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First container ship arrives at Port of Baltimore since Key Bridge collapse: ‘Another milestone’
BALTIMORE — The first container ship arrived at the Port of Baltimore since the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed more than a month ago.
The MSC Cargo Passion III made it through the 35-foot temporary channel on Sunday carrying nearly 1,000 containers.
“Another milestone today!” the Port of Baltimore said on social media.
Four temporary channels have been opened since the bridge’s collapse on March 26.
This fourth channel will only be open for a few days, but at 35 feet deep and 300 feet wide it will allow several ships that are stuck in the Port of Baltimore to get out.
“Around that 35-foot draft is where you’re really starting to get some of the inventory that’s coming onboard that had really been some of the hallmarks of The Port of Baltimore,” Maryland Governor Wes Moore said.
The opening of these channels follows the largest of four recent openings on Thursday, which restored 15% of the pre-collapse commercial activity at the Port of Baltimore. The adjustment will allow large commercial ships that were stuck to depart and others to enter, including those carrying containers, vehicles, and farm equipment.
Recreational boats allowed
Recreational boats will also be able to pass through the Key Bridge collapse salvage area during specific hours.
Larry Lewis has spent the last 20 or so years on the water. He says the opportunity to pass through the collapse site is important for recreational boaters, not just chartering businesses.
“We have boaters and owners who are stuck on the other side of the bridge, and some who are trying to get out for maintenance and things done,” Lewis said.
Traffic through the temporary channels will be strictly one-way, with outbound movements scheduled from 3:30 to 4:30 PM and inbound from 4:30 to 5:30 PM.
“There’s going to be plenty of people out there that’s going to be directing and keeping this a very safe and orderly passage,” Lewis explained.
Salvage effort at Key Bridge site ongoing
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is leading the salvage effort. The branch said its priority is to clear the main channel through the river to reopen access to the Port of Baltimore.
Massive floating cranes are being used as wreckage and debris removal continues. Engineers have to break the mangled bridge into smaller pieces to lift them away, and Navy sonar images revealed wreckage in the deepest part of the channel.
Gov. Wes Moore announced Friday that over 1,300 tons of steel from what used to be the Francis Scott Key Bridge have been removed from the river so far.
The rubble and debris are going to nearby Sparrows Point for processing and recycling.
Main shipping channel timeline remains end of May
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers expects to reopen the main shipping channel – which is 700 feet wide and 50 feet deep – by the end of May.
“There’s no way around it that in terms of the impact on the local and the state economy, we want to resume 100 percent of pre-collapse activity because it just contributes to so many jobs in the economy, contributes to so much income that flows through both the city, the county and the rest of the state,” DePasquale said.
With the main channel closed, businesses have had to use alternative methods to transport their products.
With nearly half of the 700-foot main shipping channel cleared, salvage teams are now focused on the portion of the span on top of the Dali.
2 bodies remain missing
The men killed in the Key Bridge collapse were working for Brawner Builders, filling potholes on the center span of the bridge.
“Most were immigrants, but all were Marylanders.” President Joe Biden said shortly after the collapse. “Hardworking, strong and selfless. After pulling a night shift fixing potholes, they were on a break when the ship struck.”
As a memorial grows on Fort Armistead Road for the six men killed in the accident, recovery efforts to locate the two workers still missing under the wreckage are ongoing. They have been identified as Miguel Luna, of El Salvador, and Jose Maynor Lopez, of Guatemala.
Three of the victims recovered were identified as: Dorlian Cabrera, 26, who was originally from Guatemala and lived in Dundalk; Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, 35, who lived in Baltimore and was from Mexico; and Maynor Yasir Suazo-Sandoval, 38, of Guatemala.
A fourth body was recovered last week. He has not been identified at the request of his family, but he is known to be from Mexico.
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Trump ally Nigel Farage heckles his hecklers as his far-right Reform UK Party makes gains in U.K. election
The Labour Party and its leader, new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, undoubtedly won the U.K. general election, but as he set to work building his new cabinet, there was another politician keen to crow about his party’s election windfall, much smaller though it was. Nigel Farage, the leader of the far-right Reform UK party and long one of Britain’s most divisive politicians, was heckled by a series of protesters as he took the stage to deliver a speech in London on Friday.
He smiled through the interruptions, and even heckled his hecklers back, loudly chanting “boring!” as they were removed from the hall.
Reform UK grabbed only four seats in the British Parliament’s 650-seat House of Commons in Thursday’s national election. But that’s four more than it had before.
Carlos Jasso/Bloomberg/Getty
Farage argues that the U.K.’s first-past-the-post voting system makes it difficult for smaller parties to match their overall share of the votes with their share of seats won in the Commons, and he vowed on Friday to push for an end to the current system. But the real success for Farage was in the overall vote tally, not the four seats his party won, which included his own first election to the parliament.
To the consternation of the long-ruling Conservative Party, from which it pilfered a huge amount of support, the anti-immigration Reform UK, whose leader and policies had long been relegated to the fringes of British politics, took about 15% of the vote, with just over 4 million ballots in total.
That gave Reform UK the third-highest overall vote count among all the parties that competed for the parliamentary seats, overtaking even the Liberal Democrats, who, despite getting about half a million fewer votes, emerged on Friday with a record 71 seats in the Commons.
Dan Kitwood/Getty
Farage, 60, won the seat in his home constituency of Clacton, in southeast England, after seven previous failed attempts. His Reform UK party, founded initially in 2018 as the Brexit Party, advocating for a complete and uncompromising break with the European Union, has always campaigned on cutting immigration to Britain.
The Englishman is often compared to his transatlantic ally former U.S. President Donald Trump, for both his brash political style and his nationalist rhetoric, and he’s appeared at events with the Republican in the U.S. and met with him in Britain, too.
“Congratulations to Nigel Farage on his big WIN of a Parliament Seat Amid Reform UK Election Success. Nigel is a man who truly loves his Country!” Trump wrote on his own social media platform, Truth Social, on Friday. Mr. Trump made no mention of the Labour Party’s landslide election victory, or Starmer becoming the new prime minister.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty
Farage’s campaign was marred by a number of 11th-hour controversies, mostly involving racist or sexist comments attributed to Reform UK candidates, and on election day he vowed to “professionalize” his party.
“Those few bad apples that have crept in will be long gone and we will never have any of their type back in our organization,” Farage told his supporters, along with the British public and his keenly observing political opponents.
Speaking to CBS News’ Emmet Lyons on Friday morning as the election results were finalized, the Labour Party Mayor of London Sadiq Khan acknowledged the rise of “popular nativist, nationalist movements,” and said Starmer would govern “in the national interest, show humility, be magnanimous and be humble over the course of the next three, four, five years.”
“We’ve got to earn the trust of those that voted Labour, but also try and win the confidence of those that didn’t,” he said.
That will undoubtedly be one of the chief missions of both the Labour and Conservative Parties in the years ahead.
They’ll both be eager to craft political strategies ahead of the next national election that can stop voters following the trend to the far-right seen across Europe in recent years – a trend which, despite their minimal presence in Parliament, was also demonstrated by Reform UK’s share of the votes this week.
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