A cargo ship struck a bridge that crosses outer Baltimore Harbor, a spokesman for the U.S. Coast Guard said early Tuesday.
The Coast Guard received a report of an impact at 1:27 a.m. Eastern time at the Francis Scott Key Bridge, said Matthew West, a petty officer first class for the Coast Guard in Baltimore.
Officer West said that a Singapore-flagged cargo ship, the Dali, had hit the bridge, which is part of Interstate 695. The Dali is 948 feet long, he said.
MarineTraffic, a maritime data platform, showed a Singapore-flagged container ship of the same name stopped directly under the bridge early Tuesday. The Dali left Baltimore at 1 a.m. and was bound for Colombo, Sri Lanka, according to the site.
The extent of the damage to the bridge was not immediately clear. Neither the Baltimore Police nor the Maryland Port Administration responded to requests for comment. Neither did the office of Mayor Brandon M. Scott.
The Maryland Transportation Authority said on the social media site X around 2 a.m. that all lanes on the bridge were closed in both directions for an “incident,” without specifying what had happened. Traffic was being detoured, the department said.
The bridge — named after Francis Scott Key, the author of the American national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner” — opened in 1977.
This is a developing story.
Source Agencies
