The first ship, a barge carrying jet fuel to Dover Air Force Base, passed under the wreckage of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge on Monday afternoon, almost a week after the 984-foot container ship Dali lost power and crashed into it, sending it toppling into the Patapsco River.
The accident, at 1:30 a.m. on Tuesday, March 26, killed six construction workers filling pot holes on the bridge, and shut down the Port of Baltimore, one of the busiest commercial ports in the U.S. (More imported cars land in Baltimore than anywhere else.)
Colonel Estee S. Pinchasin, commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Baltimore, said that clearing the main channel will be difficult because the massive center span of the bridge is resting in a tangle of steel I-beams that are buried in soft mud. (The picture shows her pointing to a sonar image of the wreckage.)
The wreckage “is far more extensive than we could have imagined,” she said. “It’s not just sitting on the seabed, it’s actually below the mud line.” Colonel Pinchasin said the wreckage is “extremely unforgiving” and dangerous for divers. They are working in almost total darkness, and have to rely on voice communications from teams on the surface looking at sonar images.
The Coast Guard opened a small temporary channel around the bridge on Monday afternoon, but it only has a depth of 11 feet. It opened a second channel near Hawkins Point on the northeast side of the channel on Tuesday; it has a depth of 14 feet. The Coast Guard also established a 2,000-yard safety zone around the wreckage to protect workers there.
The Coast Guard is working on a third channel out of the harbor, with a depth of 20 to 25 feet, but it has to cut through steel girders and lift them out of the water first. “I don’t have a timeline other than we’re doing it as fast as we possibly can,” said Rear Admiral Shannon Gilreath.
Meanwhile, debris from the bridge is washing up on shore. Some wooden bridge materials stained with blue bottom paint from the Dali were found on Riviera Beach, Maryland, downriver from the bridge.
