Baltimore Bridge collapse live: Vessels pass through temporary channel amid warning of ‘national economic catastrophe’

Limited ship traffic resumed for the first time after recovery teams opened a temporary channel with a controlling depth of 11 feet on the northbound side of the wreckage of the Francis Scott Key Bridge.

The first vessel to transit the channel was a tugboat pushing a barge supplying jet fuel to the US Department of Defence, the Coast Guard said.

A second temporary channel on the southbound side with a depth of 15 to 16 feet would open “in the coming days”, Maryland governor Wes Moore said.

A third channel with a depth of 20 to 25 feet would allow almost all tug and barge traffic in and out of the port after the debris was cleared, said Coast Guard rear admiral Shannon Gilreath.

A highway in Oklahoma was temporarily shut on Saturday after a barge struck a bridge over the Arkansas River, just days after the tragic collision in Maryland.

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A crane stands by at Tradepoint Atlantic terminal near the wreckage:

Debris is cleared from the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge:

This aerial view shows the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge lying on top of the container ship Dali in Baltimore:

Carnival Cruise Line said it is temporarily moving its operations to Norfolk, Virginia, a move that Royal Caribbean also took in the wake of the Baltimore Key Bridge collapse.

One ship “Carnival Legend” returned to the Virginia port on Sunday. Guests were provided complimentary bus services back to Baltimore, the cruise line said in a statement. A seven-day cruise scheduled to begin on 31 March also departed from Norfolk. Guests on the cruises were informed of the changes.

“Our thoughts remain with the impacted families and first responders in Baltimore,” said Christine Duffy, president of Carnival Cruise Line.

“We appreciate the pledge made by President Biden today to dedicate all available resources to reopen Baltimore Harbor to marine traffic as soon as possible. As those plans are finalized, we will update our future cruise guests on when we will return home to Baltimore, but in the meantime, we appreciate the quick response and support from officials in Norfolk.”

President Biden will visit the site of the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore on Friday and will meet with Maryland Governor Wes Moore and other state and local officials as efforts to clear a key maritime shipping artery continue, the White House has said.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters at the daily White House press briefing on Monday that Mr Biden would use the visit to “meet with state and local officials and get an on the ground look at federal response efforts”.

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US president Joe Biden said on Friday he will go to Baltimore next week.

Tom Perez, senior adviser and assistant to Biden, said on Sunday that plans for the visit were still being worked out. He called the salvage operation a “Herculean undertaking”.

“The Port of Baltimore will be back,” Mr Perez told MSNBC. “The president has said this. We’re going to move heaven and earth to make sure we rebuild the bridge, we clear out the debris as soon as possible, so that we can minimize these disruptions.”

A Baltimore baker who drove over the Francis Scott Key Bridge seconds before its collapse, says he had been blissfully unaware of the catastrophe until receiving a call from a panicked co-worker.

Larry Desantis told the Baltimore Banner that despite being in the immediate vicinity he had not heard the container ship collide with the bridge because he had been playing his car radio loudly.

Mr Desantis, head baker at Herman’s Bakery in Dundalk, had been travelling on his regular commute in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

According to the Banner, he had made it off the bridge around 1:27am. About a minute later, at around 1.29am the bridge collapsed.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Governor Wes Moore said that a second southwest channel will be constructed to help deeper vessels coming into the area. The channel will measure 15 feet deep and will open this week.

“The work is moving”, Mr Moore said. “This mission continues”. Separately, he said, authorities would be moving this afternoon to help remove a 350 tonne piece of the bridge pending weather conditions, specifically lightening.

“The scale of this project is enormous”, he said.