Us National Transportation Safety Board chairwoman Jennifer Homenty said at a Senate hearing on her reelection on the 10th that the investigation surrounding the Baltimore bridge crash in Maryland is now focusing on the electrical fault of the freighter involved.

    Photo taken on March 26, 2019 shows a collapsed bridge in Baltimore, Maryland, the United States. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Hu Yousong

    At around 1:30 am on March 26, the Singapore-flagged Daly cargo ship hit the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, causing the steel bridge to collapse and people and vehicles to fall into the Patapsco River. The ship had just left the port of Baltimore on its way to Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, when it struck the bridge.

    Video from the scene showed black smoke spewing from the freighter as it approached the bridge and the ship's lights flashing on and off. Homendi said she and other investigators believe the ship's lights went out before the accident and that the collision was related. "That's the focus of our investigation right now."

    According to the Washington Post, South Korea's Hyundai Group, the manufacturer of equipment for the ship's engine room, is cooperating with investigators to examine the ship's electrical systems. Hyundai Group has sent experts to the United States to download the ship's electrical data and check the circuit breaker. Investigators have gathered only relatively basic information from the ship's voyage data recorder, so Homendi concluded that "the information in the engine room will be of great help."

    Investigators believe the ship's engines and electrical systems lost power before the collision, possibly related to the loss of control. In addition, investigators have interviewed the ship's captain, two crew members at the helm of the ship and U.S. Coast Guard personnel, and conducted tests on the ship's fuel.

    Homendy also stressed that the investigation is still in the "very early" early stages, and other lines of inquiry may emerge in the future, and a preliminary report may not be released until early May. Both federal and Maryland officials had previously ruled that the collision appeared to be an accident.

    The accident caused eight construction workers on the bridge floor to fall into the water, two of them were rescued, and the other six were killed. So far, only three bodies have been recovered and three others have not been found. Maryland Governor Wes Moore and other emergency team officials said at a news conference late on the 10th that the accident investigation was carried out in parallel with the river cleanup.

    The collision halted most shipping in Baltimore, a major port on the U.S. East Coast. Towing the freighter requires first removing the wreckage of the bridge steel frame that is scattered on the ship.

    To get close to the wreckage, crews first had to remove containers from the Daly, and had already unloaded 34 of 178 containers they planned to unload, Mr. Moore said. How to remove the bulk of the bridge blocking the main channel is still being studied. Part of the bridge has sunk into the river bottom silt, which needs to be excavated, cut into small pieces, and then removed.

    The U.S. Coast Guard opened a temporary waterway for the first time this month, mainly for small vessels involved in cleanup operations and some smaller stranded vessels through. A third temporary shipping lane is expected to open by the end of the month, which will significantly increase the volume of commercial vessels passing through the port of Baltimore.

    Homendi also said that investigators are also examining the bridge design and that the transportation department should consider how to strengthen and protect such Bridges, which were designed and built years ago, "according to today's standards" to adapt to changes in the shipping industry. "If I were a state or federal Department of Transportation official, I would be exploring the question right now -- can the existing protections enable these Bridges to withstand the volume of ship traffic today?"