One Year Ago Today: U.S. Maritime Industry Delivers in Wake of FSK Bridge Collapse

We are at the one-year since the Francis Scott Key (FSK) Bridge collapsed over the Patapsco River’s Fort McHenry Channel in Baltimore, Maryland. Nearly 100 percent of the wreckage and debris removal was conducted by the Jones Act private sector U.S. maritime industry.
The FSK collapsed at about 1:28 a.m. local time on March 26, 2025 after the container ship MV DALI lost power and collided with one of bridge’s support piers.

Six construction workers died in the collapse, while two other workers survived the fall into the freezing water. The search and rescue efforts began immediately after the bridge collapsed with first responders racing to the FSK bridge area to look for survivors. This included local and state police, fire and rescue and the U.S. Coast Guard. Within the next 36 hours, the search and rescue operations turned into recovery in the search for victims. This included the careful removal of debris and wreckage while divers searched the waterway for the victims.

In that first 24 hours, the federal government set up a Unified Command of agencies to coordinate the recovery, wreckage and debris removal. The Baltimore maritime community had become well versed in the Unified Command