The Baltimore port closing means lost work for people from longshoremen to charter boats
The Baltimore Key Bridge Collapse and Outbreak: From Longshoremen to Charter Boats, Baltimore’s Port of Baltimore Means Lost Work
When the vessel hit the base of the Key Bridge, it created a chain of events. The bridge was crumpled into the river and its twisted metal draped over the ship and its containers. They fell into the water with their cars. Four workers are still missing and two of them are dead. And the whole disaster is now blocking one of the country’s busiest ports, the Port of Baltimore.
“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.
They are the workers that load and unload ships. They operate cranes. They deliver cargo. They do maintenance and repair work on equipment and containers. They do clerical work similar to timekeeping and recording cargo movements.
“Some of our maintenance guys and mechanics are still going to work to maintain the equipment in the facility,” says Cowan. “But the bulk of our work is the unloading and loading. That’s where the labor-intensive jobs are, where we use a lot of people. … Right now, that’s not happening.
If it takes too long to clear the shipping channel, port workers will be negatively affected, and the state’s economy will suffer. 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. A spokeswoman for the Maryland Department of Labor said less than 200 workers had made unemployment claims the day after the collapse.
The Maryland Senate president, Bill Ferguson, plans to sponsor emergency legislation to provide income replacement for workers who have been affected 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
Marina Skipper Bobby LaPin: Is There a Bridge? Opening Day of the Baltimore Harbor Marina Sailboat for the First Three Months
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. So the sailboat remains anchored, a blue tarp pulled taut over its deck.
We decided to delay our opening day because we didn’t want to add to the already large amount of boats in the harbor. “I also don’t want to take bookings for people that are simply trying to get on the boat so they can see the devastation of the bridge.”
Normally he’d be hiring deck hands and captains to work in the summer, those who live in the winter in Florida or the summer up north. But for now, he’s holding off any hiring.
It’s too early to say what the impact on his business will be, but he expects the bookings of tourists and conventioneers to decline for a while. Since the bridge collapsed, he can’t take longer to book more lucrative voyages 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. It is necessary for them to block the channel to build a bridge. Are we ever going to have a bridge again?
The bridge alone could be rebuilt for between $400 million and $1 billion, according to experts. The cost of insurance will increase the price of the disaster.
The bridge won’t need to be closed while it’s being built, according to Benjamin the professor of civil and systems engineering. “This has been a common challenge for bridge builders going back to at least the late 19th century,” and there are a number of construction techniques that will allow the channel to stay open, he says.
The Baltimore Peninsula Marina in the Collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge on Oct. 16, 2001, at 12:10 AM ET (New York Times)
Along the waterfront at the Port Covington Marina on Thursday, all the boats were anchored. The Cruise Maryland terminal is now empty, the giant ships are being directed to other moorings. The sleek new buildings of Baltimore Peninsula are close to the marina and include apartments, office space and restaurants.
Alex is an employee of the company that’s redeveloping the peninsula. The marina is usually quiet in this time of year, before the season for recreational boaters kicks 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. We have the Baltimore Dragon Boat Club rowing out of here this year. It’s very busy.
He says that it was a beautiful bridge. “I’ve piloted driven boats, captained boats under that bridge hundreds and hundreds of times. … It’s going to be a weird few years without that.
There were police keeping people and drones away from the site of the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore on Sunday.
Pieces of the bridge that was damaged by the container ship remain blocked off by the river, while partially submerged girders stand guard over the ship.
The bodies of two construction workers who were on the bridge at the time of the crash were recovered last week, and a search is ongoing for four others.
No timeline’ to recover four bodies after Baltimore bridge collapse, as cleanup begins: A survey of the damaged channel off Dali for the Army Corps of Engineers
“We are focused on bringing that measure of comfort and closure to the families. There is no timeline because of how complex this operation is,” he said.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has to survey the damage before it will consider moving the ship, which is called Dali. Maryland authorities said that an initial survey found that the hull of the ship was damaged but still intact, which may make it easier to move when the debris clears.
He said that the channel is 700 feet wide and 50 feet deep and there is much heavy steel bisecting it, with a lot of concrete at the bottom. The steel needs to be taken out and the concrete needs to be removed.
The National Transportation Safety Board has said that there are tons of hazardous material in some of the containers, some of which been knocked loose. The containers must be stabilized and the vessel must be refloated, Spellmon said, adding that the Coast Guard and the shipping company are in charge of this step.
The responders have begun cutting up the bridge. Gov. Moore said that heavy machinery is needed to get inside the channel to remove the bridge off the ship, which he said was about the size of the Eiffel Tower.
Moore said this would be achieved by using a large operational crane on the East Coast and opening secondary pathways.
Impact of the Baltimore Bridge Accident on Insurance Companies, Insurance Marketplaces and the Public Interest Interest Interest Groups: An Insurance Adviser for the International Marine Insurance Market
“When the divers are going down … it’s pitch dark, I mean you can only see between a foot to two in front of you, so it’s really a feeling operation,” he said.
This is going to have an effect on other states as well. Moore said that Maryland didn’t need any favors. We need bipartisan support in order to get our economy going again because this is affecting the farmers in Kentucky, auto dealers in Ohio, and restaurant in Tennessee, so we have to move quickly.
The Baltimore bridge crash is being called the largest-ever marine insured loss, Bruce Carnegie-Brown, chair of the global insurance marketplace Lloyd’s of London told CNBC.
“One of the most important costs is going to be for business interruption, for all the ships that got stuck in port that can’t get out, the ones that can’t get in, all the goods that are being delayed traveling around the world,” Cohn told NPR.
Cargo owners can claim their insurance for the delay that will cost them money. She said that compensation would be given for any deaths and injuries.
She said while Lloyd’s may be the most exposed, other insurance companies will also feel the pressure, including those in the U.S., in Bermuda, and reinsurers who insure insurers.
