9/11, and when everybody was telling them the buildings went down, nobody believed it at first. Like that’s too big of an incident.

Ratajczak, North Point firefighter: As soon as we walk in, we hear it over our main channel where we all get dispatched. Dispatch is quite literally yelling over main: “All available units, staff your station. No matter if it’s fire or EMS crew.” We look at each other and we go, “That doesn’t sound right.” They’re generally pretty calm.

Joel Jablonski, North Point firefighter: Someone sent a video into our chat of the boat colliding into the bridge. I was like, there’s no way. There’s no way that happened. You know? You get Photoshop in your head. That must have happened somewhere else and they’re making it look like here. So I start running down the station.

Lepper, city police diver: Somebody had been at Fort Armistead Park and filmed it. When I saw that, that was the first, like, holy crap. This is real. This happened. This is not a drill.

Ratajczak, North Point firefighter: I grab my fire gear and my water gear, our medical bags, bring them down to the boat, throw them on and start to launch off and head toward the Key Bridge. We are the closest Baltimore County station to the bridge, so we knew we would would have a pretty high chance that we would be first on scene.

‘We’re up there at 2 o’clock, working phones’

Shaina Hernandez, governor’s deputy chief of staff: I didn’t have any idea who was calling, and I didn’t know what time it was. I just knew it was dark. So I answered my phone and there was a very nice man on the other end of the line who was saying things that did not sound real. I kind of was answering him in a half-awake state. And he said, at one point, “Do you know who you’re talking to?” I said, “No.” He said, “This is [Emergency Management Secretary] Russ Strickland.” At that moment, I was like, “Oh!”

Fagan Harris, governor’s chief of staff: I knew it was Shaina, but nothing she was saying made any sense. … The “you have to wake up the governor” was the keyword. That’s when I woke up, and I was like, holy shit.

Gov. Moore: He said, “Gov, the Key Bridge is gone!” and I thought he said, “a key bridge.” I was like, “What bridge?” He’s like, “THE Key Bridge,” and I still don’t know if I fully processed what he was saying. “What do you mean gone?”

Ratajczak, North Point firefighter: My assistant chief was driving, and I was directly to the right of him. We’re still thinking this is going to be something small. And as soon as we come around the corner, we look over and the entire bridge was in the water.

Jablonski, North Point firefighter: You see this boat, the cargo ship, just sitting where the bridge used to be. Most of the bridge is down. You just have the pillars that were there to hold the bridge up. You had dangling pieces everywhere.

Capt. Christopher Reynolds, Middle River Volunteer Fire and Rescue diver: It literally looks like an HO [scale] train set that an angry toddler stepped on.

Dempsey, tugboat: You can’t go run over shit. You have to be very careful. … We start pulling back, slowing down, you really want to be in the drift. You want to see which way the wind’s coming, which way the tide’s going, so debris, anything that’s going to come by, you have an idea which way it’s coming from. Turn on your spotlights, start looking for debris, start looking for individuals. There could be a pickup truck floating by.

Harris, chief of staff: I remember distinctly getting out of the truck and there were a few fire trucks there. A helicopter flew on, right as we were getting out, with the light shining down. It literally felt like you’re in “Independence Day” or something, and you’re looking at this cataclysm. My God, this is like something right out of a movie.

Gov. Moore, in Boston: How fast can we get back? We’re trying to find earlier flights. … We’re up there at 2 o’clock, 3 o’clock in the morning, working phones, calling the county executive, calling the mayor. The White House called.

Secretary Buttigieg: I made sure to let him know that we’re here to help any way we could. He emphasized that they were in search-and-rescue mode, and making sure that they could rule out potential causes. One of the first questions people were asking was, “Is there something nefarious?”

Ratajczak, North Point firefighter: There was a strong smell of diesel, and it almost looked like it was snowing. All the dust in the air, settling down. I made the call to my assistant chief, “Hey, we should probably put on some sort of respiratory protection.” I started looking around for N95s.

Jablonski, North Point firefighter: There’s an eerie silence until you get closer. You start hearing the metal swinging. It was like a horror movie sound.

U.S. Coast Guard Cmdr. Ryan Gomez: We wanted to know the number of individuals in the water. What are they wearing? Where were they? You want to know information that may help you in the search-and-rescue effort. That’s the primary focus.

Jack Amrhein, Middle River diver: MDTA was doing things like looking at cameras. How many cars were going over the bridge at the time? They had someone counting vehicles, descriptions of vehicles.

Dempsey, tugboat: We had heard that there was equipment up there with people on the bridge. We didn’t know whether it was workers at that point. We heard there were 12 cars, 16 people. No, 18 people. All these numbers are coming out. Nobody knows. Calm down. We’re just looking for anyone, any sign.

‘This was around 3:40 a.m. ... What’s wrong, junior?’

Mariela, Alejandro’s wife: I sent them [the girls] to bed. It was going to be 3 a.m., and I told them, “You know what, go now, because Daddy — he hasn’t texted me anything. I don’t think he’ll be home early.”

Capt. Christopher Reynolds, Middle River diver: The fire rescue captain here used to work on the bridge, so his first question to our command was, “I still see lights on the bridge. Has anyone turned the power off?” It’s a very large electrical feed, a lot of volts, a lot of amps. So deploying people into that water until the power was turned off was not something we were willing to do.

Amrhein, Middle River diver: Part of the bridge is still sitting on the boat, right? So is the boat going to move? Is any more of this bridge going to come down? We can wear all the helmets we want to wear.

Ratajczak, North Point firefighter: We looked down in the water, and you can see the lights still flashing on a truck. This really ominous orange-and-green glow from the water. You could tell it was a State Highway Administration truck just based off of light-pattern. We have to send some people in to search it. So we start pulling up, and Baltimore City pulls up at the same time. They decide they are going to send their people in. What we call “duck diving.” You don’t have any air on. You just use your gear, hold your breath, quick dive down, do a quick search. Come right back up. They called out: It was clear.

Maria, wife of Miguel Luna: I was fast asleep when I heard them knocking like that, through the window. They were knocking loudly, loudly.

Ratajczak, North Point firefighter: That night was particularly cold. The water was freezing. Even with my sweatshirt on and then another sweatshirt on top and that jacket plus my life vest — I was still cold. Anybody that might have been out in that water and with much less clothes, it would have been freezing for them. We had to find people quick.

Maria, Miguel’s wife: I grabbed the phone and looked at the time. This was around 3:40 a.m. ... “What’s wrong, Junior? What’s wrong?” “Carmen, my dad,” he told me. “What happened? What happened?” “My dad had an accident.” “How?” I asked him. “On the bridge, the bridge fell down.”

Jablonski, North Point firefighter: Not seeing anybody out there, not being able to help anybody and realizing they’re probably trapped under there somewhere — it’s a powerless feeling.

Lepper, city police diver: We knew that rescue efforts were drawing to a close, and so a group consensus was made that it was not safe to put our divers in the water with the inability to recover anybody alive. We decided to hold our dive operations until daybreak.

‘Dawn starts to come’

Amrhein, Middle River diver: The saving grace was one of the local restaurants showed up down there. He woke up at 4:30 in the morning, started prepping and he made four trays of crab balls and french fries. So 4:30 or 5 o’clock in the morning, we’re eating crab balls and french fries, just to try to warm up.

Mariela, Alejandro’s wife: I think it was already 5 a.m. I’m not sure if it was like 5:20 a.m., and it struck me as unusual when I got the call. I don’t normally answer phone numbers that I don’t know, but for some reason I answered that call. As soon as I answered, they asked me if I was Alejandro’s wife.

Officer Corey Valis, city police diver: Dawn starts to come and, you know, the sky is sort of painted. It kind of felt like it didn’t look real, all the wreckage. What was a functional bridge now just totally collapsed. I don’t know how to describe it. Devastating.

Mariela, Alejandro’s wife: “You have to stay, my daughter, with the boys.” I told her. “Be strong.” I told her, “But dad had an accident. They told me that dad fell into the water. They are looking for him right now. I need you to help me with your brothers and be strong.” I told her, “Please start praying for him because God listens to children.”

Gov. Moore: We touched down at 7:30 a.m. and then immediately went from the tarmac to the site. As you turn the corner and you look over, the bridge is gone. I mean, that moment still takes my breath away because it’s all we’ve ever known, right? It’s been part of our skyline for as long as I can remember.

Secretary Buttigieg: The assessments had come in that the port was shut down until the waterway could be cleared. That vessel was basically wedged in place by the bridge wreckage. We knew pretty quickly that we were facing supply chain impacts.

Maj. Timothy Eikenberg, Maryland Transportation Authority Police: Normally, there’s traffic noise. Constant traffic going by. A lot of truck traffic going to the Dundalk Marine Terminal, Seagirt. Loud trucks coming down the ramp. There’s always noise. This day, it was just silence; it was just quiet. I could actually hear birds chirping.

Jacob Tuer, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: I was looking in the water and I saw what I thought maybe were feathers or fur, but I wasn’t sure. Turns out a shipping container had deer hides and it had busted open.

Giuliana Valencia-Banks, Baltimore County Immigrant Affairs: When we knew that there was a construction crew up there, I immediately just knew that it was going to be immigrants, and I knew that it was probably Latino immigrants and what that meant for these families.

Maria, Miguel’s wife: We were the first family to arrive. There was one policeman. There were several people. I don’t remember their names, but there were several people and they had us there waiting to give us information. Little by little, the families of the other people who were there during the tragedy started arriving.

Rosa Emerita Sandoval Paz, mother of bridge worker Maynor Suazo Sandoval, in Honduras: He usually called through WhatsApp around 7 a.m. [9 a.m. in Baltimore]. … I figured he was sleeping. Pobrecito, I thought. He works so hard.

Valis, city police diver: You forget how much current there is, and it starts to pull you in one direction. You’re constantly swimming back until you get on the bottom. Once you’re on the bottom, you kind of hug it.

Sgt. Benjamin Zero, city police diver: Almost zero visibility. Everything’s done by feel because you literally at times cannot see your hand in front of your face. So it’s all by touch and feel. You have one hand on the roadbed and one hand on the guardrail or the jersey barrier, just to try to have some way to orient yourself underwater.

Valis, city police diver: Doesn’t matter how much you bundle up underneath your dry suit, you’re gonna get cold, and you’re gonna get cold quick. So we’re really limited to about a half-hour each team of divers. Most of the stuff that we were seeing — a lot of large sections of intact roadway, broken chunks of concrete and a lot of rebar. It just kind of looks like a big, twisted hand underwater.

Lepper, city police diver: It was so packed around that I couldn’t kick my legs enough to push myself up. I actually had to just grab with my hand, kind of pull myself up a little bit, enough so I could start kicking again. I wouldn’t want to be down there with anybody else in that metal nightmare.

Maria, Miguel’s wife: I always told the Lord, “Take care of his body, that nothing would harm him.” I was scared a marine animal was going to get to him underwater or that the water would take him away.

Rosa, Maynor’s mother, in Honduras: It was Semana Santa [Holy Week]. I thought they were taking me out to celebrate. When we walked into José’s house, the entire family was there. Many of them were crying. It was 1 p.m. [3 p.m. in Baltimore] that they told me. “The bridge fell. Maynor was in it.”

‘Then we came back the next day’

Sgt. Christopher Tran, city police diver: We located the vehicle at the end of the first day, however, with the failing light and conditions worsening, we made the evaluation of the vehicle and determined the vehicle was not going to disappear on us. We hooked a marker so we would be able to locate the vehicle easily. It’s not gonna wash away, it’s not going to float away. So for the safety of our divers, we would come back.

Mariela, Alejandro’s wife: My heart still had faith that miracles exist and for God nothing is impossible. So when they called over to me and the police stood in front of me and said, “We found your husband’s truck,” I only told him, “Is he alive? Tell me if he’s alive.”

Valencia-Banks, county immigrant affairs: It was in the evening that they officially told the families that it was no longer a rescue, that it was a recovery. The families stayed for a couple of hours afterward. The Red Cross came and brought dinner, but they were still waiting. I think — I don’t think, I know — the families found solace in being together.

Tran, city police diver: We have essentially gigantic balloons. They’re big balloons that we bring down there, chain to a vehicle and inflate these balloons using an air compressor and it causes positive buoyancy to lift the vehicle up.

Sgt. Kurt Roepcke, city police diver: We took a tow strap, and we secured them in there. So we don’t lose the people, so we knew they were in there. Then we came back the next day. We floated the vehicle up, flipped it over and then started towing it in. Then we hit something under water. We made the decision we weren’t going to go further, and we got the two gentlemen out of the vehicle and put them on a boat.

Mariela, Alejandro’s wife: It was so, so painful, but at least now I had an answer to give my children. Because to be waiting, wondering — it is also very horrible and very painful to be imagining things. So I said, OK, the torture is partly over, but now comes another part of pain which is accepting what happened.

Roepcke, city police diver: Think about how 10 seconds changes your life. People going to work or going home — 10 seconds, the bridge is gone. Thank God they stopped the traffic. Because what if that happened during rush hour? It just makes you reflect on how short life is. You know? Ten seconds can change your whole world.

Editor’s note: These interviews have been lightly edited for clarity and concision. Damon Davis provided his account in a statement to The Banner. Interviews of Mariela, Maria del Carmen Castellon Luna and Rosa Emerita Sandoval Paz are translated from Spanish by Banner reporter Clara Longo de Freitas.