Investigators Think They’ve Solved the Mystery of the Baltimore Bridge Crash
November 19, 2025
1 min reading
Investigators believe they have solved the mystery of the Baltimore bridge crash
A small, misplaced tag may have slowly loosened a critical cable on the ship that struck Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, ultimately causing a catastrophic failure.
Jerry Jackson/Baltimore Sunshine/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
A small misplaced tag on the ship that struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore in 2024 may be to blame for the catastrophic crash that killed six people, U.S. officials revealed Tuesday.
THE Dalí struck the bridge after a series of power outages and system failures that resulted in a loss of propulsion and steering control in the early hours of March 26, 2024. The collision caused the structure to collapse into the water below.
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigators reported that a small tag wrapped around a critical wire plugged into one of the freighter’s many terminal boxes had, over the years, caused the wire to come loose, tripping a circuit breaker and causing the ship’s first power outage.
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“This tragedy should never have happened,” Jennifer Homendy, chairwoman of the NTSB, said at a board meeting Tuesday, according to the New York Times.
The report also revealed that the DalíThe plane’s crew had responded appropriately to the emergency. However, due to the ship’s size and its uncontrollable drift, the crew’s actions in attempting to prevent the crash were ultimately futile.
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