Bodies of two missing workers recovered after Baltimore bridge collapse

tonight what took seconds to come crashing down now likely to take weeks to investigate the Key Bridge collapse still too dangerous in many parts for divers to even enter the water debris sunken cars containers and chunks of bridge littering the river floor late today we traveled to What's Left of the Francis Scott Key bridge we're just outside the perimeter of the disaster Zone about a quarter mile of where the collapse happened and at sea level the first thing you realize is the Monstrous size

of that cargo vessel it is so much more massive than the structure of the actual Bridge officials say the dolly the ship that struck the bridge is stable that it has more than 1.2 million gallons of fuel and 56 containers of hazardous material but the Coast Guard saying it is not a danger the crew uh is cooperating with what we need there the they remain on board but outside the ship investigators hitting a snag the search and Recovery efforts have been hampered by the weather here in Baltimore

there's been a steady rain all day patchy fog and temperatures in the 40s but in the water it's even worse drivers won't be able to say anything they're going to work by fill with their hands uh once they get on a Target Brian Hudson leads the FBI's underwater search and evidence Response Team they're using Sonar and remote operated vehicles rovs to scan these Waters what have your teams been able to see down there how bad is it some of the debris is still shifting find mostly a lot of chunks o

f debris rocks we searching for vehicles uh so you're looking for the shape of a vehicle some of the missing construction workers were inside their cars at the time of the collapse you can actually see their vehicles lights blinking on the bridge just before impact it's going to be very very difficult I think to find them so I hope Jeffrey pritsker is an executive with that construction company he says the entire company is in mourning and still in shock did the message get to your employees tha

t the ship was going to crash into the bridge do do you know if if they realized that I I don't know I wasn't there I can only tell you they were right in the middle span of that bridge right in the center of the middle span so I I doubt if they they heard anything frankly or knew that it was going to happen and then what you see you're saying they may have been caught completely by surprise they may have been he says one member of their crew miraculously survived and is still unable to speak ab

out what happened among those missing Miguel Luna a father of six from El Salvador there he is at a gender reveal party for his grandchild just this month and mayor yir swazo Sandoval his brother emotional saying it's not easy seeing the bridge now knowing that monster of iron is trapping my brother and Tom we now have some late news about some of the missing what can you tell us yeah Lester this just we've just learned divers have now located a red pickup truck submerged in 25 ft of water and r

ecovered two victims who were trapped inside officials also announcing the mission here has changed now for a third time in less than two days this no longer is a search and Recovery Mission it is simply too dangerous to keep trying to find the victims this is now being called a salvage operation Lester all right Tom yamas tonight thanks and more than two dozen NTSB investigators are now assigned to the accident for what will be a long investigation into why this disaster happened Tom Costello n

ow on the investigation ahead while the dolly remains trapped under tons of wreckage from the collapsed Bridge ntsp teams were on board today Gathering evidence and identifying key crew members to interview already investigators have downloaded data from the ship's so-called Black Box including the ship's speed position power and throttle settings at 1:30 a.m. tu St that will help us enable us to begin to put together a timeline of events uh that occurred prior to the Striking of the bridge ntsp

Chief homedy says investigators will also look at whether the ship received contaminated fuel which could have shut down the engines causing it to lose power before crashing into the bridge engineering experts calculate it hit with roughly 30 million pounds of applied force the bridge like this one complet Ed in the 1970s was simply not made to withstand a direct impact on a critical support Pier from a vessel that weighs about 200 million pounds while the Key Bridge was built in 1970 standards

those standards changed after a frighter hit Tampa Sunshine Skyway Bridge in 1980 killing 35 people today Bridge support structures must be protected with barriers like reinforced Islands on Tampa's new Skyway Bridge if the bridge had been designed to the revised specifications that took into account the ship Collision um conditions for for that bridge it would not have collapsed nearly a dozen ships are tonight trapped inside the port even more outside amid warnings that the supply chain and l

ivelihoods are in Jeopardy we are concerned about the local economic impact with some 8,000 jobs directly associated with Port activities Michael Clark's business receives and empties containers from the port then ships the freight now he's losing business that's going to other ports right now we don't have any containers and we can't get any containers so immediately our business has shut down and Tom there's still a lot of urgency there tonight Maryland authorities we understand are already la

ying out priorities for the port yeah just a short time ago Maryland authorities say they're going to quickly start drawing up plans for a new bridge but their priority now is reopening the Waterway into the port and that will will take quite a bit of time Lester thanks for watching stay updated about breaking news and top stories on the NBC News app or follow us on social media