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On Point with Meghna Chakrabarti

What it took to reopen one of the nation’s busiest ports

On Point with Meghna Chakrabarti

WBUR

Talk Show, Daily News, News, Npr, On Point, Daily

4.23.5K Ratings

🗓️ 2 July 2024

⏱️ 49 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

78 days after the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed after it was struck by a cargo ship, the Port of Baltimore is back in business. The cleanup involved more than 2,000 people, 18 barges, 13 floating cranes, 10 excavators and 22 tugboats.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is on point, I'm Magna Chakrabardi, and guess what? Sometimes things go right.

0:07.0

Hard stuff gets done, no fuss, just hard work.

0:12.0

The competence ought to be celebrated too. We spent too much

0:16.2

time talking about negative things, don't we? So today, as an antidote to these

0:21.6

doom scrolling times, we're going to talk about the coordination and effort that took place to clean up a massive disaster.

0:30.0

And how the lessons from that success may be just as important as learning about the disaster that precipitated it.

0:37.0

We advise the entire bridge, the entire key bridge is in the harbor.

0:41.0

I advise again the entire key bridge has fallen into the

0:44.8

harbor. March 26th of this year that was the 911 call made around 1.30 a.m.

0:51.8

After the Dali, a massive container ship crashed into Baltimore's Francis

0:57.1

Scott Key Bridge. Live video footage showed the 980 foot long 158 foot wide ship striking one of the

1:06.3

bridges peers. The key bridge collapsed entirely and instantly, killing six workers who'd been fixing potholes on the bridges

1:15.0

road above. Hundreds of thousands of pounds of steel wreckage were now in the

1:20.3

waterway. The Port of Baltimore, one of the nation's busiest was forced to shut down and

1:25.4

was not expected to reopen anytime soon.

1:28.6

And I remember that morning March 26th the only certainty was uncertainty and many said it would take multiple months,

1:36.3

some said even up to a year. Maryland Governor Wes Moore.

1:39.9

Well Maryland, this team did the unimaginable by many.

1:45.4

And instead of 11 months,

1:48.1

he got this thing done in 11 weeks. Well, that was just last month, June 12th. Governor Moore announced the

1:57.2

reopening of the Port of Baltimore.

2:00.1

You hear that? That's a beautiful sound.

...

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