Despite conflicting statements, who knew what when about ship’s power failures will be pivotal question in probing the Baltimore Harbor disaster.
Conflicting claims say the container vessel Dali was experiencing electrical failures while docked for 48 hours at Seagirt Marine Terminal but was allowed to depart anyway.
The vessel then lost power in Baltimore Harbor and knocked down the Francis Scott Key Bridge early on March 26, killing six construction workers and shutting down—potentially for weeks—the ninth-busiest commercial port in the United States.
Officials with the Baltimore Department of Transportation’s Dockmaster’s Office, the “harbormaster” in Baltimore Harbor, and the United States Coast Guard maintain they were never notified of any issues with the ship while it was pier-side.
The assertion surfaced on March 27 when Julie Mitchell—a Baltimore director with Container Royalty Fund that manages benefits and advocates for port workers—told a CNN affiliate that longshoremen and others told her the Singapore-flagged container carrier had struggled pier-side with “total power failure, loss of engine power, everything.”
Ms. Mitchell said the ship should never have left the dock.
“They shouldn’t have let the ship leave port until they got it under control,” she said.
The 95,000-ton South Korean-built ship did, indeed, lose power at least twice during its circuitous 45-minute loop in Baltimore Harbor upriver from the bridge, including moments before it and its 4,700-container cargo—as much as 262,000 tons—plowed into a pylon and brought the structure down.
On March 28, however, Ms. Mitchell had changed her tune.
“I redacted my comment. I have no comment,” she told The Epoch Times and hung up the phone without elaboration.
Ms. Mitchell may have rescinded her claim’s implications, but she’s telling the truth about the scuttlebutt among port workers, said Jason Nelson, a 2022 Republican U.S. House candidate from Texas who worked in port security with the U.S. Marine Corps as an Army “boat driver.”
“I can confirm that actually,” he told The Epoch Times, adding he called “my old duty station” on Chesapeake Bay “and talked to the OIC [Officer-In-Charge] and got his feedback on what he knew and he told me that, for two days dockside, they were having power issues on the vessel.”
By John Haughey
