Six workers who were missing after the Baltimore bridge collapsed are presumed dead, officials said. The executive vice president of Brawner Builders, Jeffrey Pritzker, told NBC News that there was one survivor but will not release names.
Eight people were working on the 1.6-mile bridge when it was struck by the Dali cargo ship early Tuesday. The eight people were initially reported missing before two of them were later found, with one suffering serious injuries.
The other six have been missing for over 12 hours as the Coast Guard called off the search and rescue mission Tuesday night saying that they don’t believe they will find any of them still alive.
“They’re fathers with families. They’re people who came to earn their bread each day,” their grieving coworker Jesus Campos, who was not on the bridge, told The Wall Street Journal of the missing men.
Officials have since declared a state of emergency after the catastrophic incident.
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott has also called for prayers for the victims. “This is an unthinkable tragedy,” Scott said at a press conference early Tuesday, WJZ reported. “We have to first and foremost pray for all of those who are impacted, those families, pray for our first responders and thank them.”
“I spoke with Secretary Buttigieg directly. He and his team said they would work obviously with us throughout this incident… to make sure that we have every resource that he and the federal government can provide.”
“We are going to continue to work in partnership with every part of government to do everything that we can to get us through to the other side of this tragedy.”
President Biden has promised federal funds “to pay for the entire cost of reconstructing” the bridge, adding that he would visit Baltimore “as soon as I can.”
The U.S. transportation secretary has said that rebuilding the collapsed Baltimore bridge will not be easy.
Pete Buttigieg said the bridge is “one of the cathedrals of American infrastructure”.
“It has been part of the skyline for this region for longer than many of us have been alive,” he said.
