BALTIMORE: Pilots of the cargo ship that crashed into a major bridge in the U.S. city of Baltimore, Maryland, issued a mayday call shortly before the structure collapsed into a river, enabling authorities to save lives, according to the state’s governor.

“We can confirm that the crew notified authorities of a power issue,” Maryland Governor Wes Moore told reporters Tuesday morning, hours after the incident. Moore said the Singapore-flagged container ship Dali had no power before smashing into one of two main columns supporting the Francis Scott Key Bridge and causing the bridge to collapse.

Moore said the crew’s warning enabled transportation officials to quickly halt traffic along the interstate highway crossing over the bridge. “These people are heroes. They saved lives last night,” the governor said. The ship’s crew also dropped its anchors in a futile attempt to avert the disaster.

Even so, eight people on the bridge, reportedly all part of a construction repair crew filling highway potholes, were believed to have plummeted into the Patapsco River during the incident, which occurred at 1:30 a.m. Tuesday.

Two of the workers were rescued, with one transported to a trauma center in serious condition, while the other was uninjured. Searchers were continuing to look for the other six, with divers facing bone-chilling water temperatures of about 9 degrees Celsius (48 Fahrenheit).

Video showed a large section of the bridge quickly collapsing into the river after the Dali collided with the support column. The vessel is 48 meters (157 feet) wide and 300 meters (984 feet) long and was loaded with cargo containers setting sail for Sri Lanka.

Authorities said several vehicles — perhaps five — were on the bridge when the collapse occurred, apparently vehicles driven there by the workers and later discovered in the water.

U.S. President Joe Biden said at the White House that he would ask Congress for federal funding to rebuild the bridge and that he plans to visit the site soon.

“We’re going to rebuild that port,” which he said supports 15,000 jobs. “We’re going to rebuild that bridge as soon as humanly possible.”

He said there was no reason to suspect terrorism in the incident, even as conspiracists offered nefarious theories about the cause of the incident on U.S. websites.

Moore declared a state of emergency and said the state is working “with an interagency team to quickly deploy federal resources from the Biden administration.”

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott called the incident “an unthinkable tragedy.” Baltimore Police Commissioner Richard Worley said there is “no indication” the collision was intentional.

Synergy Marine Corporation, managers of the Dali, issued a statement saying that all its crew members, including the two pilots on board and 20 crew members, were accounted for and there were no reports of injuries on board the vessel.

The 47-year-old, 2.5-kilometer-long (1.5 miles) Francis Scott Key bridge is a major link in the interstate highway that circles the city of Baltimore, which has one of the largest ports in the United States. Biden said 30,000 vehicles crossed the bridge on a typical day.

The bridge was named after Francis Scott Key, the writer of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” a poem later set to music to eventually become the U.S. national anthem.

Key was inspired to write the poem after witnessing the British bombardment of a major U.S. military fort in Baltimore in 1814 during the war between the countries that began in 1812.

VOA