The giant container ship that collided with Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge and disintegrated in March has slowly begun to move away from the scene and was pulled ashore on Monday after a complicated procedure.
The ship refloated around 6:40 a.m. ET and was being moved by tugboat to a local port as of 7 a.m., according to the Unified Command, a collection of local and federal agencies managing the operation. .
The Dali crashed into a bridge in the early hours of March 26, causing catastrophic damage to the structure, killing six construction workers, disrupting shipping across the East Coast, and stranded in the Patapsco River for the past eight weeks. It is anchored.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said Sunday that the ship would be removed “within the next few days.”
“The refloating and transport sequence was intentionally designed to allow all response personnel around Dali to maintain control of the vessel from refloating to transport to a local marine terminal and berthing,” the command said. the department said in a statement on Sunday.
Engineers inspected the ship, removed some of the anchors and mooring lines still attached to the ship, and deballasted, or deballasted, some or all of the 1.25 million gallons of water pumped onto the ship to make up for the weight. I was planning on removing it. It was removed by precision cutting on May 13th.
If freed and out to sea, up to five tugboats would escort Dali 2.5 miles to a local port at a speed of about 1 mph.
The joint force said the route was inspected by a research vessel earlier this week and found to be free of obstructions.
A preliminary National Transportation Safety Board report last week found that the 1,000-foot Dali, flying the Singaporean flag and sailing toward Sri Lanka, lost power twice in the three minutes before the crash. did.
The Dali’s 22 crew members were unharmed in the incident, but had to remain on board the ship since the accident, including during the controlled explosion.
U.S. regulations state that ships must have a minimum number of personnel at all times.
Government officials, investigators and union officials are on board to inspect the crew. The Singapore Maritime Employees Union said in a statement earlier this month that its staff visited the seafarers and found them expressing “unfounded fear of personal criminal liability” and emotional distress. .
The FBI has launched a criminal investigation into the crash.
Baltimore is a top 20 U.S. port, and the disruption caused by the accident affected supply chains across the East Coast.
