By Megan Sayles
AFRO Business Writer
msayles@afro.com
Preparation efforts are underway for salvage teams to remove spans of the Francis Scott Key Bridge resting on top of the Dali container ship, according to a May 6 release from Unified Command.
Crew members are examining potential hazards, including crushed containers, hull damages and weight shifts, which could impede the bridge removal and refloating of the vessel. Unified Command has also secured special equipment to supervise the positioning and movement of the Dali and the bridge remains.
“We’ve got a total of six of, what we call, inclinometers that measure tilt on key locations of the span and key locations of the ship so we can watch how it’s pitching and rolling with tide, and wind,” said Rob Ruthledge, a contractor working for the Key Bridge Unified Command, in a release on May 6. “We have a sensor measuring the relative position of the span on the ship so we can see, if for some reason, it starts to slip. We also have what are called string gauges, which can measure, in real-time, the stress, while they are performing operations.”
These efforts come days before the anticipated removal of the Dali and re-opening of the 45-foot-deep Fort McHenry Limited Access Channel on May 10, which was announced by the Port of Baltimore last week.
However, during an April 30 press conference, U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral Shannon Gilreath said a concrete date of the ship’s removal could not be given as factors, like weather, may interfere with salvage operations.
Unified Command did not provide an update on when bridge wreckage will begin to be removed from the Dali in the May 6 release.
Megan Sayles is a Report for America corps member.
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