Maryland Gov. Moore gives update on Key Bridge cleanup progress | full video

good afternoon let me start by saying that we continue to pray for all the victims of the keybridge collapse and their families and our four directives have been clear first give closure and comfort to the families the second clear the channel and fully open the vessel traffic to to the port the third take care of all the people who have been affected by this crisis and the fourth rebuild the Key Bridge from the earliest days we've laid out those four directives and there's a reason that we put closure at the very top of that list because in Maryland we put our people first in Maryland we take care of each other and in Maryland we leave no one behind in Maryland Bonos an in Maryland Maryland so I want to start by talking about our work about bringing closure to the families every element of our operation comes back to this singular Northstar priority our Salvage teams are working hand and glove with our recovery teams and every time we clear more wreckage we assess the area to see if we're able to advance recovery the Maryland State Police led by Colonel Butler continue to lead recovery operations and they are embedded within unified command and this truly is a fully unified operation and every person on this team is in constant communication with every other person on this team it's not lost on anybody that we are still looking for two missing workers two uncount of four souls and that search and the search for them has not changed we are still working closely with the families of the victims and that has not changed we will continue to do everything in our power to bring closure and comfort to these Maryland families and that will not change and I want to thank unified command and this entire team and all of our First Responders for never forgetting about bringing closure to these families we've been moving together since day one and we're going to continue moving forward together now second on clearing the federal Channel and fully opening vessel traffic to the port last week UniFi command opened a fourth temporary limited Channel with controlling depth of 38 ft and since we last spoke there have been 19 transits through that channel nine vessels traveled into the port and 10 departed from the port and these vessels have been carrying everything from sugar to cement to fertilizer to Lumber and those transits supported the work of nearly 200 members of the international long shans Association now as I said last week that's an important Milestone but as we also said it's a temporary solution we cannot take our Eye Off the Ball the focus is making sure that we are going to open the 50ft channel and we will you've already heard about the Chesapeake 1000 or the Chessie it's the largest Salvage crane available on the Eastern Seaboard now today I want to talk about chess's partner the Gus and that's the nickname for the largest hydraulic Grabber in the entire country that is now here in Baltimore the Gus is right here helping us out and we have a uh a photo of Gus that I want to show you thank you so this over here you see is the Chessie the largest crane we're just mentioning this right here is the chess's partner the Gus this crane right here has a weight of 100 60 metric tons that's the weight of the Gus and the Gus when it is has its arms out the Gus is 29 by 29 just understanding the how massive this this sorry apologize there you go um how massive this pull is right here so 29 by 29 the Gus has a capacity to be able to pull upwards of 1,000 tons in a single pole outside of the water and just this far the work of the Gus along with the work of the other cranes and operations we now have currently over 100 assets within the water to include boats cranes Etc just the poll that we have thus far has equated to over 3300 tons that have been pulled from the water thus far just as a sense of of of you know what type of scale that again we're talking uh we're talking uh you know a pull of where you're talking about the uh you know the singular size of call it the you know the stature of Liberty is 350 tons we've pulled over 3,300 tons of steel from the water that's the work that unified command has expertly conducted over the process of these past weeks and so you see here even just by simply looking at the size of it this is a remarkably complicated operation that unified command is leading on and we know that they have also laid out not just a strategy in order to get it done with a full operation and executable plan in order to make that happen which brings us to the next point the use of Precision Cuts now we've already talked about the work and our work to remove containers from the dolly so we can access more of the wreckage and I'm pleased to announce that that phase of the operation is now complete in total we have lifted 182 containers from the dolly completing the larger mission of container removal from the dolly so now now that we can access that part of the bridge that's directly on top of the dolly we need to cut and clear it and that work is remarkably complicated we're talking about a massive piece of Steel and on one end the steel is leaning against a vessel that is the size of the eiel Tower and on the other end it's leaning against the bottom of the riverbed and so this work is dangerous and we need to make sure that we put the safety of the Salvage team first in everything that we do and unified command has laid out that responsible strategy for clearing the wreckage on top of the dolly so that nobody gets hurt we will depend on the highest industry standards and effective precedents to make this happen and in fact the strategy we will use on the keybridge is the same one that was used for the removal and the replacement of the Harry Nice Bridge in Charles County now I've said from Jump Street that safety is Paramount at every stage of this operation we've gotten to a point now that with countless operations a unified command has gotten done there has not been a single injury and that is a standard going forward that's the Benchmark and this operation in no way will interfere with our three other directives it will not disrupt our efforts to bring closure and comfort to the families it will not disrupt our efforts to support the people who have been impacted and it will not disrupt our efforts to rebuild the Francis Scott Key bridge which brings me to our third directive taking care of our our people our Administration has launched four different programs to help businesses affected by the collapse at three different state agencies the Maryland Department of Labor the Maryland Department of Commerce the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development and to date we've received nearly 500 applications to four state programs and approved more than $13 million in Grants and Loans to businesses the Maryland Department of Labor is also spearheading an initiative to connect workers with financial assistance it is called the state worker Support Program our department of labor has approved more than $1.5 million in payments to marylanders and these programs are helping marylanders who have spent their careers supporting the Port of Baltimore and supporting marylanders these programs are helping the mom and pop lunch counter that saw foot traffic Fall by half after the bridge fell these programs are helping the truck drivers and the entrepreneurs who are all Maryland families and if you want to learn more about the resources available to you or your businesses please go to response. maryland.gov bridge we are taking a full all of government approach to this work and that includes every single level of government and I want to thank all of our friends at the local loal levels Mr Mayor for their work in helping marylanders in need and also want to thank the Biden Harris Administration for their support in this work because as of this morning the Biden Harris Administration has approved $5 million in loans through the small business administration Mr President thank you for your continued support of Maryland and Baltimore now fourth on rebuilding the Francis Scott Key bridge in order to rebuild this bridge we need the support of the United States Congress I was on Capitol Hill two weeks ago to meet with lawmakers I was on Capitol Hill last week to meet with lawmakers this week I will be on Capitol Hill again to meet with lawmakers and tomorrow I'm attending a meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus to discuss how we can work together to rebuild this bridge and later this week week we will welcome Republican chairman Tom Cole and the House Appropriations chair to Baltimore and the entire House Appropriations Committee to Baltimore and we've already had members of Congress going from Florida to Washington State show up to see the wreckage and we look forward to Chairman Cole's visit and to the visit of the other members of the committee chairman Co committee won't just get to see the sight of the collapse they'll also get a chance to meet the men and women who are at the heart of this operation and every day I have the honor of continuing to meet more marylanders who prove what it means to be Maryland tough and Baltimore strong and today we are joined by detective Sergeant Justin up the graph from the Maryland State Police and they are underwater recovery team and I said at the top of my remarks that there was a that we had to put closure to these families at the top of our list and that's why I was very intentionally the top the number one directive and and this Maryland straight trooper that you see next to me he's on the front lines of this work on any given day we have a minimum of 25 divers ready to deploy 10 of them are members of the Maryland State Police underwater recovery team and detective Sergeant up the graph sered serves as Commander he served with the Maryland State Police for 17 years he's been on the underwater recovery team for 12 years and he was born right in Baltimore County Maryland I also found out that he uh served as a marine so he didn't do everything right with his life detective sergeant of the graph has raised his hand to serve so others can be safe he's raised his hand to serve so other families could feel protected he's raised his hand to serve so other families can get closure Sergeant upgra you're the best of us and I want to say directly thank you for proving what it means to be Maryland tough and Baltimore strong now in a moment I will hand it over to Admiral GTH representing unified command and after him we will hear from the mayor of Baltimore Mayor Scott and I want to thank all of our additional Partners who are here today for their continued and 247 commitment to making sure we get this right I will now turn it over to Amal gilary good afternoon afternoon our thoughts and prayers remain with the families of the victims as we continue uh to try to recover their remains as the governor mentioned we have made a tremendous amount of progress so far on restoring Commerce to the Port of Baltimore the limited access channel that we opened last week for four days we moved 19 vessels through that but in total all of the limited access channels we've moved more than than 200 vessels in and out of the Port of Baltimore since those reopenings so I'm tremendously proud of the work of the unified command in helping to achieve that and help get folks in Baltimore back to work that's very important and something that we are going to keep as a top priority for unified command so to give you an update on where we're going from the UniFi command We are continuing to make progress on removing the from the deep Draft channel as we have temporarily suspended Transit through that limited access Channel we have put to work the Chessie and Gus as the governor described to continue to remove debris to make that channel deeper and wider for future transits simultaneously we continue to work to remove the dolly we continue our planning efforts in that regard we completed removing all the containers that we needed to remove move off the bow of the ship to make that operation as safe as possible and we're going continue to plan to use Precision cutting to make that operation as safe as possible to all of the salvers doing that job we are also removing some pieces of a truss off the starboard side of the vessel as well to again prepare to refloat the dolly as soon as we can get the larger section off the bow now in regards to removing debris from the remainder of the channel the state and their contractor have been doing a tremendous job doing that as well making great progress mostly most recently on the north side of the bridge and continued to make great strides there removing steel which we were moving back to trade point and offloading and cutting up for recycling and they're doing tremendous work there very proud of what they're doing so those are the updates I have for you today from unified command I'll now turn it over to mayor Scott thank you Admiral thank you governor and good afternoon everyone it has now been 5 weeks uh since we had an unthinkable tragedy that left six Maryland families without their loved ones and disrupted the way of life for thousands of others we continue to hold those families close and all those impacted by the collapse of the Key Bridge and we continue to do this together together to the families enduring this unimaginable pain we will always be with you and by your side you are not grieving alone and while none of us understand exactly what you are feeling your heartbreak is shared by countless hearts and souls throughout not just Baltimore not just Maryland but throughout the country and the world and we will continue to be alongside you every step of the way the governor Mission uh the necessary move to pressure cutting we know that we have to continue to move forward so that number one we can bring closure to these families two that we can reopen the channel and allow us to get down to the work of rebuilding the bridge every piece of metal lifted every layer of the wreckage removed brings us closer to getting those goals done first bringing closer closer to those families and then obviously reopen the channel we will continue to do this as we have done every single thing throughout this tragedy in Endeavor together next I want to talk about uh the support that the city is offering in addition to that being offered by our great Partners in president biding and the federal government and our Congressional Delegation our great partner and leader in this unify command Governor Moore and state government we have resources available from the city posted at Baltimore city.gov keybridge we will continue to make utility bill water bill and rental assistance available for Port impacted workers through our office of Children and Family success our Port worker wage subsidy program has received applications from 61 businesses serving over 100 workers I want to thank our office of Employment Development for standing it up so quickly to support those businesses and the fund that has been organized by the mayor's office of immigrant Affairs has now raised in more more than $750,000 in donations to go directly towards those family while no amount of money uh can heal uh the pain that these families are feeling we want to make sure that they know that they will have their basis covered and we'll be with them as they navigate this most difficult time Mima continues to work with the governor's office our federal Partners our County Partners our community Partners to ensure that these families including organizations like the aspiran center have what they need as they work through this crisis lastly I want to again thank this unified command five weeks ago none of us knew that we would be here today none of us could even imagine what we would have to work through in this kind of tragedy but this group has led in a way where you've seen connectivity when you see one one sound one band working towards the goals that have been laid out I would not want to go through a battle with any team other than this one because they've stayed focused on the mission people first as the governor always put but most importantly we've done it together in a connected way to make sure that all this tremendous progress that we've made thus far will only open uh the door for even greater progress to come in the near future thank you Mr Governor thank you Mr Mayor thank you thank you um can you elaborate on the recovery of the final uh Missing workers is it a case of not knowing where they are or do you know where they are and they're just not accessible because of all the wreckage as we said from the very beginning it's very poor visibility down there there's so much debris we believe we have areas interest but we're un aable to access those areas of Interest that's why it's so important for the unified command divers to work in conjunction with the salvage divers to communicate what they're seeing where they're locating things and allow the unified command divers to develop an effective plan or survey to determine where they're going to search once they have that area declared safe no we're working in generalizations of areas where we think they should be based on Sonar images and other mapping techniqu um hi just a piggyback off of that um sure sorry um do you believe that the bodies also will be recovered by the May 10th um deadline for the ship being moved or do you have any sense of the timeline for that piece of it we are uh exclusively focused on bringing closure to these families um and uh we had our first conversations with the family uh literally the morning that happened we we promised them that we would stop at nothing to make sure that we could uh support them and at that time during a uh search and rescue mission and even when the search and rescue mission became a recovery Mission we told them the commitment to them and the commitment to stop at nothing to make sure we're bringing closure and comfort to them uh was consistent and would not stop do you have any sort of timeline though for like the clean up process itself sorry what what we know is uh we are putting forward every every single asset that we have at our disposal to bring closure and comfort to these families hi so over the weekend a few Medi Outlets had a chance to get up close to Gus and one of the Coast Guard members that we did an interview with mentioned that um the Grabber would be primarily used to get the debris once the dolly had been removed have plans for the Grabber changed at all or is it just working in a different part of the river we had an opportunity to use the the Gus a little earlier and so now we're working in the federal deep Draft channel to continue to remove debris while we're working to plan to remove the dolly so we did not want to lose that opportunity because that allows us to continue to make progress to reopen that as fast as possible and do it safely hi yeah I had a question about the timeline is the the timeline to remove the dolly within the next two weeks is May 10th the the date the tentative date to get that the ship out of there so we we've set May 10th as a tentative date to potentially reopen the channel but I can't give you an exact date of when the dolly is going to be removed because there's a lot of factors that play into that both the engineering the Salvage operations themselves and weather and so we're going to continue to move uh to do this safely and as fast as possible and Governor I don't know if you're best to answer this but as far as other Bridges like the Bay Bridge for instance you know we're heading into the summer travel season what's been done to make sure that that those are there are safeguards so that you know those V any potential vulnerabilities are addressed so that we don't have another tragedy yeah even even prior to this tragedy of the keybridge uh we have made the protection of critical infrastructure a highest priority uh for for this Administration and ensuring that people when they're on our roads and our bridges and our tunnels uh that they can feir measurements of of safety in doing that uh knowing that there are not just evaluations um that take place for every single piece of critical infrastructure but that that is always going to be pressure tested to ensure that we can have the best results for people who are that are that are utilizing our roads Bridges mass transit Etc uh and so that has continued uh even since the the tragedy of the Key Bridge it will continue uh and uh and we want to assure the people of this state that uh that we are we have a full focus on ensuring that the critical infrastructure that we have in the state is not just protected but then we're continuing to come with long-term reinforcements for them as well so we were just out on the boat and the Army Corp engineers said that the plan to remove the dolly is actually going to be through a control demolition can you just explain how that might work thank you so we're using a Precision cutting technique to allow us to safely remove that section from the bow of the ship and by using Precision cutting techniques we are able to Institute all those cuts simultaneously so that that's the safest possible uh for the salvers themselves so that they're not trying to cut something and then something another section collapses while they're making that cut govern you mentioned about $1.5 million in payments has been made to marylanders um to help support them during this time about how many people have been assisted uh we'll go I'll go back and get you the exact number of uh of individuals and individual businesses uh that have been supported so we can come back and get you that question than you thanks all thank you e

Channel: CBS News

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Keywords: cbs news, news, live news, livestream, breaking news, baltimore, maryland, francis scott key bridge, baltimore bridge, bridge collapse, wes moore, dali

Id: okgJgM-j4g0

Length: 27min 15sec (1635 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 30 2024