Nearly two dozen sailors remained on board the Dali on Monday, below decks on the massive hull, when a controlled explosion occurred.
The simultaneous explosion sent pieces of Baltimore’s once-iconic Francis Scott Key Bridge into the dark waters of Maryland’s Patapsco River, seven weeks after the bridge collapsed, killing six people on the bridge and leaving the Daly in trouble .
Authorities and crew hope the dismantling will mark the beginning of the end of a long process that has left the 21 men on board stranded and cut off from the world, thousands of miles from home.
But it’s unclear when they will be able to return home.
The Dali, a 948-foot (289m) container ship, hit the Francis Scott Key Bridge at the start of a 27-day journey from Baltimore to Sri Lanka, sending thousands of tons of steel and cement into Pattap. Sco River. It grounded the ship under a large sheet of metal debris.
The NTSB’s preliminary report found that two power outages occurred before the accident, disabling equipment, and noted that the ship lost power twice in the 10 hours before the accident.
The crew, consisting of 20 Indians and one Sri Lankan, were unable to disembark due to visa restrictions, lack of required disembarkation passes and ongoing parallel investigations by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
The crew remained on the ship on Monday even as authorities used small explosives to deliberately “cut” a large section of the bridge on the bow.
Ahead of the controlled dismantling, U.S. Coast Guard Adm. Shannon Gillies said the crew would remain below decks and fire crews were at the ready.
“They are part of the ship. They are necessary to keep the ship manned and functioning properly,” Admiral Gilreath said. “They themselves are the best responders on board.”
While the ship may resurface this week, it’s unclear when it will be able to complete the 2 nautical mile (3.7 km) journey to port.
