Salvage crews race against the clock to remove massive chunks of fallen Baltimore bridge

SPARROW POINT, Md. — Nearly three weeks after Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed under the impact of a wayward freighter, crews are using the largest crane on the East Coast to tow the wreckage to a nearby salvage yard.

The heaviest section so far weighed about 450 tonnes (408 metric tons). At the salvage yard Monday morning, workers dismantled the metal trusses by attacking them with propane torches and giant scissors that cut them into more manageable pieces. From the nearby waters rose the Chesapeake 1000, a floating crane with a storied history that included helping the CIA retrieve part of a sunken Soviet submarine.

The Key Bridge took five years to build in the 1970s. Now it’s a race against time to dismantle the remains of a fallen monument in Baltimore.

On March 26, six construction workers were killed in the collapse. Four bodies have now been recovered.

Salvage crews hope to recover the two remaining bodies once the debris is removed. They are also working toward their goal of opening a temporary canal later this month that will allow more commercial traffic to resume 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, more than 1,000 tons (907 metric tons) of steel has been removed from the waterway. But the work is tedious, dangerous and incredibly complex, the operation’s leaders said Monday during a visit to the Tradepoint Atlantic salvage yard, the only maritime terminal currently operating at the Port of Baltimore.

The facility, which is located on 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 any pieces of the bridge are removed, divers must explore the murky underwater wreckage and assess how to safely remove the various components. Coming up with a route map is one of the biggest challenges, said Robyn Bianchi, assistant mountain master on the project.

“There’s a lot of rubble, there’s rebar, there’s concrete,” she said. “We don’t know what dangers are down there, so we have to deal with that very methodically and slowly.”

At the same time, crews are working to remove some containers from the freighter Dali before lifting the steel trusses from the bow and refloating the ship.

“It’s a dynamic hazard,” said Joseph Farrell, CEO of Resolve Marine, which is working to refloat the ship. He said once that happens, the Dali will return to the Port of Baltimore. “Getting it out of there is a priority. .”