The cargo ship Dali was in the water after hitting and collapsing the Francis Scott Key Bridge on March 26, 2024, in Baltimore, Maryland.
Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images
Engineers in Maryland began removing a portion of the Francis Scott Key Bridge from the Baltimore waterway on Saturday, the first step in the long strategy of reopening the city’s shipping port.
“I cannot emphasize enough how important today is and the first movement of this bridge and wreckage,” he said Governor Wes Moore at Saturday’s press conference. “The complexity of this problem cannot be overstated.”
Early Tuesday morning, the Key Bridge collapsed after a container ship collided with one among its piers, leaving several people missing, six of whom the U.S. Coast Guard said were dead.
“We will never lose sight of the human aspect of this crisis,” Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said Saturday.
Since the collapse, the Port of Baltimore, the eleventh-largest port in the U.S., has been closed until further notice, forcing shipping corporations to relocate to other ports.
Government officials at the federal, state and municipal levels have mobilized their teams to begin trying to bring the port back online. President Joe Biden is scheduled to visit the city next week and has pledged that the federal government will cover the full cost of restoring and rebuilding the bridge.
To complete the bridge’s first lift on Saturday, engineers cut out a piece of the bridge to allow a crane to service it. 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 possibly be repeated on other parts of the bridge to clear the passage for some transportation to resume, each for more ships to help remediate the bridge site and possibly for some business shipping.
“When we can reopen the canal, it could potentially be used again for commercial purposes, but first we need to clarify that and that’s what we’re working on,” said Shannon Gilreath, a U.S. Coast Guard official.
Economists say the Baltimore port closure likely won’t have a significant impact on the macroeconomy, nevertheless it’s still a significant disruption that complicates shipping supply chains.
“It’s not 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 ship traffic.”
