The owner and manager of the cargo ship that caused the Francis Scott Key Bridge to collapse in the US city of Baltimore have agreed to pay more than $US100 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the Justice Department, officials said Thursday.
Six members of a road crew plunged to their deaths on March 26 when a container ship lost power and crashed into one of the four-lane bridge’s supporting columns.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore collapses.
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The settlement comes a month after the Justice Department sued Dali owner Grace Ocean Private Limited and manager Synergy Marine Group — both of Singapore — seeking to recover the more than $US100 million the government spent to clear the underwater debris and reopen the city’s port.
“This resolution ensures that the costs of the federal government’s cleanup efforts in the Fort McHenry Channel are borne by Grace Ocean and Synergy and not the American taxpayer,” Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Benjamin Mizer said in a statement.
The Justice Department alleged that the electrical and mechanical systems on the ship, the Dali, were improperly maintained, causing it to lose power and veer off course before striking a support column on the bridge in March.
The collapse snarled commercial shipping traffic through the Port of Baltimore for months before the channel was fully opened in June.
Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval, Miguel Angel Luna Gonzalez, Jose Mynor Lopez, Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes and Carlos Daniel Hernández were killed in the collapse.
It took more than six weeks for their bodies to be recovered.
They were all Latino immigrants who came to the United States from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.
Suazo Sandoval, 38, had lived in the US for 18 years and left behind a wife, a five-year-old daughter and 18-year-old son, the BBC reported.
Luna Gonzalez, 49, had lived in Maryland for more than 19 years and was a husband and father of three.
Mynor Lopez, 37, had lived in the US for almost two decades, leaving behind a wife and four children.
Castillo Cabrera, 26, had worked at the building company for three years and moved to the US to help his mother.
Hernandez Fuentes, 35 was a father-of-four.
Hernández, 24, was from Mexico and texted his girlfriend moments before the bridge collapsed.
Hernandez Fuentes’s brother-in-law and Hernández’s uncle, Julio Cervantes Suarez, was rescued from the water and taken to hospital.
He told NBC he was inside his truck when the bridge collapsed.
Cervantes Suarez’s truck fell into the water. The 37-year-old, who cannot swim, escaped through a window and clung to a piece of floating concrete.
“That’s when I realised what happened. I looked at the bridge and it was no longer there,” he told NBC.
“I started to call out to each one of them by name,” he said.
“But no one answered me.
“I relive it all the time, the minutes before the fall and when I’m falling.”
He is haunted by the fact that he told his nephew to go to his car and rest.
“If I had told him to come with me, maybe it would have been different,” he said. “Maybe he would be here with us.”
The families of the victims filed a lawsuit action against Grace Ocean Private Limited and Synergy Marine Group in September.
Cervantes Suarez filed a separate lawsuit, seeking damages for his injuries.