Baltimore bridge disaster bereaved sue shipping firm

As the sun was rising Baltimore 26 March, Maria del Carmen Castellón received news that she never expected: her husband, Miguel Angel Luna Gonzalez, was missing in the cold, dark waters of Maryland’s Patapsco river.

“I got a knock on the door from my husband’s son,” she recalls. “It’s news I wouldn’t wish on any wife. At that moment, I wished I had wings so I could fly and save him.”

Luna, a 49-year-old father of three originally from El Salvador, was one of eight workers fixing potholes on Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge when it was struck by a 948ft (289m) cargo ship – the M/V Dali – sending an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 tonnes of debris into the shipping channel below.

Six of the workers – all originally from Latin America – died in the bridge collapse.

It would be more than five weeks until Luna’s body was recovered in early May.

“That was the hardest day of my life,” Ms Castellón said. “It opened a wound in my heart that will never heal.”

Now, six months on from the disaster, the families of three of the dead workers are suing the shipping company, Grace Ocean Private Ltd, arguing that its “negligence” and actions directly led to the collapse of the bridge and the deaths of their loved ones.

“We’re fighting for justice,” added Ms Castellón, speaking in Spanish to reporters at the Baltimore offices of Casa, an advocacy organisation focused on immigrants. “Justice means preventing future tragedies.”