BALTIMORE — The U.S. Coast Guard has opened a temporary, alternate channel for vessels involved in clearing debris from the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, part of a phased approach to opening the main shipping channel leading to the vital port, officials said Monday.
Crews are undertaking the complicated work of removing steel and concrete at the site of the bridge’s deadly collapse after a container ship lost power and crashed into a supporting column. On Sunday, dive teams surveyed parts of the bridge and checked the ship, and workers in lifts used torches to cut above-water parts of the twisted steel superstructure.
Officials said the temporary channel is open primarily to vessels that are helping with the cleanup effort. Some barges and tugs that have been stuck in the Port of Baltimore since the collapse are also scheduled to pass through the channel.Authorities believe six workers plunged to their deaths in the collapse, including two whose bodies were recovered last week.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said at a Monday afternoon news conference that his top priority is recovering the four remaining bodies, followed by reopening shipping channels to the port. He said he understands the urgency but that the risks are significant. He said crews have described the mangled steel girders of the fallen bridge as “chaotic wreckage.”
Moore said crews used a large crane to lift a 200-ton (180-metric ton) span of the bridge, a task that took 10 hours. He said the piece was considered a “relatively small lift” in the grand scheme of the recovery effort, which he called enormous.
Moore said crews would lift another 350-ton (317-metric ton) piece from the bridge later Monday as weather allows.
Officials earlier said the temporary channel would have a controlling depth of 11 feet (over 3 meters), a horizontal clearance of 264 feet (80 meters) and a vertical clearance of 96 feet (29 meters).
“This marks an important first step along the road to reopening the port of Baltimore,” Capt. David O’Connell, the federal on-scene coordinator of the response, said in a statement Monday. “By opening this alternate route, we will support the flow of marine traffic into Baltimore.”
Two additional larger channels are planned as more debris is removed from the waterway. Officials declined to provide a projected timeline for those channels being opened.
Meanwhile, the ship remains stationary, and its 21 crew members remain on board for the foreseeable future, officials said. Twenty of them are from India, and one is from Sri Lanka, said Will Marks, a spokesperson for the crew. He said they’re currently busy maintaining the ship and cooperating with investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board and the U.S. Coast Guard.
Marks said it’s unclear how long the crew will remain on board.
Officials in Baltimore said the crew has plenty of supplies. They said parts of the ship that were damaged in the crash didn’t include the crew’s living quarters or kitchen.
Moore said he expects the president will leave with a better understanding of the task at hand.
“He’s going to see the fact that we have a ship that is almost the size of the Eiffel Tower, that weighs about as much as the Washington Monument, that’s in the middle of the Patapsco River,” Moore said. “He’s going to see a bridge that has been in existence since I was alive — I don’t know what that skyline looks like without the Key bridge — and he is going to come and he’s going to see it sitting on top of a ship.”
Also Monday, the Small Business Administration opened two centers in the area to help companies get loans to assist them with losses caused by the disruption of the bridge collapse.
Yvette Jeffery, a spokesperson for the agency’s disaster recovery office, said affected businesses can receive loans for as much as $2 million. She said the effects could range from supply-chain challenges to decreased foot traffic in communities that depended heavily on the bridge.
The bridge fell as the cargo ship Dali lost power March 26 shortly after leaving Baltimore on its way to Sri Lanka. The ship issued a mayday alert, which allowed just enough time for police to stop traffic, but not enough to save a roadwork crew filling potholes on the bridge.
Two workers survived, two bodies were found in a submerged pickup, and four more men are presumed dead.
The Dali is managed by Synergy Marine Group and owned by Grace Ocean Private Ltd., both of Singapore. Danish shipping giant Maersk chartered the Dali.
