Salvage crews race against the clock to remove massive chunks
SPARROWS POINT, MD. >> Nearly three weeks since Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed under the impact of a wayward cargo ship, crews are using the largest crane on the Eastern Seaboard to haul the wreckage to a nearby salvage yard.
The heaviest section so far weighed about 450 tons. In the salvage yard Monday morning, workers disassembled the metal trusses by attacking them with propane torches and a pair of giant shears that sliced them into more manageable pieces.
Rising from the water nearby was the Chesapeake 1000, a floating crane with a storied history that includes helping the CIA retrieve part of a sunken Soviet submarine.
The Key Bridge took five years to construct in the 1970s. Now, it’s a race against the clock to dismantle the remnants of a fallen Baltimore landmark.
On March 26, six construction workers plunged to their deaths in the collapse. Four bodies have since been recovered.
Salvage crews are hoping to recover the two remaining bodies once more of the debris has been removed.
They’re also working toward a goal of opening a temporary channel later this month to allow more commercial traffic through the Port of Baltimore, which has remained largely closed since the March 26 collapse. Officials plan to reopen the port’s main channel by the end of May.
So far, over 1,000 tons of steel have been removed from the waterway. The work is tedious, dangerous and complex, leaders of the operation said Monday during a visit to the salvage yard at Tradepoint Atlantic, the only maritime shipping terminal currently operating in the Port of Baltimore.
The facility, which occupies the site of a former Bethlehem Steel plant northeast of Baltimore, has ramped up operations to accommodate some of the ships originally scheduled to dock at the port’s other terminals.
Before removing any pieces of the bridge, divers are tasked with surveying the murky underwater wreckage and assessing how to safely extract the various parts.