What investigators have discovered about the DALI collision with the Key Bridge

Six months ago tonight, many of us awoke in the middle of a night’s sleep to news that seemed impossible – a 900-plus ton ship had crashed into the key bridge, destroying it and claiming the lives of six residents from Maryland. There’s still a lot we don’t know about what happened that night, but we’ve learned a lot over the past six months. Investigators are sorting out what went wrong and who is to blame. Here’s a breakdown of what they’ve discovered so far.

Just three days after the bridge collapse, with everyone clamoring for answers, I spoke with Captain Jim Staples, a master mariner and maritime investigations consultant. He told us that ships like the DALI have emergency generators that are supposed to start automatically during a power outage, allowing the crew to maintain driving capability.

“So, you know, if they did the right thing, they should’ve already been on management emergency,” he said.

WMAR-2 news reporter Elizabeth Worthington asked, “So you imagine if they wouldn’t … that must mean they couldn’t?”

Staples said, “Right. To me, they had a complete failure on that ship, including the emergency generator.”

It seems he was right, based on what we know so far from investigators. At least three separate but parallel investigations are underway — from the Department of Justice, the Maryland Attorney General and the National Transportation Safety Board.

The NTSB has only released preliminary reports, so we know more from the DOJ and the state of Maryland, both of which summarized their findings in lawsuits announced last week against the two companies responsible for DALI — Grace Ocean, the owner, and Synergy Marine, the manager.

In conducting their investigations aboard DALI in the months following the crash, state and federal government investigators accused those companies and the crew of making efforts to save time and money. They discovered that the ship had long-standing electrical and mechanical problems dating back to at least the spring of 2023. The handover notes show that the previous captain had reported those problems to Synergy that month.

The excessive vibrations were wearing on the ship’s electrical system, shaking important wires and cables.

“But instead of taking the necessary precautions, they did the opposite,” Benjamin Mizer, the DOJ’s senior deputy attorney general, said on a phone call with reporters last week announcing the federal government’s lawsuit. “Through negligence, mismanagement, and sometimes a desire to cut costs, they configured the ship’s electrical and mechanical systems in a way that prevented those systems from being able to quickly restore propulsion and direction after a power outage.”

And they say – that’s exactly what happened on March 26. It was a domino effect.

When a transformer malfunctioned and the ship lost power, it was supposed to automatically switch to a backup source, but that safety feature was “recklessly disabled” by the crew, the lawsuit alleges. Engineers wasted time manually resetting the system, time they could have spent moving away from the bridge of the key. The power was restored, but only for a minute.

“DALI lost power a second time, probably because the ship was using an inadequate temporary fuel pump that could not restart after an outage. This was another legal safety requirement that Dali did not comply with in order to reduce costs and save time. ” said Chetan Patil, Acting Deputy Attorney General of the Civil Division of the DOJ.

“Vessels like the DALI should be equipped with backup systems, backup systems that ensure the vessel does not lose power or steering capabilities at critical times, such as when approaching a bridge,” said the attorney general of Maryland Anthony Brown during a press conference Tuesday announcing the state’s lawsuit. “But because of the stunning mismanagement, disinterest or incompetence of Dali’s owner and operator, those backup systems failed.”

At that point, it was too late. The ship was heading straight for one of the piers of the bridge.

Lawyers also argue that dropping the anchor at this stage could have either witnessed the impact or even helped push the ship away from the bridge supports. But since the crew was either poorly trained or incompetent, they claim, the anchors were not readily available when the pilot called for them.

They say neither the captain nor the two companies responsible for DALI reported any of these previous problems to the Coast Guard, including the power outages the day before, as required by federal regulations. The captain also failed to notify the local pilot, licensed by the state of Maryland, who boarded the vessel that morning.

You can see in the master-pilot exchange document below, released by the NTSB, that the pilot was informed that all equipment was in “good working order.”

“This is information that you should convey to the pilot so that the pilot can make a good judgement, whether the ship is safe or not, because that is his main concern, he is boarding a ship that he may not have never been around before. . He wants to know if the ship is safe to put to sea,” Captain Staples told us.

The DOJ and state’s conclusions match what the NTSB has released so far from its investigation. Documents released earlier this month show Hyundai engineers inspecting the vessel. Hyundai is the ship’s manufacturer.

A loose cable was found, and engineers ran a simulation to demonstrate how it could cause an outage if that cable became disconnected.

The NTSB drew no conclusions from this finding. The full report is not expected for at least another 6 months – a year after the bridge collapse.