BALTIMORE: As part of a complex effort to restore the city’s blocked port, salvage crews worked on Saturday to pull the first section of Baltimore’s collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge from the sea so that barges and tugboats could access the disaster site, according to Maryland and US officials.
A huge cargo ship lost power and collided with a support pylon early on Tuesday morning, causing the steel truss bridge to collapse and killing six road workers. A large portion of the span fell into the Patapsco River, obstructing the shipping lane to the Port of Baltimore.
At a press conference, Maryland Governor Wes Moore said that a portion of the steel superstructure of the bridge north of the disaster site will be chopped into pieces that could be placed onto a barge by a crane and transported to the Tradepoint Atlantic facility at Sparrows Point, which is nearby.
Moore stated, “In the long run, this will enable us to create a temporary restricted channel that will assist us in getting more vessels in the water near the collapse site.”
Due to hazardous circumstances, the search for four more workers has been suspended while the bodies of two colleagues have been recovered.
He refused to say when this part of the clearance work would be finished. “It won’t take hours,” he declared. “We can move more tugs, more barges, and more boats into the area to accelerate our recovery once we complete this phase of the work, which won’t take days.”
The 984-foot Singapore-flagged container ship Dali has a crumpled section of its superstructure sitting on its bow. Workers will not attempt to remove this part of the bridge’s superstructure just yet. Although the ship’s hull is damaged, Moore stated that it is “intact” and that it was unknown when the ship could be transported.
When it comes to the endeavor to remove bridge debris and allow ships to enter the Port of Baltimore, Moore described it as “a remarkably complex operation.”
The bodies of two workmen who were fixing the bridge deck at the time of the accident have been found, but Moore added that efforts to find the bodies of four more people who are thought to be dead have been put on hold because it is too unsafe for divers to operate in the presence of so much debris.
Rear Admiral Shannon Gilreath of the Coast Guard informed reporters that before the Dali could be relocated, debris from the deep-draft shipping channel of the Patapsco River would need to be removed by teams from the Coast Guard, the U.S. Navy’s salvage arm, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The work on Saturday included cutting a section slightly to the north of that waterway and hoisting it onto a barge using a 160-ton marine crane. At the bridge site is an even larger crane that weighs 1,000 tons.
The artwork will be delivered to Tradepoint Atlantic, the location of the defunct Bethlehem Steel Mill, which is being transformed into a distribution hub for businesses including Volkswagen, Amazon.com, and Home Depot. Situated on the Chesapeake Bay side of the fallen bridge, the facility’s port is fully functional. When asked about Tradepoint Atlantic’s involvement in the salvage operation, the business could not immediately provide an answer.
Paul Wiedefield, the secretary of transportation for Maryland, stated that Tradepoint authorities had consented to let other ships offload cars at the facility’s deepwater dock so they could be shipped to dealers.
Following a barge’s collision with an Arkansas River bridge, authorities in Oklahoma announced on Saturday that they had closed a section of US Highway 59 close to Sallisaw. According to media reports, there were no immediate reports of injuries, and the bridge would be inspected by officials.
The jobs of over 15,000 individuals whose work centers around everyday port operations are on pause five days after the tragedy in Maryland. Although other East Coast ports ought to be able to manage container traffic, according to logistics experts, Baltimore is the main U.S. port for the import and export of “roll-on, roll-off” vehicles as well as farm and construction equipment.
The state’s request for a disaster declaration, which permits small businesses harmed by the disaster to apply for emergency low-interest loans of up to $2 million through the end of 2024, has been approved by the Small Business Administration, according to Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland.
In an incredibly quick disbursement, the federal government gave Maryland an initial $60 million in emergency assistance on Thursday to clear debris and start reconstructing the Key Bridge.
