SPARROWS POINT, Md. (AP) — Nearly three weeks after Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed under the impact of a wayward cargo ship, crews are using the largest crane on the East Coast to transport the wreckage to a nearby salvage yard.
The heaviest section so far weighed around 450 tonnes (408 metric tonnes). In the salvage yard Monday morning, workers dismantled the metal trusses, attacking them with propane torches and a pair of giant shears that cut them into more manageable pieces. Rising from the water nearby was the Chesapeake 1000, a floating crane with a rich history that included helping the CIA recover part of a sunken Soviet submarine.
Construction of the Key Bridge took five years in the 1970s. It’s now a race against time to dismantle the remains of a fallen monument in Baltimore.
On March 26, six construction workers plunged to their deaths in the collapse. Since then, four bodies have been found.
Rescue teams hope to recover the two remaining bodies once the debris is cleared. They are also working toward their goal of opening a temporary canal later this month that would allow more commercial traffic to resume through the Port of Baltimore, which has remained largely closed since the collapse of the 26 March. Authorities plan to reopen the port’s main channel by the end of May.
So far, more than 1,000 tons (907 metric tons) of steel have been removed from waterways. But the work is tedious, dangerous and incredibly complex, leaders of the operation said Monday during a visit to the Tradepoint Atlantic salvage yard, the only shipping terminal currently operating in the Port of Baltimore.
The facility, which occupies the site of a former Bethlehem Steel plant northeast of Baltimore, has ramped up operations to accommodate some of the ships originally scheduled to dock at the port’s other terminals.
Before removing pieces of the deck, divers are tasked with examining the murky underwater wreckage and assessing how to safely extract the various parts. Developing a roadmap is among the biggest challenges, said Robyn Bianchi, assistant salvage master on the project.
“There’s a lot of debris, there’s rebar, there’s concrete,” she said. “We don’t know what the dangers are out there, so we have to be very methodical and slow with it.”
At the same time, crews are working to remove some containers from the cargo ship Dali before lifting its bow’s steel spans and refloating the vessel.
“It presents a dynamic danger,” said Joseph Farrell, CEO of Resolve Marine, which is working to refloat the ship. He said once that happens, the Dali will return to the Port of Baltimore. “Getting him out of there is a priority.”
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