The United States Government announced this Thursday that it will allocate a first batch of 60 million dollars (about 55 million euros) to rebuild the Baltimore bridge, in Maryland, which collapsed last Tuesday due to the attack of a ship that lost control.
Emergency funds will be transferred to the State of Maryland Department of Transportation and will serve to cover the initial costs of repair work of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, the White House said in a statement.
These resources “will help Maryland begin the urgent work and more resources will follow as recovery and rebuilding efforts move forward,” wrote U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
These funds, known as “quick release” money, correspond to an initial payment by the government to help restore essential transportation, the announcement highlighted. The 60 million will help pay for debris removal, demolitions, detours, emergency repairs, among other tasks. The Secretary of Transportation assured yesterday that It will not be “neither quick, nor easy, nor cheap” to rebuild the bridge, a key infrastructure for the port of Baltimore, one of the most important in the country in the Atlantic.
The container ship Dali hit the Francis Scott Key bridge at 1:29 a.m. Tuesday, causing the collapse of much of the infrastructure in a few seconds. At least six employees of a company doing repair work on the bridge lost their lives in the accident. All of them were migrants, originally from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. For now, Only the bodies of two of the deceased have been recovered, Alejandro Fernández Fuentes, 35 years old and of Mexican nationality, and Dorlián Castillo Cabrera, 26 years old and born in Guatemala.
Before the collision, the crew of the container ship issued an emergency warning, which allowed the circulation of vehicles on the bridge to be cut off and avoid a greater tragedy, according to authorities. However, it is not yet clear whether the workers, who were fixing potholes on the bridge at the time of the collapse, received this notice.
Source: Lasexta
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