Crews have begun to remove pieces of the fallen Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, as the cleanup of last Tuesday’s collapse churns on in hopes of reopening the nearby Port of Baltimore to shipping as soon as possible.
The first piece cut, lifted, and removed from the wreckage site in the Patapsco River over the weekend was roughly 200 tons in size.
“We’re talking about something that’s almost the size of the Statue of Liberty,” Gov. Wes Moore said at a press conference Monday afternoon, adding that the whole operation to remove that piece took 10 hours. An even larger piece — weighing roughly 350 tons — was expected to be removed Monday evening, weather permitting. The governor said he heard the Coast Guard call the piece removed over the weekend “small.”
Authorities estimate that 4,000 tons of steel from the bridge sit on top of the ship Dali. The 984-foot-long ship crashed into the bridge last week, collapsing most of the 1.6-mile bridge in a matter of seconds. The bodies of four missing construction workers who are presumed dead are believed to be inside the structure of the bridge, which is unsafe for divers to enter.
President Joe Biden is expected to visit the site of the collapsed bridge on Friday. His administration approved a request to issue a Small Business Administration disaster declaration, and the two centers where businesses can apply for loans were up and running Monday in Dundalk and Baltimore’s Canton neighborhood.
Authorities were able to open a temporary channel for access in the Patapsco River through the collapsed Key Bridge on Monday and hope to have others open in the coming days.
The first channel runs under a part of the bridge that is still standing, according to U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral Shannon Gilreath. Its clearance is 264-feet horizontally and 96-feet vertically, with a water depth of 11 feet, meaning it’s only safe for shallow-draft vessels, Gilreath said during Monday’s press conference. Some of those vessels are commercial, “but it can also be used by the boats we need to get equipment positioned for survey and removal.”
Traffic in the Baltimore region is expected to be heavier than normal Tuesday morning, as it’s the first day that public schools will be back in session since the Key Bridge collapse. Both Baltimore City and County schools were on spring break last week through Monday.
With rain also in the forecast Tuesday, Maryland Department of Transportation Secretary Paul Wiedefeld urged motorists to add extra time to their commutes. Authorities have made some traffic light signal adjustments due to heavier traffic in certain areas due to the bridge collapse and subsequent detoured routes for drivers, such as on Ritchie Highway and Peninsula Expressway, Wiedefeld said Monday.
Last week, Wiedefeld said the Fort McHenry Tunnel on Interstate 95 had seen roughly 15,000 more vehicles per day since the Key Bridge collapse, with the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel on Interstate 895 seeing about 7,000 more vehicles per day. Before it fell, the Key Bridge saw an average of more than 31,000 vehicles per day.
