Channel opened to clear wreckage
Vessel’s owner files petition to cap its liability at $43.6M
BALTIMORE — The U.S. Coast Guard has opened a temporary, alternate channel for vessels involved in clearing debris from the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, part of a phased approach to opening the main shipping channel leading to the vital port, officials said Monday.
Crews are undertaking the complicated work of removing steel and concrete at the site of the bridge’s deadly collapse after a container ship lost power and crashed into a supporting column last week. On Sunday, dive teams surveyed parts of the bridge and checked the ship, and workers in lifts used torches to cut above-water parts of the twisted steel superstructure.
Officials said the temporary channel is open primarily to vessels helping with the cleanup effort. Some barges and tugs that have been stuck in the Port of Baltimore since the collapse are also scheduled to pass through the channel.
Authorities believe six workers plunged to their deaths in the collapse, including two whose bodies were recovered last week.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said at a news conference Monday his priority is recovering the four remaining bodies, followed by reopening shipping channels to the port. He said crews have described the mangled steel girders of the fallen bridge as “chaotic wreckage.”
“What we’re finding is it is more complicated than we hoped for initially,” U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral Shannon Gilreath said.
Moore said crews used a large crane to lift a 200-ton span of the bridge, a task that took 10 hours. He said the piece was considered a “relatively small lift” in the grand scheme of the recovery effort, which he called enormous.
Moore said crews would lift another 350-ton piece from the bridge as weather allowed.
“This marks an important first step along the road to reopening the port of Baltimore,” Capt. David O’Connell, the federal on-scene coordinator of the response, said in a statement Monday. “By opening this alternate route, we will support the flow of marine traffic into Baltimore.”
Two additional channels are planned as more debris is removed from the waterway. Officials declined to provide a projected timeline for those channels.
The bridge fell as the cargo ship Dali lost power March 26 shortly after leaving Baltimore on its way to Sri Lanka. The ship issued a mayday alert, which allowed just enough time for police to stop traffic but not enough to save a roadwork crew filling potholes on the bridge.
The Dali is managed by Synergy Marine Group and owned by Grace Ocean Private Ltd., both of Singapore. Danish shipping giant Maersk chartered the Dali. Synergy and Grace Ocean filed a court petition Monday seeking to limit their legal liability, a routine but important procedure for cases litigated under U.S. maritime law. A federal court in Maryland will ultimately decide who is responsible and how much they owe.
The filing seeks to cap the companies’ liability at roughly $43.6 million. It estimates the vessel itself is valued at up to $90 million and was carrying freight worth over $1.1 million.
Officials are trying to determine how to rebuild the major bridge, which carried Interstate 695 around southeast Baltimore.