“We haven’t received a timeline yet, but what I can tell you is the work is now underway. Parts of the nonfederal channel are already being worked on, and there is a 1,000-ton capacity lift crane on a barge being put into place — now there’s another 600 ton crane on its way to back it up,” Buttigieg said Sunday during an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
The bridge collapsed early Tuesday morning when a cargo ship slammed into a key support pillar. Initial reports from the National Transportation Safety Board and videos of the collision shared on social media suggest that the ship suffered a power outage just before it struck the bridge.
The crash sent a tangle of debris into the water, cutting off a major U.S. shipping lane, and a key entry point for cars, trucks and agricultural machinery. Around 8,000 people work directly in the port, and a prolonged closure would have far-reaching impacts on supply chains across the country.
It’s also still unclear how long it will take to rebuild the bridge, Buttigieg said Sunday, but federal money is already flowing to Maryland.
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration swiftly approved $60 million in emergency funds on Thursday. The original bridge took five years to complete in the 1970s, Buttigieg said, “but that doesn’t necessarily inform us about the timeline on the reconstruction.”
In a news conference last week, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore predicted a long road to rebuilding the fallen bridge.
“This work will not take hours,” said Moore. “It will not take days. It will not take weeks,” he said.