Engineers cleaning up the collapsed Baltimore bridge say the channel with limited access to the port will open in 4 weeks

The bridge collapsed within seconds on March 26 after colliding with the cargo ship Dali, which had lost power shortly after leaving Baltimore to Sri Lanka. The ship issued a Mayday warning, which gave police enough time to stop traffic, but not enough time to rescue the road work crews filling potholes on the bridge. Authorities believe six workers died by drowning in the Patapsco River; So far two bodies have been recovered. Two others survived.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced a “tentative timeline” Thursday, saying in a news release that it expects to open a limited access channel to the port that will be approximately 280 feet wide and 35 feet deep (85 feet) within the next four weeks. meter by 11 meter). m) will support one-way traffic in and out of the port for channel barge container service and some vessels carrying automobiles and agricultural equipment to and from the port.

USACE said it aims to reopen the 700-foot-wide by 50-foot-deep (213 meters by 15 meters) federal navigation channel by the end of May, restoring access to the port to normal capacity.

“A fully open federal channel is our primary goal, and we will approach this task with care and precision, with security as our main priority,” Lt. Gen. Scott Spellman, USACE commanding general, said in the news release.

Spellman acknowledged that the timeline is “ambitious” and could still be affected by adverse weather or “changes in the complexity of the debris.”

The announcement came on the eve of a scheduled visit by President Joe Biden, who is scheduled to visit the collapse site on Friday and meet relatives of victims.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden will also receive an operational update from officials with the US Coast Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers.

On Thursday, Isabella Casillas Guzman, head of the U.S. Small Business Administration, visited Baltimore to meet with business owners along with state and local leaders. Guzman said a federal program offering loans to small businesses affected by the bridge collapse has received 500 applications so far.

Businesses involved in transportation and supply chain logistics are likely to suffer the most in the short term, he said, but the long-term impacts will be widespread.

“It’s a whole range of impacts,” he said after a roundtable discussion at an office in Baltimore that opened in recent days to assist business owners affected by the collapse.

The Port of Baltimore handles more cars and farm equipment than any other similar facility in the country, and the disaster has created logistics problems up and down the East Coast.

The Maryland Senate unanimously approved a bill Wednesday night authorizing the governor to use the state’s Rainy Day Fund to help unemployed port workers. He sends the bill to the Maryland House, which could approve the bill this week.

Norwegian shipping firm Wallenius Wilhelmsen, which has a hub in Baltimore, said it expects its losses from the port closure to be between $5 million and $10 million. One of its ships is one of several stuck in the port of Baltimore right now.

Crews are working to remove steel debris and recover the remaining bodies, which has been made more difficult by recent bad weather. They have opened two temporary channels primarily for vessels involved in the cleanup.

But the water is so dirty that rescue divers can’t see more than one to two feet in front of them, Gov. Wes Moore said at a news conference Thursday afternoon. Each diver is now paired with an operator who uses three-dimensional images and other equipment to guide them in a “buddy system,” he said.

U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral Shannon Gilreath said seven commercial ships were stranded in the port along with their crews. Ships will not be able to pass unless a temporary channel is opened deep enough for them to exit.

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Published: 05 April 2024, 05:21 am IST