Dali unseaworthy ahead of Key Bridge collapse, federal officials say

The federal government has accused the operators of the container ship that collapsed the Francis Scott Key Bridge of negligence and mismanagement, saying the Dali crew had “made a makeshift rig of their vessel.”

The new claims provide the most detailed account yet of what led to the bridge’s complete collapse early March 26. The Justice Department filed the lawsuit Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Maryland, seeking $100 million in costs as well as punitive damages from Synergy Marine Group, the ship’s manager.

The government alleges that the Dali contained a transformer that repeatedly snapped due to excessive vibration and an “unwisely disabled” backup circuit system. Recent inspections Loose bolts, nuts and washers as well as broken cable ties were found inside transformers and switchboards.

The ship’s electrical equipment was so poor that one agency stopped conducting electrical tests due to “safety concerns,” according to court documents filed by the government.

Synergy and Grace Ocean Private, owner of the Dali Hotel, had previously asked the court to release them from liability or limit it, claiming they were not at fault.

“This was an entirely avoidable disaster that was the result of a series of entirely foreseeable mistakes by the owner and operator of DALI,” Principal Deputy Attorney General Brian M. Boynton, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, said in a statement.

The 984-foot container ship lost power several times after leaving the Port of Baltimore and struck a critical support pillar of the Key Bridge. The bridge collapsed within seconds, killing six men. A seventh man was pulled from the water and survived.

According to court documents, the Dali experienced multiple power outages while in Baltimore but failed to report them to the Coast Guard, as required by U.S. regulations. The Dali’s captain also failed to disclose the power outages or the ship’s history of mechanical, electrical, and other irregularities to the Maryland pilot responsible for guiding the ship out of Baltimore Harbor and through the Chesapeake Bay.

In the latest filing, federal authorities said four different methods of controlling the Dali in an emergency failed because of the vessel’s poor condition, resulting in a “series of failures.”

That night, a licensed pilot from Maryland boarded the ship to guide it out of the Seagirt Marine Terminal in Baltimore and was assured by the captain that the ship was in good working order. As the ship approached the Key Bridge, the ship lost power when a transformer opened.

When the Dali’s power was lost, the ship should have automatically switched to a backup circuit system within seconds, restoring control, according to Justice Department documentation. But that didn’t happen because the automation function was “inadvertently disabled,” and the ship’s engineers had to run around in the dark to reset the tripped circuit breakers.

The time it took to reset the breakers, about a minute, was critical, government lawyers wrote. At the same time it was happening, the ship’s emergency generator should also have started automatically within 45 seconds, as required by maritime regulations, but it took more than a minute for the emergency systems to kick in, according to court documents.

Investigators say the transformer and its breakers “had long been exposed to the effects of severe vibration, which is a known cause of transformer and electrical installation failures.”

“Instead of taking steps to eliminate the source of the excessive vibration, (the crew) provisionally retrofitted their craft,” DOJ lawyers wrote. “They retrofitted the transformer with anti-vibration mounts, one of which cracked over time, was repaired with welds, and cracked again. They also inserted a metal cargo hook between the transformer and a nearby steel beam in a makeshift attempt to reduce the vibration.”

The ship’s previous senior officer also reported that “constant vibrations” above the engine room were causing cargo lashings to break, which engineers said was causing gear in the engine room to crack.

“Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the transformer breakers tripped due to loose and damaged circuits,” authorities said.

Authorities said that two minutes before it hit the bridge, the Maryland pilot issued an emergency order for the Dali to release its anchor in the hope of easing it away from the bridge.

However, the Dali’s ship’s anchor was not ready to be immediately released in an emergency, as required by law, and nothing happened, according to court documents.

“When the ship finally dropped anchor, less than half its length from the bridge, it was too late to do anything,” they wrote.

When Dali engineers restored power after the first outage, the ship also did not have a working propeller because the main engine was still disabled. If engineers had been able to restore the main engine, the ship’s pilot would have had time to slow down or change direction, according to court documents. Instead, a minute later, Dali lost power a second time, again due to the company’s negligence, according to the Justice Department.

The second power outage, about a minute after the initial power restoration, was caused by the wrong pump being installed to power the ship’s diesel generators, which generate electricity. Unlike a standard fuel pump, the ship was equipped with a “flushing” pump, which is designed to temporarily clean the pipeline while the crew changes fuel types, according to court documents.

Government lawyers said the flush pump was not designed to automatically recover power after a power failure, a “critical safety feature” that a proper fuel pump would have. Instead, the flush pump remained off, and the diesel generators received fuel from a smaller, emergency pump that could not supply enough fuel to maintain power. Because the fuel leak was so small, the engines slowed down, disconnecting the ship’s computer from the electrical switchboards, causing a second power failure.

In court documents, the government said Synergy, the company that manages Dali, used the flush pump “to save money.”

According to court documents, to restart a flushing pump after a power outage like the one Dali experienced, an engineer would have to descend 55 steps from the engine control room to the purifier room and then press the start button.

The National Transportation Safety Board has been conducting an independent investigation into the Dali disaster for months, separate from the Justice Department. At a congressional hearing this spring, NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy told lawmakers that the safety board was focusing on problems with the ship’s electrical system.

A report released last week by the safety board revealed that inspectors found a loose electrical cable attached to a transformer that was in use when the Dali left port on March 26. Engineers from Hyundai, the ship’s manufacturer, told investigators that the cable could cause a power outage if the connection were severed. It was unclear whether the cable had become loose because of the ship’s vibrations; the NTSB report did not reach any conclusions.

The men were part of a construction crew that worked through the night to patch holes in the bridge. Those killed were: José Mynor López, 37, of Baltimore; Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, 35, of Baltimore; Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, 26, of Dundalk; Maynor Suazo Sandoval, 38, of Owings Mills; Miguel Angel Luna Gonzales, 49, of Glen Burnie; and Carlos Daniel Hernández, 24.

This article will be updated.