(Baltimore) The difficult operations to clear the immense collapsed Baltimore bridge have begun, with a first piece of the structure having been cut out and moved, the US Coast Guard said on Sunday.
Earlier this week, a container ship rammed into the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore, on the American east coast, in the middle of the night, causing it to collapse and killing six people.
The boat is now stuck in place, with part of the bridge collapsed on it. It thus blocks maritime transport in one of the busiest ports in the country.
Video released by authorities on Saturday showed workers cutting metal from a bridge beam. A first piece then had to be lifted by a crane, then transferred to a boat, before being transported to a storage site.
“The first lifting operation was carried out last night, after the cutting of the upper portion of one of the northern sections of the bridge was completed,” a spokeswoman for the guards told AFP on Sunday morning. ribs.
She said she could not say when the next piece would be moved.
“Progress is starting to be made despite the fact that it is an extremely complicated situation,” Wes Moore, the governor of the state of Maryland, where Baltimore is located, said on CNN on Sunday.
Clearing the bridge and freeing the container ship, named Dali, are a priority for the authorities.
“This is not just important for Baltimore workers, but for our national supply chain,” Pete Buttigieg, the US Transportation Secretary, said on CBS on Sunday.
He said he did not know when the channel could be reopened to maritime transport.
Six workers who were working on repairing the roadway on the bridge at the time of the accident are considered dead. The bodies of two of them were found.
Operations to find the other remains are interrupted because the authorities currently consider the work of divers on the scene too dangerous, because of “the weather and the quantity of debris present in the water”, Governor Wes Moore repeated on Sunday. .