Joe Biden is set to visit Baltimore after Key Bridge collapse: ‘We’re with you’

US President Joe Biden announced that he will visit Baltimore next week in the aftermath of the catastrophic collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge leading to the city’s port.

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during his visit at the Chavis Community Center in Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S., March 26, 2024. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz/File Photo(REUTERS)

As of Friday afternoon, four people remain missing and are presumed dead. The tragedy prompted Biden to pledge a visit to the site, following the lead of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

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Biden has already allocated $60 million in federal funding for the initial cleanup to Maryland.

“We’re with you. We’re going to stay with you as long as it takes,” assured Biden, expressing his intention to visit Baltimore promptly. “You’re Maryland tough. You’re Baltimore strong.”

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Aftermath of the Baltimore Key Bridge collapse

The workhorses of the industry, huge barges are anchored in the waters near the busiest port. The wreckage of the collapsed bridge shall be salvaged by authorities after even the collision of a bridge provides no resistance but vanishes in a fwip. Investigators, as a matter of fact, are still on board the massive container vessel which hit a bridge pillier while remaining underwater underneath a part of this disaster.

The coordinating effort will be enormous and involve cleaning up and re-building the Francis Scott Key Bridge. On one hand, half of the exposed structure is inclined upon the aircraft carrier that rammed into it while the other one is visible in the water. Building a new bridge again is something that could be realized only in a few years, while the port should be passed to the shipping in a couple of weeks.

With the existing waste being the biggest barrier in the path of Baltimore’s harbour and its main shipping channel, the cleaning up will take roughly several weeks. Nevertheless, rebuilding this bridge will require a much larger time slot. The federal authorities have made public their intentions to reconstruct the bridge and have requested Congress to contribute for this designated budgetary allocation.

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The tragic events unfolded shortly before 1:It’ll be 30 a.m. there on Tuesday. Despite the chaos, the police stopped the traffic on the bridge using a mayday message from the vessel indicating lack of control. Unluckily, the bridge crumbled down while the construction workers were not warned in advance, and they plunge off the edge into the Cliff waters.

Only four out of the eight absentee workers have been accounted for. The subsequent efforts of search-and-rescue were grounded due to the hazardous situation in the locale. They (one of the bodies) have been excavated out while others (the remaining two workers who fell into the icy waters) sadly lost their lives.