The cleanup of the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge is underway In Baltimore, Maryland. The Key Bridge collapsed around 1:30 a.m. on Tuesday, March 26, after a container ship slammed into one of the bridge’s pillars when it lost power and steering capabilities.
Four construction workers who were on the bridge at the time are presumed dead and still unaccounted for.
On Friday, the largest crane ship on the East Coast, capable of lifting up to 1,000 tons, arrived at the wreckage. It will be one of at least two cranes used to assist in clearing the channel, according to Maryland Gov. Wes Moore.
Moore announced that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Navy are mobilizing resources to the channel. The Biden administration also approved $60 million in immediate aid for debris recovery efforts.
“This work will not take hours,” Moore said. “This work will not take days. This work will not just take weeks. We have a very long road ahead of us. We understand that. And we’re preparing. And yesterday morning, our team and members of the federal delegation traveled to the site of the collapse on a Coast Guard cutter. You’ve had a chance to see the wreckage from far away. Yesterday we had a chance to see it up close. And when you have a chance to see that wreckage up close, you fully understand the enormity of the challenge. This is an incredibly complex job, and our timeline will be long.”
Officials reported on Wednesday that the wreckage was preventing divers from reaching the bodies of missing construction workers.
Coast Guard officials said that clearing the debris is the first step toward their primary goal of reopening the Port of Baltimore. The subsequent steps include removing the container ship and the remaining bridge from the water, which they described as a complicated process.
“But before we can actually engage in lifting, we’ve got to complete the assessment process of the bridge,” said Rear Adm. Shannon Gilreath of the U.S. Coast Guard. “And the pieces of the bridge are in the water, so that we can figure out how to cut the bridge into the right size pieces so that we can actually lift them with the crane.”
Officials anticipate that it could take months to remove the bridge debris from the water, and the Port of Baltimore is expected to remain closed until the process is complete, barring boats or ships from entering or exiting.
