The Key Bridge Collapse: Oral Histories

Captain Eric Stacharowski, Baltimore County Fire Department, Dundalk, Station #6

…The bells went off at 1:30, and it said to investigate a “possible cruise ship hit the Key Bridge,” and that’s all they said. We got up. Sounded like nonsense. Sounded completely, you know…we get a lot of calls that don’t necessarily lead to anything. So that’s kind of what I thought it was going to be…

…As we’re pulling up, I remember the driver saying something and the specialist in the back went “Cap, do you see that? Do you see that?” And at that point, I realized everything was dark.

Normally, everything under the bridge was still lit up, as it always was. But as we got closer, everything was dark. And I’m looking. And as my eyes adjusted, that’s when I saw that the bridge was completely down. And that’s when it was like, a wow moment, like just took a second to really comprehend what had happened.

A police officer pulled up and he said that there was a crew on the bridge and when it hit, they weren’t able to get that crew off. So I got on the radio and I gave my transmission basically saying that — and he said a cruise ship as well — I couldn’t see. It was dark. So he said cruise ship, so I said “Cruise ship apparently hit the Key Bridge. There’s an unknown number of workers in the water. But be advised, the Key Bridge is gone.”

And, at that point, dispatch was like, “Repeat.” And I repeated it. Somebody on another unit said something on the radio, and I verified that the Key Bridge was completely collapsed…

…When I got out of the engine, to talk to the police officer, I just remember it being eerily quiet. You didn’t hear anybody yelling. You didn’t hear anybody screaming. So at that point, you kind of, you kind of knew that this was a major, major event…

Scott Ambrose, longshoreman and main character of documentary short, “Echoes from the Key Bridge: A Baltimore Longshoreman”

…I was ordered to the Dali at 7 p.m. I arrived at the Dali, and they were short a foreman that night… We finished our work at 11:00, which is great because I’m used to working at least ‘til midnight, if not 3 a.m. or even later 6 a.m., when I start a 7 p.m. shift. So, you know, I took that as a nice little treat for the day, and I went home… It was a nice night. I had the window open… 

…My cat jumped up on the end table there by the window and was sound asleep and I was just, you know, spacing out, doing my thing, and, you know, next thing you know, it’s almost 1:00 am, and that’s when it happened. 

This roar came in, the house started shimmying a little bit, and, you know, it sounded like….the cat flew off of the end table, flew off, into the air, took off, and I pushed the screen out of the window, put my whole body out, looking out for what this noise….because as fast as it happened, I don’t even know if the cat hit the ground by the time it was down. It was so much sound so fast…

…the best way I can describe the sound is like a giant fork stuck in a giant garbage disposal…it was over as soon as it began…

…I got dressed and walked down to the shoreline. The best way to do that is to walk through Turner Station and even past Turner Station, across Broening Highway. I get close to the shoreline — well it’s all houses over there, there’s really no public access, but that didn’t matter. There was already 30 people standing on the waterfront property of all these people’s homes, so I just joined them. And sure enough, the bridge was in pieces. And there was the Dali, and then, that’s when panic set in. I experienced a panic attack that lasted 48 hours. I didn’t sleep for two days…

…During the salvage operations, and the rescue operations, there was a time in the middle there where it really dried up. I had to go on unemployment for a little while, and I was happy to have it, I was happy to have it as an option…We all went into survival mode, and just did what we had to do…I was waiting in line for food banks some weeks…

…It was this — it wasn’t the World Trade Center, it wasn’t any of these recessions, it wasn’t covid, or anything else I’ve experienced — it was this that really opened my eyes to the fact that nothing is guaranteed…

…I’d like to see something for the victims, definitely, immortalized on that bridge for certain.