Heavy equipment including cranes, tugboats and Coast Guard vessels will be arriving all weekend in Baltimore to help clean up the wreckage of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which collapsed Tuesday morning after it was struck by a cargo container ship.
The Dali, the ship which collapsed the 1.6 mile bridge in a matter of seconds, remains stopped in the Patapsco River with roughly four-thousand tons of the remains of the bridge on top of it scattered around it. The Chesapeake-1000, a crane able to lift one-thousand tons at a time, was due in Baltimore to help with the cleanup. It won’t be the only piece of heavy equipment arriving according to Maryland Governor Wes Moore.
“In the coming weeks, we expect to have the following entities inside of the water — seven floating cranes, ten tugs, nine barges, eight salvage vessels and five Coast Guard boats,” the Governor said at a press conference at Tradepoint Atlantic Friday afternoon. Moore toured the wreckage up close with other state and Coast Guard officials Friday morning. He noted seeing cargo containers ‘torn like paper-mache’ while calling the cleanup task ‘daunting’, but emphasized the importance of finding the remaining bodies of the killed construction crew as well as the need to open the Port of Baltimore up again for shipping. The governor and other officials say it’s still too early to give a timeline on when that might happen.
Eight construction crew members were patching potholes on the bridge when it collapsed. Two were rescued from the water alive, while the rest were presumed dead. Two were found Wednesday — Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes of Baltimore and Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera of Dundalk. Four others have yet to be found, and are believed to be inside the wreckage of the bridge, which is unsafe for divers from the Maryland State Police to enter. Two of those remaining missing were identified by immigrant services group CASA as Miguel Sana and Maynor Suazo Sandoval. The remaining two workers have yet to be identified.
As for any materials that might be leaking from the ship or from cargo containers that were ruptured or spilled, the federal Environmental Protection Agency says it’s monitoring the situation, but as of Friday didn’t believe anything posed a threat. “At this time, there is no indication of active releases from the vessel, nor the presence of materials that are hazardous to human health in the water,” said Adam Ortiz of the EPA at the Friday afternoon press conference. “However, monitoring is ongoing.” On Thursday, the Coast Guard estimated 14 cargo containers were ‘impacted’, and that those primarily contained soap, perfume and some resin material.
Correction: An earlier version of this story referred to the bridge as the Frederick Scott Key Bridge. The story has been updated with the correct name.
