Divers in Baltimore have recovered the remains of two of the six missing workers that fell into Baltimore Harbour from the collapsed highway bridge.
The bodies were pulled from the Patapsco River a day after the massive container ship lost power and its ability to manoeuvre before smashing into a support pylon of the Francis Scott Key Bridge.
A Maryland State Police official said the truck containing the bodies of the two men was found in about 25 feet of water near the mid-section of the fallen bridge.
A spokesperson from the troop said that further efforts to recover remains were being suspended because of the increasingly treacherous conditions.
The collapsed bridge on top of the cargo ship
Getty
Four more workers who were part of a crew filling potholes on the bridge's road surface at the time remained missing and were declared on Tuesday night to be presumed dead, 18 hours after the crash.
Earlier in the day, federal investigators examined the cargo ship while emergency teams searched for bodies and details emerged of the intense efforts to save lives in the minutes before the steel span collapsed.
Minutes before the 1:30 a.m. crash on Tuesday, an unknown voice could be heard saying: "Hold all traffic on the Key Bridge. There's a ship approaching that just lost its steering."
While voices were heard discussing the next steps, including alerting any work crews to leave the bridge, one broke through to say: "The whole bridge just fell down!" The audio was carried by Broadcastify, an open-source audio streaming service.
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Wreckage lies across the deck of the Dali cargo vessel,
Reuters
All six of those missing who worked for Brawner Builders are presumed to be dead by authorities as divers search the water for bodies, having recovered the black box from the Dali.
Two have been named as Miguel Luna, a 49-year-old father of six, from El Salvador, and 37-year-old Maynard Sandoval. There were also two Guatemalan foreign nationals aged 26 and 35.
Jose Campos, a colleague of Luna, told Sky News: "My supervisor called me in the morning and told me they had rescued one of my colleagues but he was in a coma.
"I never imagined something this awful could happen. The path where the boat goes was supposed to be a safe zone."
WATCH: The moment of the Baltimore bridge collapse
Vice Admiral Peter Gautier said Coast Guard priorities are to restore the waterway for shipping, stabilize the vessel and extricate it.
He said: "The real critical thing here is that, as you know, a portion of the bridge remains on the bow on that ship"
Of the ship's 4,700 cargo containers, 56 hold hazardous materials but there is no threat to the public, he said. Two containers went overboard during the crash but they did not contain hazardous materials.
The ship is carrying more than 1.5 million gallons of fuel oil, he added.