BALTIMORE — Data capturing the moments before the container ship Dali struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge has been secured by the National Transportation Safety Board and is being analyzed by the federal agency’s lab, officials confirmed Wednesday.

Large ships are required by international regulations to carry voyage data recorders that, similar to the “black box” found on aircraft, help investigators piece together key decisions and actions.

If the equipment works properly and the data can be verified, it can provide information that serves as a “road map” of what the ship and its crew were doing in the lead-up to, and during, a casualty event, said Lawrence Brennan, an adjunct professor with Fordham University School of Law who teaches a maritime law course.

The bridge collapsed early Tuesday. Six members of a crew repairing potholes on its deck fell into the Patapsco River; two bodies were found as of Wednesday evening. The other workers are presumed dead. Officials said they believed the other bodies were trapped beneath the wreckage of the bridge, and that the debris would have to be removed before they could be recovered.

Representatives for the NTSB did not respond to an inquiry from The Baltimore Sun about the condition of the Dali’s voyage data recorder and whether it properly captured information.

The NTSB’s chair, Jennifer Homendy, said Tuesday the recorder would be “critical” to the investigation.

Data items captured by recorders can include the ship’s position, speed, direction, the audio in work stations, communications audio, radar, the depth of the water underneath vessels, the alarms going off, wind speed and an electronic logbook.

In this case, it could provide details about conversations between the pilot and crew members, the ship’s movement and, potentially, a “mayday” signal that officials say helped prevent more casualties on the Key Bridge by giving police time to close the bridge to drivers. The local pilot was on board to guide the ship through the harbor.

“You know what the watch commander or the captain told the chief engineer,” Thomas Roth-Roffy, a U.S. Coast Guard licensed chief engineer who worked for 18 years as an NTSB investigator, said of such recordings.

Not only can the voyage data recorder help investigators retrace the ship’s path and determine how the crew responded when things went awry, it allows the NTSB to “recreate what’s visible on the ship’s radar,” Roth-Roffy said. “It actually does screen captures every 30 seconds or a minute.”

...continued

©2024 The Baltimore Sun. Visit at baltimoresun.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.