The cargo ship Dali is in the water after colliding with and collapsing the Francis Scott Key Bridge on March 26, 2024 in Baltimore, Maryland.
Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images
Maryland engineers began lifting a piece of the Francis Scott Key Bridge out of Baltimore’s waterway on Saturday, the first step in a long process to reopen the city’s seaport.
“I can’t stress enough how important today is and the early movement of this bridge and its rubble,” Gov. Wes Moore said at a Saturday news conference. “The complexity of this cannot be overstated.”
Early Tuesday morning, the Key Bridge collapsed when a container ship collided with one of its pillars, leaving several people missing, six of whom, according to the U.S. Coast Guard, died.
“We will never lose sight of the human aspect of this crisis,” Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said Saturday.
In the days following the collapse, the Port of Baltimore, the 11th largest port in the United States, remained non-operational until further notice, forcing shipping companies to divert to other ports.
Government officials at the federal, state and municipal levels have mobilized their teams to begin trying to get the port back into operation. President Joe Biden will visit the city next week and has pledged to have the federal government pay the full cost of recovering and rebuilding the bridge.
To perform the first lift of the bridge on Saturday, engineers cut off a piece of the bridge to make it manageable for their crane. Once the piece is cut, engineers will attach straps to it, rig it and lift it onto a barge to be transported out of the waterway.
If successful, this process could be replicated for other parts of the bridge to clear a passage and allow some shipping to resume, both for more ships contributing to the recovery of the bridge site and possibly for some commercial shipping.
“Once we are able to reopen a canal, it can potentially be reused for commercial activity as well, but we need to clear that up first and that’s what we’re working on,” said U.S. Coast Guard official Shannon Gilreath.
Economists say the closure of the Port of Baltimore will likely have no major impact on the macroeconomy, but it is still a major disruption that complicates maritime supply chains.
“This isn’t just about Maryland. This is about our nation’s economy,” said Governor Moore. “Our economy depends on the Port of Baltimore, and the Port of Baltimore depends on vessel traffic.”