President Biden is scheduled to visit on Friday the site of the Baltimore Bridge, where a giant cargo ship plunged and collapsed last week, killing six people and severing a major shipping and transportation artery.
During his visit to the site of the Francis Scott Key Bridge wreckage, Biden will take an aerial tour, receive a briefing on response plans and meet with the families of construction workers whose structures fell into the Patapsco River.
Biden faces a more than mile-long tangle of concrete and steel, disrupting traffic, destroying blue-collar communities, disrupting operations at one of the nation's largest ports and disrupting entire supply chains. are under threat of disruption that could spread to the rest of the world.
The president has already pledged federal aid to help the city recover from the March 26 disaster, including funding the bridge's “full reconstruction costs as soon as humanely possible.” It also includes a pledge to pay. It is unclear whether he will announce new measures during his visit, including emergency funding measures that must be approved by Congress. Some Republican lawmakers have already rejected his promise to pay for the bridge in full.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday that Biden will gather more information on what kind of assistance is needed during the trip, pointing to assistance already provided by the federal government.
“The president continues to lead a whole-of-government approach in responding to the bridge collapse,” she said. “As the president said within hours of the collapse, this administration will be with the people of Baltimore every step of the way.”
Jean-Pierre said government officials called major employers in the Baltimore area this week, including retail chains like Home Depot and distributors like Amazon, to encourage them to retain workers.
Since the collapse, the government has secured $60 million in emergency funding to fund port clean-ups, help rebuild bridges, provide low-interest disaster loans to affected businesses and improve supply chain He has overseen efforts to monitor and manage disruptions.
The structure, which took five years to construct, opened in 1977 and served as an important transportation link on the East Coast, carrying more than 30,000 vehicles per day on Interstate 695. It was named after Francis Scott of Maryland and his key. He was born as the author of “The Star-Spangled Banner.''
The bridge collapsed in the middle of the night when a 985-foot-long cargo ship plowed into it shortly after leaving the Port of Baltimore, a major economic engine that handles more automobiles and farm equipment than any other port in the country. The ship “Dari” lost power before hitting the bridge, but gave authorities enough time to stop traffic on the bridge and send a mayday call.
However, there was not enough time to contact workers already on the bridge.
Six construction workers were missing after the collapse, and the bodies of two of them were recovered from the river on March 27. Efforts to recover the remaining workers, who were presumed dead, were suspended. Officials said the body was likely wrapped in steel and concrete.
“These were hard workers working in the middle of the night to fix holes in the bridge that tens of thousands of travelers cross every day,” Jean-Pierre said.