Army Chief of Engineers details efforts to reopen Port of Baltimore

At 1:29 a.m. on March 26, the container ship M/V Dali lost power and rammed into one of the piers of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which carries Interstate 695 over the entrance to Baltimore Harbor, plunging a major portion of the bridge into the water.

The crash killed six men who were working on the bridge and blocked one of the main ports of entry to the United States with more than 50,000 tons of debris.

In the aftermath, many pundits said it would be months before the Port of Baltimore would reopen. Less than three months after the disaster, the port is fully reopened.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was one of the many organizations that sprang into action to deal with this accident. Chief of Engineers Lt. Gen. Scott A. Spellmon testified about the multiagency effort to reopen the Port of Baltimore before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, yesterday.

The general stressed that the effort was a joint effort at all levels of government to clear the debris and reopen the critical port.

Soon after the collapse, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore declared a state of emergency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Baltimore District activated the district's Emergency Operations Center and put the Corps team in motion. "Our state-of-the-art survey vessels, which usually serve to verify depths and widths of our federal channels, were deployed to support initial search and rescue dive operations," Spellmon said. "Our support evolved as we joined a multiagency effort across all levels of government to form a unified command."

Spellmon said he has been a part of many disaster response operations in his career, but the "unified team led by U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. Shannon Gilreath and Capt. David O'Connell is one of the best I've seen," he said. "They are amazing leaders."

Spellmon received guidance from President Joe Biden right at the beginning of the effort. "He called me early on the morning of March 26, and told me the top priority was to remove the wreckage from the Federal Navigation Channel and get it reopened," Spellmon said.

The Corps "owns" the Baltimore Channel and has since 1970 when Congress authorized the Corps to build the Baltimore Harbor and Channel. Congress called for the Army Corps of Engineers to construct and maintain a 700-foot-wide by 50-foot-deep channel at the bridge location.

"The full navigation channel was of course fully blocked by the wreckage of the Key Bridge," Spellmon told the Senate Committee.

The Corps quickly went to work using fiscal year 2023 and 2024 operations and maintenance funding and reprogrammed other funds.

The organization also looked to their contract capacity. "We are fortunate to have a standing interagency agreement with the U.S. Navy Supervisor of Salvage and Diving and I cannot say enough positive words about these incredible men and women from the U.S. Navy and they're in their industry partners," he said. "They are true world-class professionals, and they are very good at what they do, each having amazing experiences, expertise and a suite of contracting tools that gave us access to some superb salvage companies."

The contractor for the Baltimore project was Donjon Marine Company from Newark, New Jersey.

The multiagency group immediately had to plan how to begin clearing approximately 50,000 tons of concrete, asphalt and steel from the Patapsco River, the general said. "For everyone's context, that is equivalent to over 200 Statues' of Liberty-worth of material," he told the committee.

The group quickly devised a plan to clear a 35-foot-deep by 280-foot-wide limited access channel by the end of April, and then restore the full 50-foot navigation channel by the end of May. This initial channel would enable about 70 percent of the vessels to use the port. The Coast Guard certified the limited access channel on April 25.

"To reopen the full channel, we had to execute the most difficult task which was removing the section of bridge that collapsed onto the bow of the vessel Dali," he said. "For this task, the team successfully used precision demolitions to cut the bridge away from the ship and move the Dali from the edge of the federal navigation channel."

Once they accomplished this, the salvors could reach the remaining bridge wreckage and residual material in the channel well below the mud line. "We moved as quickly and safely as possible and on June 10 the Corps of Engineers successfully restored the federal channel to its original depth and width, again of 700 feet wide and 50 feet deep," he said. "Today, no steel or concrete remains in the federal channel. All wreckage was removed, [and] the collapsed bridge area was cleared down in some cases to a 60-foot depth."

The debris removal mission has ended, and the Port of Baltimore Navigation Channel has returned to its authorized dimensions, Spellmon told the committee. "On behalf of the more than 39,000 men and women of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and all of our federal, state and industry partners, I want to say we are tremendously proud to have been a part of the unified team that undertook this incredible task," he said.