BALTIMORE – A heavy chunk of a bridge in Baltimore that rests on a ship that knocked down the bridge has to be hacked into pieces and hauled away by cranes before the vessel can be towed away.
Until then, the 22 all-Indian crew members of the Dali container ship will likely have to stay on board.
In the early hours of March 26, the Singapore-flagged ship “lost propulsion” and rammed into a pillar of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, causing it to collapse into the Patapsco River.
“The crew will probably move with the ship, so long as nothing goes wrong in the process of removing debris,” Petty Officer Carmen Caver of the United States Coast Guard told The Straits Times on March 29.
“They will most likely go shoreside when the boat itself does,” she said, speaking from the Unified Command and Joint Information Centre set up to coordinate responses and disseminate information about the bridge.
Ms Caver, however, added that she could not specify the timeframe in which the ship will be moved.
The 300m-long ship, about the length of three football fields, was headed for a four-week voyage to Sri Lanka. Among the 4,700 containers on board are 56 that carry 764 tonnes of hazardous materials, like corrosive and flammable liquids and lithium-ion batteries.
Describing the complex operations to clear the wreckage, Maryland’s Governor Wes Moore said giant floating crane Chesapeake 1000 had reached the scene but it could lift only up to 1,000 tonnes of debris.
“One of the challenges is that the Key Bridge, which sits on top of the vessel right now, that portion weighs somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 tonnes,” he added at a press conference on March 29.
The US Army Corps of Engineers, which is leading the clean-up, said the top priority is to allow traffic to begin flowing again by clearing the shipping channel of the chunks of the bridge.
Next, the pieces that fell on the ship will be cut into pieces to be lifted before the vessel is towed away. Lastly, concrete and steel from the bridge that litter the river bed will be dredged up.
While that happens, the crew is required to stay on board and help with the investigations.
Investigators from Singapore’s Transport Safety Investigation Bureau and the Maritime and Port Authority have travelled to Baltimore to join the efforts led by the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
The ship’s captain, his mate and chief engineer have spoken to investigators, NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy said.
