The construction workers who went missing in the Baltimore bridge collapse came to the Maryland area from Mexico or Central America, including an enterprising Honduran father and husband who started a delivery business before the pandemic forced him to find other work, according to his family.
Police managed to close bridge traffic seconds before a cargo ship slammed into one of the Francis Scott Key Bridge’s supports early Tuesday, causing the span to fall into the frigid Patapsco River. There wasn’t time for a maintenance crew filling potholes on the span to get to safety.
The tragedy illustrated the contributions that migrants make to the U.S. economy, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said.
“This demonstrates that migrants go out and do risky jobs at midnight. And for this reason, they do not deserve to be treated as they are by certain insensitive, irresponsible politicians in the United States,” he said.
Because it’s safer to do road work when there are fewer cars on the road, I presume. There wasn’t much time from the mayday call to the collapse, so I’ll wait to hear more from the investigators before I weigh in on what safety faults there were