BALTIMORE:Â Three heavy lift floating cranes arrived in Baltimore harbour on Friday (Mar 29) to begin what Maryland’s governor described as a “remarkably complex operation” to clear crumpled girders from a collapsed bridge taken down by an errant container ship.
“To see it up close, you realise just how daunting a task this is,” Maryland Governor Wes Moore told a news conference after touring the disaster scene in a boat.
Migrant groups meantime honoured the six Latino construction workers who lost their lives when the Dali container ship struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge long before dawn Tuesday, toppling it with stunning speed. The six were part of a pothole repair team.
“I am here to say that we immigrants are essential,” said Erika Aleman, a construction worker from Honduras who lives in Baltimore.
Vessel traffic through the busy Port of Baltimore has been suspended indefinitely, causing disruptions to trade spanning the globe, and Moore warned that recovery would be lengthy.
“We cannot rebuild the bridge until we have cleared the wreckage,” Moore said. “This is going to be a long road.”
The complexity of the recovery dismayed those involved.
“We have to figure out the right plan to be able to break that bridge up into the right-sized pieces that we can lift,” US Coast Guard Rear Admiral Shannon Gilreath said.
Twisted bridge trusses weighing thousands of tons still entrap the damaged container ship.
The Chesapeake, a 1,000-ton lift capacity derrick barge, and two smaller crane barges arrived in Baltimore harbor, the Navy said, and a fourth crane barge will arrive next week.
The work of clearing tons of steel debris from the deep waters of the Patapsco River is made more delicate by the fact that the bodies of four workers have yet to be recovered.
The four missing workers are believed to have been killed when the Singapore-flagged, 300m Dali lost power and careened into a bridge support column.
Source: CNA
