According to Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore demonstrates that “migrants go out and do risky jobs at midnight,” and thus they “do not deserve to be treated as they are by certain insensitive, irresponsible politicians in the United States.”
López Obrador’s remark came as Maryland State Police identified one of the two victims recovered from the Patapsco River on Wednesday as 35-year-old Alejandro Hernández Fuentes, originally from Mexico.
“Based on the conditions, we’re now moving from a recovery mode to a salvage operation because of the superstructure surrounding what we believe are the vehicles, as well as the amount of concrete and debris; divers are no longer able to safely navigate or operate in the areas around this wreckage,” Col. Roland L. Butler Jr., superintendent of Maryland State Police, said during a press conference on Wednesday night.
Butler identified the other body recovered from the ocean as Guatemalan Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, age 26. Divers recovered a red pickup truck submerged in around 25 feet of water in the middle span of the bridge, with two bodies trapped inside.
Four more construction workers are thought dead following Tuesday’s accident, in which the cargo ship Dali collided with one of the bridge’s supports in the early morning, causing the span to collapse. They’re also from Guatemala and El Salvador.
Another fatality has been named as 38-year-old Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval, the youngest of eight siblings from Azacualpa, a rural mountainous area in northeastern Honduras, according to The Associated Press.
Sandoval fled Honduras for the United States 18 years ago, entering the country illegally before settling in Maryland and working any job he could find, including construction and brush clearing, according to the news agency. According to his brother Martín Suazo Sandoval, he later began a package delivery firm in the Baltimore-Washington area.
“He was the fundamental pillar, the bastion so that other members of the family could also travel there and later get visas and everything,” a source told the AP. “He was really the driving force so that most of the family could travel.”
Maynor is married and has two children, aged 17 and five, according to his brother. Maynor was compelled to find an alternative job due to the coronavirus epidemic, so he joined Brawner Builders, the business that was performing bridge maintenance when it collapsed.
According to Martín Suazo Sandoval, Maynor never expressed fear of the task, even working at heights on bridges. He always emphasized the importance of putting in extra effort to succeed. He stated that it did not matter what time or where the employment was; you had to be where the work was.
The Honduran was working on obtaining legal status and intended to return to his native country this year to finish the process, according to his brother.