New channel lets trapped ships escape
Some of the biggest ships trapped behind the wreckage of Baltimore’s Key Bridge can finally escape, as a new, deeper temporary channel opened for carefully choreographed journeys in and out of the port.
On Thursday morning (local time), the Panama-flagged Balsa 94, escorted by a pair of tugboats, slipped through a new 91-metre-wide, 12m-deep channel on its way to eastern Canada.
Later in the day, a large ship that carries vehicles and a third cargo ship also headed out through the channel, while others were set to enter the port, authorities said.
“The channel is active and in use,” said petty officer Michael Himes, of the Key Bridge Response Unified Command.
The ships had been trapped with a handful of other large vessels since the 95,000-gross-tonne Dali slammed into a bridge pier on March 26 after an electrical malfunction that remains under investigation. Six bridge workers were killed.
There’s been a trickle of marine traffic and commerce in recent weeks, with more than 140 smaller ships circumventing the disabled Dali and the crumpled steel debris blocking the main shipping channel by using smaller temporary channels.
The deeper channel is set to offer a limited window for the passage of bigger vessels. The US Department of Transportation had said there were three bulk carriers, two general cargo ships, a tanker and a vehicle carrier stuck behind the destroyed bridge, along with four US military vessels.
But on Monday, that window will shut again, Himes said. Teams of workers are set to reach a delicate phase of the post-disaster cleanup next week, and authorities want to protect them from large vessels passing by. The channel will open again around May 10.