The difficult cleaning work of the huge and collapsed building Bridge The Coast Guard in Baltimore has begun, the Coast Guard said Sunday USAafter an initial piece of the structure was cut and moved.
The piece in question weighed “around 200 tons” and was transferred to a ship on site, a coast guard spokeswoman told AFP.
The operation marks the beginning of a long and complex work to restore maritime traffic to the Port of Baltimore, one of the busiest in the country.
Earlier this week, a container ship crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in this East Coast city in the middle of the night, causing it to sink and killing six people.
The ship, which Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said is “almost the size of the Eiffel Tower,” is stuck and part of the bridge has collapsed above it.
A video released by authorities on Saturday showed workers cutting girders on a portion of the bridge that still sits above the water.
“The first operation was carried out yesterday evening,” the coast guard spokeswoman told AFP on Sunday morning. He added that cutting of a northern section of the bridge continued Sunday.
“There is some initial progress, although it is an extremely complicated situation,” Wes Moore told CNN on Sunday, who said the day before that the cleaning of the northern section of the bridge was intended to clear a “temporary channel.” open More ships can take part in operations, a process that is expected to take “days”.
Clearing the bridge and releasing the container ship to allow access to the port is a priority for authorities, but will take much longer.
“This is important not only for workers in Baltimore, but also for our national supply chain,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told CBS on Sunday.
Six workers who were repairing the bridge road at the time of the accident were believed to have died.
So far only two bodies have been found. Search operations for the remaining four have been suspended due to “weather conditions and the amount of remains in the water,” Gov. Moore said Sunday.
SPRING: AFP
