Two Mexicans, a Salvadoran, a Honduran and two Guatemalans are the nationalities of those who died after the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore early Tuesday morning, all of them construction workers who were carrying out repair work.
Hispanics represent 16.2% of the U.S. workforce. But in areas such as construction, an industry with labor shortages, Latinos represent a major source of labor with one in three workers of this sector (31.5%), reported EFE.
The Honduran Maynor Suazo, father of two, is one of the fatal victims, and two Guatemalans, a 26-year-old man from San Luis (Petén) and a 35-year-old man from Camotán (Chiquimula) died while making repairs to the collapsed bridge.
Guatemalans represent 7% of the migrant community in Maryland, where the accident occurred, and one in five workers in that state is an immigrant, with the most common areas of work being construction and services, according to data from the Guatemalan consulate in Maryland.
They stop the search for the victims
The authorities stopped this Wednesday until further notice the underwater search for the victims of the collapse of the Baltimore bridge (Maryland, USA) after finding the lifeless bodies of two of the six workers who died in the accident.
Maryland Police Chief Roland Butler explained in a press conference that rescue divers can no longer operate safely due to bad weather and the large amount of debris in the river. “We have exhausted all search efforts,” he said.
The authorities decided to suspend the search “for the moment”, given that they predict that on Thursday the weather will not be favorable for immersion work either.
The suspension of the search tasks was announced in the same appearance in which the discovery of the bodies of two of the six victims of the collapse was announced.
They are the Mexican Alejandro Fernández Fuentes, 35, and the Guatemalan Dorlián Castillo Cabrera, 26, who were found inside a red truck underwater.
His relatives have already been informed of the discovery of the remains.
The two were part of a group of eight construction workers, all Latin Americans, who were filling potholes on the Francis Scott Key Bridge early Tuesday when the Dali ship hit the infrastructure.
Two of them were rescued alive, while the other six are presumed dead. Alejandro Fernández Fuentes and Dorlián Castillo Cabrera are the first bodies recovered.
56 containers with hazardous materials
The merchant ship that crashed early Tuesday morning into a bridge in Baltimore has 4,700 containers on board, 56 of them containing dangerous material, although they do not pose a public danger, US authorities said Wednesday.
Vice Admiral Peter Gautier, deputy commander of operations for the United States Coast Guard, explained in a press conference that “the ship is stable but still has more than one and a half million gallons of fuel oil and lubricating oil on board and has 4,700 cargo containers on board.
In the crash that led to the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, a total of 13 containers, which “do not contain hazardous materials,” fell overboard into the water.
“There is no threat to the public from hazardous materials on board. So we obtained the manifest of the vessel that the container ships transport and we carried out that analysis of the types of center and board of hazardous materials,” he stated.
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2024-10-07 22:03:27
