BALTIMORE — Helicopter photojournalist James Searls hasn’t had time to process everything he saw from the air Tuesday.
“This is up there. This is easily in the top three, top five of one of the worst things I’ve had to see,” he said via Zoom.
James and I worked at competing stations during my three years reporting in Baltimore. He’s still at WBAL, the NBC affiliate, and spends much of his time shooting video from the station’s helicopter.
We spoke by Zoom on Tuesday after his unexpected 15-hour shift. Searls says his phone rang at 3:15 a.m. to cover the Key Bridge collapse for the station, and he was in the air, camera rolling, within the hour.
“It was legit, all hands on deck. Multiple agencies, city police, all the counties came in, volunteer fire departments came in,” he said. There were aircraft flying around, fixed-wing and helicopters, search boats in the water, fire trucks, and mobile command centers everywhere. I don’t know if I’ve seen that much of a police presence or fire rescue presence in any sort of scenario that I’ve been in 24 years [of working in the news].”
Searls says as the sun rose, the extent of the damage came into focus.
From the air, he saw vehicles under the water, the ship destroyed, and mangled metal where the Key Bridge once was.
The bridge was used by 31-thousand drivers per day.
Without it, there would be a 1.6-mile hole in the beltway loop around the city. It’s vital to the city’s traffic flow and economy.
“The biggest thing about the Key Bridge is, it’s one of only three ways to get across the Patapsco River,” said Searls.
“There’s either the bridge, which is now gone, or the two tunnels – I-95 and I-895. So without this bridge, people are going to have to go around a very large detour just to get to those two other interstates to go to those two tunnels to go between back and forth between East Baltimore and West Baltimore.”
Searls says he’s heartbroken for the families of the missing construction workers. And he’s missing a structure he often featured in ‘beauty shots’ sent back to the station during live newscasts.
“It’s amazing to think about that. It’s just not there anymore. It just fell into the river.”
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