Coast Guard Ends Search for Bridge Collapse Survivors

This story has been updated with new details. Six people believed to have fallen in the water in the Baltimore bridge collapse early Tuesday are presumed dead, officials say. The Coast Guard said Tuesday evening that search and rescue efforts have been suspended and the effort will become a recovery operation, ABC News reports. "Based on the length of time that we've gone in the search, the extensive search efforts that we put into it, the water temperature—at this point, we do not believe that we're going to find any of these individuals still alive," said Rear Admiral Shannon Gilreath. Authorities say recovery efforts will begin early Wednesday. More:

• The missing workers. The missing people are workers from Brawner Builders, who were repairing potholes on the Francis Scott Key bridge when it was hit by the Dali cargo ship. "It's a terrible, terrible, unforeseen tragedy," Jeffrey Pritzker, executive vice president of Brawner Builders, tells the Baltimore Sun. "We are all kind of shocked and distressed." Two survivors were pulled from the water after the collapse.

• Ship suffered "complete blackout." Clay Diamond, executive director and general counsel of the American Pilots Association, tells CNN that the ship's pilot did "everything that he could have done" to try to stop it hitting the bridge after it lost power. "Just minutes before the bridge, there was a total blackout on the ship, meaning that the ship lost engine power and electrical power, it was a complete blackout," Diamond says. He says the pilot called for a hard rudder to port and for the ship to drop anchor, but "it happened so quickly and with so little lead time" that the collision could not be prevented.
• Engineers raise questions. The New York Times reports that engineers who have reviewed footage of the collapse are asking whether the bridge pier hit by the cargo ship had adequate devices, known as fenders, to deflect collisions. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, however, said he doesn't know of any bridge "that has been constructed to withstand a direct impact from a vessel of this size."
• Biden vows to "move heaven and earth." President Biden said Tuesday that he has directed his team "to move heaven and earth to reopen the port and rebuild the bridge as soon as humanly possible," reports Fox 5. The president, who said the federal government will cover rebuilding costs, pledged to visit Baltimore as soon as possible. "Like the governor said, you're Maryland tough, you're Baltimore strong, and we're going to get through this together," he said.

(More Baltimore bridge collapse stories.)