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Fourth body recovered during salvage, recovery operations at Key Bridge collapse site
BALTIMORE – A fourth body was recovered Sunday from inside a submerged vehicle at the site of the Key Bridge collapse, according to the Unified Command.
The victim has not been identified at the request of the family.
One of the missing construction vehicles was located in the river, and inside was a person who had been trapped.
A cargo ship, the Dali, crashed into the Key Bridge around 1:30 a.m. on March 26, knocking eight construction workers into the Patapsco River. They were repairing potholes on the bridge.
Two construction workers were rescued, and now four have been recovered. Two remain missing and are presumed dead.
“Maryland continues to pray for the families and loved ones affected by this tragedy. They have our thoughts, our hearts, and our support,” Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said. “We hope that everyone will respect the request of the family for privacy during this difficult time. As we continue to recover those who have perished, may we never forget them, their loved ones, and the commitment they made to work in a profession that bettered the lives of so many Marylanders across the state.”
Crews have recovered the bodies of 35-year-old Maynor Yasir Suazo-Sandoval, 35-year-old Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, 26-year-old Dorlian Castillo Cabrera and Hernandez.
“Our hearts continue to break for the loved ones of these victims,” Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said. “Our entire city remains with them, joining them in mourning and in healing now that one more of their loved ones has been brought home. For those still waiting, we join them in their hope and grief that they will have the same closure soon. As I have said from the very first moment, we will continue to do everything in our power to support these families, and provide whatever they need to persevere through this unthinkable tragedy.”
Massive crane lifts Key Bridge debris to Sparrows Point
WJZ got a closer view of the salvage operation in Sparrows Point on Monday where pieces of the Key Bridge are being taken for disposal.
The biggest so far is span that weighs more than 400 tons.
The massive Chesapeake 1,000 crane lifted it to Sparrows Point over the weekend.
“This is our processing yard where all the materials that are removed from the river are brought by barge and crane, very large pieces of material,” said James Harkness, the chief engineer working for the Maryland Transportation Authority. “When they brought it in yesterday, they had to cut it in half because it was about 90 feet tall.”
Cutting Key Bridge down to size
Welders cut the pieces into an even more manageable size. Crews are also using hydraulic shears.
Responders said every effort is being made to recycle the steel.
The government requires every big ship—including the Dali—to have a designated responder in case a disaster like this happens. In this case, that job was assigned to Resolve Marine.
“Immediately when this happened, we were activated and had people on scene within hours,” Resolve Marine CEO Joseph Farrell said.
What’s the Dali’s damage?
Resolve Marine CEO Joseph Farrell said when the Key Bridge collapsed onto the Dali, it severed the bow of the ship “pretty good.”
“When the bridge came down it severed the bow, the front of the ship, pretty good—so a lot of the systems were cut. Wiring to the bow thruster has been severed,” Ferrell said.
Farrell said the Dali currently has power.
His crew is trying to get the bow thruster working again. It makes the ship easier to maneuver when they remove enough containers to get it out of there.
Farrell said they have removed 40 containers, and he believes getting 140 in total off the ship may be enough.
He also said the work will not interfere with the FBI and NTSB investigations and credits the Unified Command with keeping everything organized.
“There’s a lot of clarity exactly as to where our role is, and we work with every agency. It allows everybody to plug into that and not step on each other’s toes,” he said.
“There’s a lot of debris. There’s rebar. There’s concrete”
Divers remain in the water daily, and visibility is often next to zero in the muddy Patapsco.
“There’s a lot of debris. There’s rebar. There’s concrete. For a first dive, we don’t know what dangers are down there, so we have to be very methodical and slow with that. We have something called an umbilical which feeds the diver’s air supply to the diver’s helmet,” said Robyn Bianchi with DonJon Marine.
She told WJZ that divers are mindful that several victims have yet to be recovered.
Shortly after our interview, responders recovered another victim from the water.
Bianchi recounted how a diver on her team found one of the victims.
“We pulled the diver out of the water. He was nice and calm,” Bianchi said. “We knew exactly where it was. We called the Maryland State Police. They came out. They made the dive. They recovered the body and we were able to keep our divers kind of away from that trauma.”
Two victims remain unaccounted for. The latest was found on Sunday.
Officials said he was found trapped inside a construction vehicle. He has been positively identified, but his identity has not been released to the public at the family’s request.
“As we mourn the lives lost and continue the recovery operation, we recognize each missing individual is someone’s beloved friend or family member,” said Colonel Roland L. Butler, Jr., Superintendent of the Maryland Department of State Police, “Along with all of our allied law enforcement partners, we pledge to exhaust the physical and technical aspects of their training while deploying every available resource possible.”
Cargo unloaded at TradePoint Atlantic
Nearby at TradePoint Atlantic—the only place near the Port of Baltimore where larger ships can currently dock—cargo is getting unloaded including many new cars Monday. That keeps jobs in Baltimore.
“We’re actually able to make sure this cargo stays in Baltimore because there are other ports that are interested in helping, but that also means that cargo could go permanently to a different port, so we are thankful to be able to help with some of that redirected cargo,” said Kristin King of TradePoint Atlantic.
Baltimore City to sue cargo ship’s owner
Baltimore City is taking legal action against entities it deems responsible for the deadly collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, and the FBI has opened an investigation into the disaster.
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott on Monday announced the city partnered with two high-profile trial law firms to take legal action against those responsible for the tragedy, including the ship’s owner, charterer, operator, manufacturer and other parties.
The mayor said the effort is to mitigate the immediate and long-term harm caused to Baltimore’s residents, like the families of the victims, workers in the Port of Baltimore, and those who used the bridge every day. It is not clear how much in damages the city seeks.
“We are continuing to do everything in our power to support everyone impacted here and will continue to recognize the human impact this event has had,” the mayor said in a statement. “Part of that work needs to be seeking recourse from those who may potentially be responsible, and with the ship’s owner filing a petition to limit its liability mere days after the incident, we need to act equally as quickly to protect the City’s interests.”
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Pope Francis denounces military attacks that go “beyond morality” when asked about Israel’s recent attacks
Pope Francis criticized military attacks that go “beyond morality” after he was asked about Israel’s recent escalation of attacks in Lebanon that targeted top Hezbollah commanders.
Francis made the comments while en route home from Belgium when reporters asked him to weigh in on Israel’s airstrike that killed Hezbollah’s longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah on Friday. The strike in Beirut targeted an area greater than a city block and reduced several buildings to rubble.
Hezbollah confirmed that the airstrike also killed Ali Karaki, one of the group’s senior commanders. At least seven top commanders in the Iran-backed militant group have been killed in recent days by Israel strikes.
Andrew Medichini / AP
Francis, who didn’t mention Israel by name and said he was speaking in general terms, said that “the defense must always be proportional to that attack.”
“When there is something disproportionate, there is a dominating tendency that goes beyond morality,” he said. “A country that does these things — and I’m talking about any country — in a superlative way, these are immoral actions.”
He said that even if war itself is immoral, there are rules that “indicate some morality.”
“But when you don’t do this … you see the bad blood of these things,” he said.
The death of Nasrallah has sent shockwaves throughout Lebanon and the Middle East, where he has been a dominant political and military figure for more than three decades.
President Biden said the Israeli strike was a “measure of justice” for victims of Hezbollah’s “reign of terror.”
Francis has tried to strike a balance in his comments on the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and the conflicts in Gaza and southern Lebanon that have ensued. He has called for an immediate cease-fire, for the release of hostages taken by Hamas and for humanitarian aid to get to Gaza.
Francis repeated that he calls the Catholic parish in Gaza every day to see how they are doing.
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Transcript: H.R. McMaster, former National Security Adviser, on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” Sept. 29, 2024
The following is a transcript of an interview with H.R. McMaster, CBS News contributor and former National Security Adviser, on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” that aired on Sept. 29, 2024.
ROBERT COSTA: We’re joined now by retired Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster. He did serve as National Security Advisor in the Trump administration, but he has not endorsed either candidate in the presidential race this time around. He’s also a CBS News contributor and the author of a new book, “At War With Ourselves.” Good morning, General, thanks for being here.
LT. GENERAL H.R. MCMASTER: Robert, great to be with you.
ROBERT COSTA: You just heard from retired General McChrystal. He has made an endorsement. You have not. Why not?
LT. GENERAL H.R. MCMASTER: Well, Robert, I respect his- you know, his ability to make that decision and right to make that decision. But what concerns me these days is the military is getting drug in to partisan politics, and you hear really both parties trying to involve the military. Now, of course, General McChrystal is endorsing Vice President Harris as an individual, but I think sometimes it’s difficult to differentiate between an individual endorsement and the military getting drug into partisan politics, right? You hear- you hear this narrative these days, you know, from some people on the far right, that the military is woke, or from the far left that the military is extremist. Hey, the military is not woke or extremist, right? The military is doing its duties under the Constitution and for whoever’s elected commander in chief. So that’s been a big part of my reticence. And then the other role is, I think, Robert, I mean, the other reason is, I don’t think anybody needs me to tell them how to vote, right? In the book and in other venues, I lay all- all of it out, right, the good, the bad, the ugly, you know, of- of the Trump administration. But I do so in context of the eight Obama years that followed it and the four- that preceded it, and the four Biden years that followed it. So I think voters should make their own decisions, and what I’ve tried to do is help inform voters, no matter what their- which way they’re leaning.
ROBERT COSTA: Let’s turn to the Middle East. What’s your view? You heard from Senator Cotton, you heard from General McChrystal. How do you see a possible war on the horizon, if any, between Israel and Iran? Or is there something that can be done, especially by the United States, to contain what is happening?
LT. GENERAL H.R. MCMASTER: Robert, I would say there already is a war between Israel and Iran, and it’s a- it’s a war that Iran has been waging for four plus decades. Nasrallah, who was there at the beginning of Hezbollah, who was there when they killed 241 Marines in- in Beirut, and began a campaign against not only who Nasrallah called the cancerous boil of Israel, but the great Satan of the United States. And Nasrallah, remember what his catchphrase was at the end of like, almost- many of the speeches that he gave, which was, the Jews are vulnerable because they love life. We can take that away from them. We will win, because they love life and we love death. And so the Israelis have had, really, no choice. Remember, right after the heinous attacks of October 7, that’s when Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel in solidarity with- with Hamas. That resulted in the evacuation of 10% of Israel’s territory. About 70,000 Israelis are out of their homes. And so I think Israel is taking the right approach to escalate against an enemy who’s been able to escalate, really, on their own terms, with impunity. And I think increasingly the United States has to act like we know what the return address is, in Iran. Now’s the time to double down on the pressure on Iran, to dry up the cash flow available–
ROBERT COSTA: What does that mean, though? Just in terms of financial action, or do you expect there might need to be a U.S. military role down the line for the United States in the Middle East?
LT. GENERAL H.R. MCMASTER: Well, there already is- is a military role–
ROBERT COSTA: In terms of ground troops or air strikes?
LT. GENERAL H.R. MCMASTER: Well, I think- I think both- all of this should be kind of on the table. And I think we should act like we know where those rockets are coming from, the 150,000 rockets that Hezbollah has pointed at Israel, the 40,000 or so members of Iran’s proxy army in Syria, the Palestinians, along with Jihad and Hamas in the West Bank, what remains of Hamas in Gaza, those were all trained, equipped, supplied by Iran, to create this ring of fire around Israel, and to destroy Israel and kill all the Jews. The precursor to that is to act against us. Robert, 175 attacks against U.S. forces and U.S. installations by Iranian proxies since October 8 of last year.
ROBERT COSTA: General, you say the United States and Israel should be in lockstep, or at least aligned, as they move forward. But the Pentagon has said, the Biden administration has said, they were not informed about these attacks ahead of time. So what does that say about the real state of play between Israel and the United States?
LT. GENERAL H.R. MCMASTER: I think what Israel has determined is that it had to protect its security and secrecy around this operation. If you think about the blows that they delivered to Hezbollah in the- in the past week, 10 days, it’s really unprecedented, you know, killing so many of them, winning so many with the beepers and then the walkie talkies, and then when they couldn’t talk securely, they met at a location in Beirut, struck that target. So, Nasrallah has- has been taken out, but so has all the cadre around him. These are decades long of relationships and knowledge, and so I think now is the time to put on the financial sanctions. Why did the Biden administration not enforce the Trump era sanctions against Iran, and allowed about $100 billion to flow to that theocratic dictatorship? Now’s the time to reverse that policy.
ROBERT COSTA: So that- Israel has taken out military targets. Lebanon is saying that many civilians have been killed. What should the U.S. do in terms of protecting civilian deaths moving forward, talking to Israel about that issue, what needs to be done on the civilian front?
LT. GENERAL H.R. MCMASTER: Well, what you want is, you need firepower to overwhelm this enemy, but you also want to apply that firepower with- with discrimination.
ROBERT COSTA: Is that being done?
LT. GENERAL H.R. MCMASTER: Well, it depends on the calculus at the time. Remember, the bunker in which Nas- Nasrallah was killed was underground, several stories underground, underneath where? An apartment complex. And so it’s Hezbollah. Remember, he said, we love death. Remember what Hamas leadership said just before the October 7 attacks? The purpose, one of the purposes, of that attack, was to get some of their own people killed so they could use that against Israel. So it’s really important, I think, at this stage, to continue to impress on the Israelis, apply firepower with discrimination, but also to recognize that these terrorist organizations are the principal causes for the violence and destitution and the suffering of the people in Gaza and the people in Lebanon. Look at the great promise of Lebanon. It’s a beautiful country. Look at what Hezbollah has done to that country, with their alliance with the Syrians in the 2000s, remember, we had the Cedar Revolution in 2006 after Hariri’s assassination. I mean, the Lebanese people are destitute, in large measure because of Hezbollah.
ROBERT COSTA: And just finally here, former President Donald Trump, who you know well, he met with President Zelenskyy in recent days. He keeps talking about being able to broker something between Zelenskyy and Putin. Do you buy it?
LT. GENERAL H.R. MCMASTER: You know, I don’t really buy it in terms of, you know, hey, in 24 hours, it can be- I think it’s a real- it’s a real myth, right? It’s a real misunderstanding of war to assume that you can get a favorable political outcome without a favorable military outcome. That’s never really happened in war. And so I think the right course of action is, if you want to accelerate toward progress, toward a settlement, is to convince Putin that he’s losing the war. I think that’s the only way you get a favorable settlement. How do you do that? You demonstrate our resolve to continue to support the Ukrainians as they defend themselves against this continued onslaught by the Russians. That’s how you get to, maybe, favorable conditions for negotiation.
ROBERT COSTA: General McMaster, we appreciate you coming on “Face The Nation.” Hope you come again. Thank you very much.
LT. GENERAL H.R. MCMASTER: Thank you.
ROBERT COSTA: And we’ll be back in a moment.
9/29: Sunday Morning – CBS News
Pope Francis denounces military attacks that go “beyond morality” when asked about Israel’s recent attacks
Transcript: H.R. McMaster, former National Security Adviser, on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” Sept. 29, 2024
9/29: Sunday Morning – CBS News
Pope Francis denounces military attacks that go “beyond morality” when asked about Israel’s recent attacks