On a timeframe for the rehabilitation of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Washington D.C. Von Schmidt, an architect at the Naval Observatory

Von Schmidt is a bit more optimistic about a timeframe. What is the traffic level like? That remains to be seen,” he says. “I think it’s very possible that traffic moves in two plus weeks. He thinks it’ll be open for traffic after that.

Officials say the first step is to remove the debris, then open the shipping channel, and later build a new bridge. President Biden has pledged that the federal government will pay for the bridge’s rebuilding, which could take years.

After a huge container ship crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge, making it difficult to travel in and out of the city, it’s critical that the debris is removed from the narrow waterway so that maritime traffic can resume.

That means scanning the bottom, Konrad says. “Right now, the [U.S. Army] Corps of Engineers is running a couple sonar boats to get a general idea,” he says. “That’s going to take time. And once they do that, they’re going to have to send divers down with welding, cutting torches, cut sections out, and then they’re going to have to bring in a crane barge.”

Von Schmidt says he assumes that the focus will be on “completely clearing the center span so that there’s no restriction in navigation, because right now with that debris, it’s restricted navigation.”

The next step is to remove the bridge debris. “Then you got to probably drag the bottom again to make sure you don’t have any debris that’s going to cause a problem.”

They will get a salvage company in to secure the ship before they remove it. [don’t leak] from the containers, no fires, that sort of thing,” Konrad says.

The CEO of gCaptain, a website that tracks the shipping industry, said that the likely first step was to make sure that there was no more damage to the bridge.

“It has to be done very quickly,” says David Von Schmidt, a naval architect and engineer. The regional economy can’t afford that anymore.

Baltimore’s port closure means lost work: From longshoremen to charter boats, the impact on Maryland’s economy is still a mystery

“Quite a few are out of work right now,” says Scott Cowan, president of International Longshoremen’s Association Local 333 in Baltimore. He represents 2,400 dockworkers and ILA members in the Port of Baltimore.

The workers load and unload ships. They work with cranes. They receive and deliver cargo. They do maintenance and repair work on equipment and containers. They do timekeeping and recording the movement of cargo.

Maintenance guys and mechanics are still going to work on equipment in the facility. The bulk of our work is loading and unloading. That is where we use a lot of people for labor-intensive jobs. And that’s not happening right now.”

How long it takes to get the shipping channel cleared will determine how deeply port workers are affected — and the size of the impact to Maryland’s economy. Cowan says the closure of the shipping channel is costing $191 million a day in lost economic activity.

The state has set up a dedicated unemployment line for workers affected by the port closure. There were less than 200 workers who made unemployment claims after the collapse, according to a department of labor spokesman.

Senate President Bill Ferguson said earlier in the week that he will sponsor a bill to provide income replacements for those workers who have been impacted by the port’s closing.

Still, Cowan doesn’t think the impact will be a lasting one for Baltimore’s longshoremen: “I believe the cargo will rebound here quite strongly and we’ll be going into the Christmas season here shortly, bringing goods into this country. We should be fine.

Source: From longshoremen to charter boats, Baltimore’s port closure means lost work

From longshoremen to charter boats, Baltimore’s port closure means lost work: A bridge-building challenge for sailboats and the Chesapeake

Bobby LaPin — “Captain Bobby” — owns and operates Boat Baltimore, offering sailing tours of Baltimore Harbor and the Chesapeake Bay. He docks the 45-foot-long sailboat Saeda at a marina in South Baltimore.

It’s a seasonal business, and he’d been gearing up to start cruises on April 1. Now he won’t open until May. A blue tarp rests over the deck of the sailboat.

He says the opening day was pushed back because we don’t want to distract people from the recovery mission. “I don’t want people to book a boat for just to get on the bridge so they can see the destruction of it.”

He’d usually hire deckhands and captains to work in the summer in Florida and the winter in the north. He’s not going to hire at this time.

He says it’s too early to tell exactly what will be the impact on his business, but he expects bookings from tourists and conventioneers to decline for a time. And since the collapsed bridge is blocking access to the Chesapeake, he can’t take longer, more lucrative bookings, where he’d sail out to the bay.

“Obviously, the No. 1 concern economically is going to be to clear the channel so shipping can start. And then after that happens, they have to build a bridge,” he says. “But when they build a bridge, they need to block the channel to do so. Are we even going to have a bridge again?

It won’t be necessary to close the channel while the bridge is under construction, says Benjamin Schafer, a professor of civil and systems engineering at Johns Hopkins University. This has been a common challenge for bridge builders going back to the 19th century, and there are a number of construction techniques that can allow the channel to stay open.

Source: From longshoremen to charter boats, Baltimore’s port closure means lost work

The Baltimore Peninsula Marina: Where’s the boat? Where are we going? What’s going on at the marina next door, where we’re going?

The boats were anchored along the waterfront on Thursday. Next door, the terminal at Cruise Maryland sits empty, the giant ships now directed to other moorings. The sleek new buildings of Baltimore Peninsula are just inland from the marina and feature apartments, office space and restaurants.

Alex is in charge of operations for the waterfront for the company. He says this time of year is generally quiet at the marina, before the season for recreational boaters picks up in late April or early May.

Even with the bridge collapse and the port closure, Snider talks about everything that’s planned at the marina in the months ahead: “There’s a sailing club that’s going to be here, we’ve got a kayak launch. This year the Baltimore Dragon Boat Club will be rowing out of here. So it’s very busy.”

“It was a beautiful bridge,” he says. “I’ve piloted driven boats, captained boats under that bridge hundreds and hundreds of times. … It’s going to be a weird few years, not having that there visually.”