Six other workers are presumed dead, Jeffrey Pritzker, the executive vice president of Brawner Builders, the workers’ employer, confirmed to Business Insider.
Pritzker did not disclose the names of the workers, who had fallen into the freezing waters of the 50-foot-deep Patapsco River after a cargo ship crashed into the bridge in Baltimore’s port.
Rescue crews have yet to recover the bodies of the presumed dead workers. The amount of time that has passed and the water’s depth led rescue teams to believe that they were no longer alive, Pritzker told the Associated Press.
Officials suspended their search and rescue efforts Tuesday evening, the Washington Post reported.
Baltimore Fire Chief James Wallace told NBC News that two people had been rescued from the water.
The Singapore-tagged Dali cargo ship crashed into the bridge around 1:30 a.m. due to a loss of power. At the time of the incident, the Brawner Builders workers were on their meal break, one of their coworkers Jesus Campos, told the Post.
The bridge collapse could have been worse had it not been for a mayday call that crew members on the Dali dispatched, warning officials that they were about to hit the bridge, Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland told reporters at a news conference Tuesday morning.
As a result, officials were able to stop traffic on both sides of the bridge to prevent more cars from driving over. Moore said that the actions of the crew likely saved many lives.
Engineers previously told Business Insider that the cargo ship crash was not due to any oversights in the bridge’s construction; rather, the sheer force of the massive cargo ship made such a collapse inevitable.
