Baltimore bridge salvage: 'This is a game of Jenga you don't want to lose'
Baltimore bridge salvage: 'This is a game of Jenga you don't want to lose'
US Army Colonel Estee Pinchasin looks out at the thousands of tonnes of twisted, broken steel and concrete jutting out from the dark waters of Maryland's Patapsco river, and delivers her assessment: an "unforgiving mangled mess".
"That's the best way to describe this," the fatigue-clad veteran says from the deck of an Army-operated salvage vessel, the Reynolds. "It's hard to explain steel that is cantilevered, bent and smashed with so much force."
The "mess" Col Pinchasin has been tasked with clearing is the tattered remnants of Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge, strewn around - and embedded into - the Dali, a massive 948ft (289m) cargo ship that now sits motionless under an expanse of shredded metal, with partially crushed shipping containers hanging from its sides.
The mangled mess is self-explanatory. But why unforgiving? Because, put simply, anything and everything here is a potential threat to the lives of salvage crews.
I’m sure they will eventually be on to their owners. If you had a helicopter or something in one of those you’d be expecting it to be delivered unless it fell into the ocean or was specifically damaged.
I doubt it. The cargo has probably been all written off with insurance. The containers and their contents will be auction off as is
In fact, I did have a helicopter in one of those, but the shipping label might have gotten rubbed off or switched in all the chaos.