Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) vowed to “move as fast as possible” to reopen the shipping route through the Baltimore port currently stalled with the recent collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge.
“We are going to move as fast as possible,” Moore said during a press conference on Saturday. “We are going to ensure the safety of our first responders. And we will not compromise one for the other. We are going to do both at the same time.”
Multiple cranes are placed in the Patapsco River, clearing the debris from the incident as engineers are cutting and lifting the collapsed pieces of the bridge off the site.
“With a salvage operation that is this complex and this unprecedented you need to be able to plan for every single moment,” Moore said. “And this work is going to take time and we’re going to continually assess and reassess the situation.”
Moore said the conditions for rescue divers are “unsafe,” but as soon as that changes, they will go back into the water.
The Baltimore bridge collapsed in the early morning hours Tuesday after a Singapore-flagged container ship en route to Sri Lanka slammed into its support after losing power.
Along with seven cranes, 10 tugboats, nine barges, eight salvage vessels and five Coast Guard boats are present, according to the Associated Press.
“This is going to take time to clear this section of the collapse,” Moore said. “It’s not going to take hours. It’s not going to take days but once we complete this phase of the work, we can move more tugs and more barges and more boats into the area to accelerate our recovery.”
To help with the recovery, the U.S. government authorized $60 million in relief to Maryland. President Biden said on Friday he will visit Baltimore sometime next week.
The port, which has been shut down since the collapse of the bridge, is a major shipping hub on the East Coast.
“This is not just about Maryland,” Moore said. “This is about our nation’s economy.”