Baltimore Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse live: First piece of wreckage removed as mayor responds to racist critics

One of the last drivers to cross the Key Bridge in Baltimore before its collapse said he skipped death by a whisker.

Larry Desantis crossed the bridge on Tuesday morning while traveling from Pasadena to Dundalk for his second job.

“If I was one minute later, I probably wouldn’t be here now,” Mr Desantis told 13ABC.

Mr Desantis said he was driving at around 45 miles per hour because of the construction. The six migrant construction workers have been presumed dead, with authorities combing the river for the remains of four of them.

“There was a police car when I went by, right before the toll bridge. From what I understand, they knew something was going to happen, so he was waiting to get the word to stop the traffic. So, I guess I was like the last one that went through,” Mr Desantis added.

Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg said there is no timeline yet on when the Port of Baltimore will reopen as authorities rush to clear the debris of the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge.

The navy and the army corps of engineers were deploying a 1,000-tonne crane and a 600-tonne crane to clear the debris, Mr Buttigieg told ABC on Sunday.

“They have not wanted to speculate yet on a timeline because the operation is so complex,” he said.

“It’s not that you just have to remove the wreckage, it’s that you have to do it in a way that doesn’t cause portions of the bridge that are there across the water to shift.

“They’ve been under a lot of compression, tension. They could behave almost like a spring if they are not expertly managed.”

The mayor of the city of Baltimore is calling on Congress to act as a united body in response to the devastation caused by the crash of a massive container ship into his city’s iconic Francis Scott Key Bridge, which destroyed the crossing and has shut down one of the biggest ports on the East Coast.

Mayor Brandon Scott appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation and told guest host Ed O’Keefe that the disaster was more than just an issue for his state, citing the specific sectors likely to be impacted by the expected months-long closure of the port. The Port of Baltimore is the largest import site for foreign automobiles in the US, and also services other sectors including agriculture.

“This should not be something that has anything or any conversation around party,” he told CBS. “It matters to the global economy.”

A Baltimore baker who drove over the Francis Scott Key Bridge seconds before its collapse, says he had been blissfully unaware of the catastrophe until receiving a call from a panicked co-worker.

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Baltimore mayor Brandon Scott has responded to racist remarks that he had to endure since the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge last week.

Following the collapse, conservatives on social media began falsely attributing the incident to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes, calling Mr Scott a “DEI mayor”.

“I am a young Black man, a young Black mayor in this country. We know that there are a lot of racism folks who think I shouldn’t be in this job,” Mr Scott, 39, told CBS News on Sunday.

“I know that. I’ve been Black my whole life. I know how racism goes in this country. But my focus is always going to be on those people. I didn’t want to be out there that night answering questions about DEI. I’m worried about the loss of life.

“And ignoring the noise of folks who simply want to be divisive and are afraid that their way of life, where people that don’t look like them and think like them can be in control, can be in power and actually be better at the job,” he added.

The captain of the Port of Baltimore has said authorities are preparing to open an alternate channel in the vicinity of the Key Bridge.

“This will mark an important first step along the road to reopening the port of Baltimore,” Capt David O’Connell said on Sunday.

Captain O’Connell is the Maryland commander for the Coast Guard and on-scene coordinator for the wreckage clear-up operation.

“By opening this alternate route, we will support the flow of marine traffic into Baltimore,” he said.

Workers began removing the rubble of the collapsed Francis Key Scott bridge from the Patapsco River on Sunday.

A 200-tonne segment of the bridge was lifted and transferred using a crane to offload and process those parts at Tradepoint Atlantic in Sparrows Point, governor Wes Moore said.

The bridge collapsed early on Tuesday morning, killing six migrant road workers, when a container ship nearly lost power and crashed into a support pylon.

The wreckage and hazardous weather conditions have made it impossible for divers to continue searching for the four remaining bodies of the deceased construction workers in recent days, governor Moore said.

Maryland governor Wes Moore has urged Republicans to work with Democrats to approve federal funding for rebuilding the Key bridge to get the port economy back on its feet.

The Joe Biden administration released $60m in initial emergency aid on Thursday to assist in cleaning up the bridge debris and reopening the port, which is the largest in the US for “roll-on, roll-off” vehicle imports and exports of farm and construction equipment.

Mr Moore said Republicans should be willing to approve the funding for the sake of not just the city of Baltimore, but for the national economy.

“The reason that we need people to move in a bipartisan basis … is not because we need you to do Maryland a favour,” Mr Moore told CNN on Sunday.

“We need to make sure that we’re actually moving quickly to get the American economy going again, because the Port of Baltimore is instrumental in our larger economic growth.”