In the midst of misfortune, the death of six colleagues due to the collapse of the Baltimore bridge, the Virgin appeared to Moisés Díaz last Tuesday.
This is what he himself commented before the cameras. That morning he had to work at night and he had to go to repair potholes at Francis Scott Key. A last minute setback caused the shift to be changed.
“I can't stop thanking God,” he confessed. Despite that gratitude, Díaz could not shake the pain over the loss of his colleagues. “I saw those who disappeared in this tragedy more as my family than as friends,” he lamented.
Díaz was able to visit the only survivor in the hospital who was doing maintenance on the bridge when the Dali hit, the cargo ship that suffered a complete blackout and its pilots lost control of the ship. He gave time for the emergency launched from the ship to close the highway that ran through that infrastructure to road traffic.
According to the version given to him by his surviving friend, the workers were not aware of the alert. They had finished covering the holes and had a break waiting for the concrete to dry.
So they got into their vehicles to rest. This is what explains why the only two bodies recovered were found inside a red pick-up truck. The rescue tasks of the other four bodies (no one doubts that they are dead) have been postponed due to the danger posed to the submariners by trying to get into the scrap metal, but they assure that they will return as soon as the cleaning tasks are finished, and the removal of the remains of the bridge and the freighter itself.
Julio Cervantes, according to his friend, managed to crawl and get out through the window of the sunken vehicle. “He thought he was going to die and, although he couldn't swim,” he survived, Diaz explained. They all came to the United States chasing the promised land.
Meanwhile, teams of engineers and specialists this Saturday began the complicated work of cutting and removing the first sections of twisted steel from the Francis Scott Key, which completely fell into the bed of the Patapso River like a house of cards after the ship collided with one of its pillars.
Sparks from the blowtorches could be seen flying from sections of metal bent into a mess. The coast guard confirmed that they had begun to remove one of the parts of the collapsed structure. The federal government granted an emergency allocation of 60 million dollars to face this maneuver.
The teams of workers very carefully measured and cut the steel of the dismantled bridge before placing the straps to lift it and deposit it on barges that took it from the scene of the tragedy, an essential task to be able to reopen the port as soon as possible.
A total of seven floating cranes, including the one considered the largest in the United States, capable of lifting 1,000 tons, were at the site, in the waters southeast of the city of Maryland. Ten tugboats, nine barges, eight rescue vessels and five coast guard vessels were also involved.
Each movement affects the one that will occur next without yet knowing how long the entire operation will take. "I cannot emphasize enough the importance of this day with the first movements to remove the remains of the destroyed bridge. This is going to be a remarkably complicated process," said the state governor, Wes Moore.
