DUNDALK, Md. — When the Army Corps of Engineers laid out the first timeline for reopening the Port of Baltimore, the agency called it "ambitious." Today, Colonel Estee Pinchasin called it "realistic."
"We're holding to - very confidently - end of April - we're gonna open up this limited access channel. Progress is going very well even compared to last week. I just literally came off the water in the wreck site. They're making a lot of progress. So I'm really optimistic we're gonna hold to that schedule and get that channel open."
The goal is to have the main federal channel open by the end of May, which would restore the port to normal capacity.
Right now, there's a 1,500 ton piece of the bridge blocking where the limited access channel is going to be. Salvage crews need to get that out of the way - both the part you see, and the part that's underwater.
"The problem is - the bridge no longer looks like that," Governor Moore said during a press conference, pointing to the part of the bridge sticking out of the Patapsco River. "The bridge looks like that," he said, referencing a sonar image of what lays beneath the surface. "So what we're seeing from the top is one image. In many ways what's even more complicated is what we don't see."
The process is going to involve some digging. Some parts of the bridge are buried under 20-30 feet of mud on the river bottom. Some parts are covered by the roadway that used to be below it.
Figuring out where and how all the pieces are or are not connected requires the teams operating above and below the water to work together.
What the divers do underwater helps inform the salvage operators on how to make their next move. Behind every cut and every lift, is a team of engineers performing calculations to make sure it's safe.
"So when the bridge fell, it created a lot of force on the steel. There's a lot of compression and tension on that steel. I would describe it - if you stuck a spring down into the mud and bent it, and then you cut the spring, you don't know which way it's going to snap. That's what the divers and the salvage teams are facing," General Lloyd said.
While some salvage operators are focused on cutting and lifting pieces of the bridge, others are focused on removing containers from the Dali, to allow for the removal of the wreckage that's laying across the ship.
Today, Governor Moore said so far they've removed 34 containers. The total goal is to remove 178.