US Navy divers have secured new sonar images of the destroyed Francis Scott Key Bridge, swimming in ‘virtual darkness’ in murky clouds of displaced river mud.
Their sonar captured the deepest remains of the infamous bridge collapse from the lowest point of the federal navigation channel of the Patapsco River in Baltimore – 50 feet below the surface.
The new appearance of the wreck beneath the depths shows that the metal framework has collapsed below the mud line, which officials said would be more difficult to salvage.
The Navy has made available three ships, with a combined lifting capacity of 1,350 tons, while another ship with a capacity of 400 tons is on its way, for the clean-up and salvage work.
US Navy divers swimming in ‘virtual darkness’ through murky plumes of displaced river mud have secured new sonar images of the destroyed Francis Scott Key Bridge. The submerged metal frame of the bridge extends above the waterline, visible as a blue line in the sonar images
Their sonar captures the deepest remains of the infamous bridge collapse from the lowest point of the federal navigation channel of the Patapsco River in Baltimore, 50 feet below the surface
Government agencies are now rushing to clean up the Key’s mangled steel trusses and remove the grounded, 1,000-foot-long freighter, the Dali, which crashed into the bridge on March 26 (above), killing six construction workers lives were lost and the vital road bridge was destroyed.
Col. Estee Pinchasin of the Army Corps of Engineers said at a press conference this month: “Research shows that the wreckage at the bottom of the 50-foot canal is much larger than we could have imagined.
‘It’s not just on the seabed, it’s actually below the mud line. That makes it very difficult to know where to mow, how to mow, and how to lift and hoist.”
The Navy now joins state, local and federal agencies now rushing to clean up the mangled steel trusses of the Key and the grounded, 1,000-foot freighter, the Dali, which sank in the morning crashed into the bridge on March 26, killing six construction workers. destroyed the crucial commuter bridge.
Government officials hope to build a makeshift shipping lane by the end of April: a smaller canal 80 meters wide and 10 meters deep, which they hope will restore commercially vital activity to the Port of Baltimore.
The sonar dives, using the 3D underwater sonar imaging tool called CODA Octopus, are key to the essential but laborious phase of identifying and locating all the bulk debris that was once the Francis Scott Key.
“Despite the CODA images we use (…) it still takes time,” he says Captain Sal Suarezthe Navy’s supervisor of salvage and diving, in a video last week.
Government officials hope to build a small, makeshift shipping lane by the end of April: a 250-foot-wide, 30-foot-deep canal that they hope will restore commercially vital activity back to the Port of Baltimore. Above, more new sonar images were released on Wednesday
Haunting satellite images show the aftermath of the destruction of the Francis Scott Key Bridge after it was struck by a 105,000-ton shipping container
CODA Sonar images of the wreck trickled in during early April, when the dive team first mapped the wreck in shallower depths of the river.
Visibility for the divers extends only “one to two feet” in front of their eyes, according to the Army Corps of Engineersdue to the four to five feet of mud and loose silt that shot up after the bridge wreck struck the bottom of the Patapsco River.
“Divers are forced to work in virtual darkness because their visibility, when illuminated, is akin to driving through heavy snow at night with high beams on,” a force spokesperson wrote on Facebook.
‘The water is so murky that divers must be guided by detailed verbal directions from operators at the top of ships viewing real-time CODA images.’
The dive teams themselves don’t take underwater images of rivers because, as one Navy-led diver put it, “You don’t need to take video of something you can’t even see.”
Laser-based Light Detection and Ranging, or LiDAR, is also being used by land-based regulators to better provide divers in the water with situational awareness of the tangled and cloudy lidar wreckage, Captain Suarez said at a news conference last Thursday.
Captain Suarez and his team of 20 have also been tasked with assessing the damage to the Dali as part of their emergency contract.
“You are limited by the amount of time you can spend at the bottom, depending on the depth for each diver,” said Captain Suarez, who is the official director of ocean engineering for the US Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA).
“You’re also limited by the safety factor,” he explained. “This is wreckage in all shapes and sizes and it’s dangerous.”
Currently, no active-duty Navy divers are part of the recovery project, despite Navy personnel being in charge.
Since the bridge collapsed on March 26, at least 135 naval personnel, two work boats, an inflatable ribbed hull boat, several tugboats and twelve crane and support vessels all went to the Patapsco to assist in the salvage and clean-up operation.
Salvage teams this week also began removing mangled containers from the deck of the Dali freighter, from where the massive vessel remains trapped beneath the wreckage of the Francis Scott Key.
The 22-man crew of the Dali from India has been stranded on board for almost two weeks, with it unclear when they will be able to disembark. The ship was just minutes into its journey after a 28-day voyage when it lost power and crashed.
The crew is uninjured and has been provided with food, water and fuel, according to the New York Times.
According to the Key Bridge Response Unified Command, the removal of containers from the deck of the Dali will continue this week, weather permitting.
“The Limited Access Channel will allow larger vessels to enter and exit,” the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Baltimore District office said in a statement on social media Wednesday.
Ocean-going tugboats, Maritime Administration (MARAD) boats and cargo ships used for ‘Roll-on/Roll-off’ shipping, which moving cars and agricultural machinery, will be among the areas cleared for the temporary, shallower channel.
The Army Corps of Engineers said it has set an “ambitious” but tentative deadline to fully clear and restore canal access to the Port of Baltimore by the end of May.