It’s lost work for longshoremen and charter boats because of Baltimore’s port closing
Baltimore’s port closure means lost work: Source: From longshoremen to charter boats, the tragedy of the Baltimore Key Bridge is coming to an end
The container ship hit the base of the Key Bridge and set off a chain of events. The bridge fell into the river with twisted metal covering the ship and thousands of containers. Eight construction workers and their cars tumbled into the water. Four of the workers are still missing and presumed dead, while two are dead. The Port of Baltimore is one of the busiest in the country, and is now partially blocked by the disaster.
“Quite a few are out of work right now,” says Scott Cowan, president of International Longshoremen’s Association Local 333 in Baltimore. He represents 2,400 dockworkers and ILA members in the Port of Baltimore.
These are the workers who load and unload ships at the port. They operate cranes. They receive and deliver cargo. They do maintenance and repair work on equipment and containers. They record and record the movement of cargo.
“Some of our maintenance guys and mechanics are still going to work to maintain the equipment in the facility,” says Cowan. There’s a lot of work, but the bulk is unloading and loading. That’s where the labor-intensive jobs are, where we use a lot of people. … Right now that’s not happening.
How long it takes to get the shipping channel cleared will determine how deeply port workers are affected — and the size of the impact to Maryland’s economy. Cowan says the closure of the shipping channel is costing $191 million a day in lost economic activity.
The state has set up a dedicated unemployment line for workers affected by the port closure. Only 200 workers have made unemployment claims, according to aMaryland Department of Labor spokesman.
The Maryland Senate president, Bill Ferguson, stated earlier this week that he would sponsor an emergency bill to give income support to the workers who have lost their jobs due to the port’s closing.
However, he does not think that the impact will last and believes that the cargo will come in strong around the Christmas season. We should be fine.
Source: From longshoremen to charter boats, Baltimore’s port closure means lost work
The Baltimore-Saeda Sailboat: What’s up with Boat Baltimore? When Will We Open It Again? After the Bridge Collapse
Bobby LaPin — “Captain Bobby” — owns and operates Boat Baltimore, offering sailing tours of Baltimore Harbor and the Chesapeake Bay. He docks the 45-foot-long sailboat Saeda at a marina in South Baltimore.
He’d been working on getting cruises ready for the beginning of April. Now he won’t open until May. The sailboat is anchored, with a blue tarp on its deck.
He says the opening day was moved because they didn’t want to add to the boats in the harbor. I don’t want to take bookings for people who are trying to get on the boat in order to view the devastation of the bridge.
Normally he’d be hiring deckhands and captains to work for the summer, folks who work the winter in Florida and the summer up north. He is holding off on hiring at the moment.
It’s too early to know the impact on his business, but he expects tourists and conventioneers to stay away for a while. Since the bridge collapsed, he couldn’t get more profitable bookings to sail out to the bay.
“Obviously, the No. 1 concern economically is going to be to clear the channel so shipping can start. And then after that happens, they have to build a bridge,” he says. They need to block the channel in order to build a bridge. Are we even going to have a bridge again?
The bridge alone could cost $400 million to $1 billion, according to experts. But insurance costs will drive up the total price tag of the disaster.
A professor at a university says that it won’t be necessary to close the channel while the bridge is being built. There are some construction techniques that will allow the channel to stay open, and this has been a common challenge for bridge builders since at least the late 19th century.
The Baltimore peninsula waterfront development — a crime scene at the collapse of a Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Fla. (Summer 2013)
All the boats were moored along the waterfront at the marina. Next door, the terminal at Cruise Maryland sits empty, the giant ships now directed to other moorings. Just inland from the marina are the sleek new buildings of Baltimore Peninsula, with apartments, office space and restaurants.
The waterfront operations manager for the company that’s developing the peninsula is Alex Snider. He says this time of year is generally quiet at the marina, before the season for recreational boaters picks up in late April or early May.
In the months ahead, there is a sailing club, a kayak launch and a lot of other things planned at the marina. We’ve got the Baltimore Dragon Boat Club’s going to be rowing out of here this year. So it’s very busy.”
He says it was a beautiful bridge. “I’ve piloted driven boats, captained boats under that bridge hundreds and hundreds of times. … It’s going to be strange, not being able to see that.
It looked like a crime scene at the site of the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore on Sunday, where police were keeping people and drones away.
Some of the bridge was blocked off by the river, and some girders were submerged in the water after the container ship hit it.
The two bodies of construction workers who were on the bridge when it crashed were recovered last week, while a search is continuing for four others who are still missing.
No timeline to recover four bodies after Baltimore bridge collapse, as cleanup begins: A spokesperson for the National Transportation Safety Board, the Coast Guard, and the Navy
“We are focused on bringing that measure of comfort and closure to the families. He said that there is no timetable because of how complex the operation is.
The US Army Corps of Engineers will look at the damage before considering moving the ship. Maryland authorities think that it will be easier to move when the debris clears after an initial survey showed that the hull of the ship was undamaged.
He said that the 700 feet wide and 50 feet deep channel has a lot of heavy steel in it, with concrete at the bottom. The steel needs to be taken out and the concrete needs to be removed.
The National Transportation Safety Board has said that there are tons of hazardous material in some of the containers, some of which been knocked loose. The shipping company and the Coast Guard are in charge of stabilizing the containers and the vessel, Spellmon said.
Responders have begun cutting up the bridge to remove the wreckage. The bridge that was being pulled from the ship was the size of the Eiffel Tower, according to Gov. Moore.
Moore said that the largest operational crane on the East Coast would be used to open secondary pathways and carry over 1,000 tons.
Source: ‘No timeline’ to recover 4 bodies after Baltimore bridge collapse, as cleanup begins
The Baltimore bridge crash: The largest marine insured loss and how much will it affect Lloyd’s? Maryland, Kentucky, and other insurance marketplaces
“When the divers are going down … it’s pitch dark, I mean you can only see between a foot to two in front of you, so it’s really a feeling operation,” he said.
“This is not just going to impact Maryland. Moore said Maryland didn’t need any favors. We need the bipartisan support we need to get our economy going again, so that we can help farmers in Kentucky, auto dealers in Ohio, and restaurants in Tennessee.
The Baltimore bridge crash is being called the largest-ever marine insured loss, Bruce Carnegie-Brown, chair of the global insurance marketplace Lloyd’s of London told CNBC.
It will be one of the biggest costs for business interruption, for all the ships that are stuck in port, the ones that can’t get out, all the goods that are being delayed traveling around the world,” he said.
The cargo owners can claim the delay in their business as an insurance claim, which can cost them money. She said there will also be compensation payments because of the lives lost and for any injuries.
She said while Lloyd’s may be the most exposed, other insurance companies will also feel the pressure, including those in the U.S., in Bermuda, and reinsurers who insure insurers.
The Baltimore Key Bridge collapsed due to heavy rain after a ship hit it from the north, killing at least five people. The ship had hit the bridge’s base with a major container ship, injuring more than 100 people. The container ship was carrying a cargo of iron ore from China when it hit the bridge.