Appalling weather conditions are set to ease in the coming days making salvage operations at Baltimore port easier.
One of the operations set to get underway will be to start taking undamaged cargo off the Dali, the 9,962 teu ship on charter to Maersk that hit and destroyed the Francis Scott Key bridge last week.
“We need to lift those undamaged containers off to give us space to safely operate to begin to plan to remove portions of the bridge that are now also embedded into the ship but we need a weather window to do that,” said Rear Admiral Shannon Gilreath with the US Coast Guard.
The head of Lloyd’s of London warned last week that the Dali could prove to be the largest marine pay-out in insurance history.
The ship has been aground for the past nine days with a section of the structure weighing on its bow. As much as 4,000 tons of steel from the bridge’s frame are hanging on the bow of the ship, pinning the hull to the river bed below.
Officials said they are also waiting for a better weather window to do a 350 ton lift off a section of the downed bridge near the main channel where the collapse is.
The Maryland Senate unanimously passed the PORT Act this week which provides temporary relief programs to help people impacted by the closure of the port of Baltimore.
President Joe Biden is due to visit Baltimore tomorrow, bringing with him better weather to make the complex salvage operation easier.
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