The main shipping channel leading to Baltimore’s port officially reopened to its full depth and width on Monday, following the March 26 collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge when it was hit by the 984-foot-long container ship Dali, killing six construction workers.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Navy Supervisor of Salvage and Diving announced the reopening after crews were finally able to remove wreckage of the bridge at the 50-foot mud line. The channel then was restored to its original dimensions of 700 feet wide and 50 feet deep.
Since the crash, crews removed more than 50,000 tons of steel and concrete from the bridge that had tumbled into the channel on the Patapsco River. The bow of the Dali itself was pinned in the wreckage until crews were able to free it on May 20 and tugboats escorted it back inside the harbor. At that point the channel was reopened to a 400-foot width, permitting ships to enter and leave the port.
The Unified Command said that clearing the wreckage and reopening the full channel took more than 2,000 workers, two dozen tugboats, 13 floating cranes, and 10 excavators, among other equipment.
The Dali crashed into one the bridge’s supporting columns at 1:29 a.m. on March 26, causing the collapse. The National Transportation Safety Board recently issued a report saying that the ship had lost power and steering as it approached the bridge because of electrical problems that had started the previous day back inside the port.
Closing the port has been a blow to the local economy, affecting tens of thousands of jobs. The port of Baltimore handles more imported cars than any other port in the U.S.; it also is a major exporter of heavy farm equipment
Meanwhile, the 1.6-mile-long Key Bridge remains closed, and rebuilding it will probably take several years. President Biden has already pledged federal support, but the full cost of building a new bridge is not clear.
Read more at https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/10/us/baltimore-bridge-shipping-channel-opens/index.html and see a video of the bridge collapse below:
