All eyes are on the Key Bridge.
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Last month’s deadly bridge collision in Baltimore has now gotten the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
As two sources with information about the matter told ABC News, the bureau has opened a criminal investigation into the crash, which occurred when the Singapore-based Dali cargo ship crashed into the city’s Francis Scott Key Bridge after its power went out, resulting in the deaths of six men who’d been working on the bridge.
Specifically, the feds are looking into whether the crew of the Dali — who have been stuck in the Baltimore Harbor for more than two weeks now and may have to stay there for weeks or even months longer as US investigations are pending — was aware that such a power failure might occur before the ship left port in Southeast Asia, as the Associated Press reported last week based on anonymous insider sources.
The National Transportation Safety Board, which has been investigating the Key Bridge collapse since the end of March, told the AP that it was also looking into whether the ship had experienced electrical issues while docked.
In a statement to ABC, the Justice Department confirmed that the FBI agents had been aboard the ship on Monday, and the bureau’s Baltimore branch told the outlet that it was “present aboard the cargo ship Dali conducting court-authorized law enforcement activity.”
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On the same day that news of the FBI’s presence aboard the ship dropped, Baltimore’s mayor also announced that the city had hired two law firms to work alongside its own attorneys to get to the bottom of the March 26 collision.
Those attorneys, Mayor Brandon Scott said in his office’s statement, would be seeking to “hold the wrongdoers responsible and to mitigate the immediate and long-term harm caused to Baltimore City residents.”
“Through this engagement, the City of Baltimore will take decisive action to hold responsible all entities accountable for the Key Bridge tragedy,” he continued, “including the owner, charterer, manager/operator, and the manufacturer of the M/V Dali, as well as any other potentially liable third parties.”
As serious as this all sounds, it does unfortunately answer some questions Futurism posed to the Key Bridge response team and the Baltimore International Seafarers’ Center about why the 21-person crew, which is comprised of workers from India and Sri Lanka, was still on board the ship weeks after the bridge collapse.
“The ship is still considered a working vessel,” Rev. Joshua Messick, the Seafarers’ Center’s executive director, told us last week. “It’s not that they have not been allowed off, but they are working in tandem with the agencies involved in the recovery/cleanup effort.”
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