Biden visits Baltimore to assess bridge collapse damage

During a visit to the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse site on Friday, President Joe Biden pledged federal support for the recovery effort while offering his condolences to the families of six workers killed when a container ship collided with the bridge last week.

“To all our military members and first responders and most importantly, the people of Maryland. I’m here to say your nation has your back, and I mean it — your nation has your back,” Biden said, amid the backdrop of the collapsed bridge. “The damage is devastating, and our hearts are still breaking. Eight, eight construction workers went into the water when the bridge fell, six lost their lives. Most were immigrants, but all were Marylanders —hard-working strong and selfless.”

Here’s what you should know about his visit:

President Joe Biden on Friday referenced a portion of the US national anthem — written by the namesake of the Francis Scott Key Bridge — to say that Baltimore will make it through the challenges presented by the bridge’s collapse.

“This port is older than our republic. It’s been through tough, tough times before,” the president said.

Key wrote the poem that eventually became “The Star-Spangled Banner” while watching a British assault on the harbor during the War of 1812.

“As the dawn broke,” the president said, “we saw the American flag still flying. Baltimore was still standing, and our nation, as he wrote in ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ had made it through a “perilous fight.”

“Folks,” Biden added. “That’s going to take time. … We’re determined to come back even stronger.”

President Joe Biden on Friday said he hopes the channel closed off by the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge last week will be reopened by May.

“So far, our team has been able to clear two small channels for essential ships, helping clear the wreckage,” Biden said.

A third channel for some commercial traffic — including car carriers, which used Baltimore as a crucial port for US imports — should be opened by the end of this month, Biden said.

“By the end of May, we’ll open the full channel,” he said.

More context: The US Army Corps of Engineers announced Thursday it plans to fully reopen the channel leading to the Baltimore port by the end of May. While the dangerous work of clearing the channel to the Port of Baltimore continues, the US Army Corps of Engineers Baltimore District said it plans to open a “limited access channel” that will be about 280 feet wide by the end of April.

President Joe Biden on Friday referred to his own experience of loss while referencing the families of the six construction workers who were killed when the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed last week.

“I’ve been there,” said Biden, who lost his wife and daughter in a car crash in 1972 and his son, Beau, to brain cancer in 2015.

“The anger, the pain, the depth of loss is so profound,” he added, noting that one day the memory of a loved one “is going to bring a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eye.”

Biden is expected to meet with some of the relatives of those killed on the bridge after his remarks conclude.

President Joe Biden told Baltimore the country has its back as the city recovers from last Tuesday’s collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge.

“I’m here to say your nation has your back,” Biden said in Baltimore, after receiving an operational briefing from local officials. He repeated: “Your nation has your back.”

On President Joe Biden’s first stop in Baltimore, he was briefed by Brigadier Gen. John Lloyd, who commands the North Atlantic Division for the US Army Corps of Engineers, on recovery efforts around the Key Bridge collapse to open the channel.

“You gave us the priority to open the federal channel again and get the port of Baltimore operational—what I can tell you sir, is I am extremely confident we are going to make that happen,” Lloyd told Biden. “And why do I say that? Two reasons—first, the mobilization of people and the equipment.”

Lloyd outlined challenges facing the team, noting as he’s visited the site, there is “a lot of bridge resting on that vessel,” which will require engineers to cut the vessel and lift it out of the channel. Still, he said, “the cooperation is fantastic—the best I’ve ever seen,” offering special praise for Maryland Gov. Wes Moore.

“The governor is a former army guy too, Mr. President, so it makes it easy to work with him,” Lloyd said, prompting Biden to joke, “This guy’s got guns as big as my thigh.”

Biden was then briefed on rebuilding efforts before hearing from Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on the federal response. Buttigieg said the department has supported Maryland in four main areas: “Help them get the port back open, deal with the supply chain applications in the meantime, helping get the bridge back up and deal with the surface traffic implications.”

The transportation secretary touted $60 million in emergency relief to the region “within hours of it coming in.” He also pledged “that is a down payment, and just the beginning, but as more requests come in, we’ll make sure that we can turn them around right away too.”

The group is now moving to the banks of the river for Biden’s remarks.

As the local community begins the difficult work needed to return to some sense of normality after the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed, experts say that, at the very least, the local economy will likely withstand the effects of the bridge’s collapse.

The collapse will indeed have some economic impact, but it will likely be limited.

Here’s a snapshot of Baltimore’s regional economy and why it’ll be likely spared from an economic disaster:

President Joe Biden will see federal response efforts firsthand and receive an aerial tour of the damage caused by the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore during his visit to the city Friday, a White House official said.

“President Biden will travel to Baltimore where he will receive an operational update on response efforts from the Unified Command, including the Coast Guard and Army Corps of Engineers on assistance to state officials in surveying and removing the wreckage in the channel and allowing the Port of Baltimore to reopen as soon as humanly possible,” the official said in a statement released Thursday night.

Biden will also meet with the loved ones of the six construction workers killed when the bridge collapsed last week, the official added.

The president will be joined by:

Before its disastrous collapse last week, the Francis Scott Key Bridge served as an economically crucial gateway: Thousands of container ships crossing from the Atlantic to Baltimore’s port passed under the bridge’s decades-old span.

But the now-ruined structure isn’t the only bridge along that same key shipping route: Twenty miles downstream, massive container ships headed to Baltimore also pass under the Chesapeake Bay Bridge near Annapolis.

And according to experts who reviewed its design for CNN, it could also be at risk of collapse if one of those vessels rammed into it.

Several of the 4-mile-long Bay Bridge’s concrete piers, which sit in the middle of the shipping channel, appear vulnerable to the type of ship collision that destroyed the Key Bridge, experts said.

The bridge is “lacking in safety measures,” said Adel ElSafty, an engineering professor at the University of North Florida, who said the structure should be reassessed in light of the Key Bridge collapse. “It could very much be vulnerable to a ship impact.”

CNN reviewed the protective design features of more than a dozen major US bridges that cross shipping channels leading to the biggest ports in the country.

Most have stronger defenses against ship collisions than the Key Bridge had, such as more robust fender systems or larger concrete structures designed to deflect oncoming vessels, according to statements from local officials and interviews with more than a half-dozen structural engineering experts.

But a handful of other bridges, including the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, have less significant defenses, according to experts – potentially placing them at risk as increasingly large container ships pass under them.

Read more about what other US bridges are facing.

The Biden administration is asking Congress to allow the federal government to pay for 100% of the costs for reconstructing the Francis Scott Key Bridge following its collapse last week.

In a letter to congressional leaders, Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said the request was “consistent with past catastrophic bridge collapses, including in 2007, when the Congress acted in a bipartisan manner within days of the I-35W bridge collapse in Minnesota.”

“We stand ready to work with the Congress to ensure the City of Baltimore and the State of Maryland has what it needs to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which is critical to the Nation’s workers and economy,” Young writes.

Unified Command divers conducted operations yesterday near the site of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse, according to a video released today.

“These divers conduct surveys beneath the surface of the water to provide the Unified Command with information on the underwater wreckage,” the group said.

The Unified Command includes the US Coast Guard, US Army Corps of Engineers, Maryland Department of Environment, Maryland Transpiration Authority, emergency management company Witt O’Brien’s and Maryland State Police. 

The US Army Corps of Engineers announced yesterday it aims to fully reopen the channel leading to the Baltimore port by the end of May – a significant update since the disaster halted vessel traffic and delivered a serious blow to a port that is critical to local and national economies.

Ahead of President Joe Biden’s visit to Baltimore, the far-right House Freedom Caucus is laying out a series of hardline demands for any supplemental funding for the Francis Scott Key bridge disaster — a sign of how an emergency aid package could face a bumpy path in the GOP-controlled House.

Before agreeing to federal funds, Freedom Caucus members want to “first seek maximum liability from the foreign shipping companies upfront” and also want the Port of Baltimore to draw upon “already available federal funds.” 

The group also said any funding must be “limited to physical structure repairs,” and are also demanding that the Biden administration to lift a pause on LNG exports.

The Biden administration is asking Congress to allow the federal government to pay for 100% of the costs for reconstructing the bridge.

The six construction workers who lost their lives in the Key Bridge collapse were immigrants from four countries – Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico and Guatemala.

Their stories and aspirations mirrored the lives of millions of new entrants to the United States.

They are far more representative of the migrant population than the extreme and misleading picture often spouted about migrants by Donald Trump. The Republican presumptive nominee often falsely claims foreign countries are sending their “worst people” as a de-facto invasion force to the US.

Trump’s demonization of immigrants who are trying to cross into the country illegally, who he claims are “poisoning the blood” of the country, often feels like a shorthand condemnation of migrants as a whole.

Often, migrants do jobs that other people don’t want to do – the ones with the lowest wages and the worst conditions. Some do so to support families in the US and to lay the foundation of better lives for their children and grandchildren.

Many send money home to support relatives who live in far less affluent economies. Mexican immigrant workers for instance transferred more than $60 billion in remittances to their country in 2023, according to Mexico’s central bank.

The sacrifices of those missing might be worth remembering when the anti-immigrant rhetoric cranks up again in the run-up to November’s presidential election.

And when the Francis Scott Key Bridge rises again, it’s a good bet it will be immigrants who are building it.

A group of six Latino immigrant workers fell to their deaths while working on Baltimore’s doomed Francis Scott Key Bridge last week. When construction begins to rebuild it, more Latino immigrants will almost certainly join the effort to reopen the crucial transportation artery.

Latino workers make up about a third of America’s construction industry, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a huge overrepresentation considering they make up just 19% of the overall American population and 17.6% of its workforce. More than two-thirds of Hispanic construction workers in America are foreign-born.

For the millions of recent Latino immigrants, construction jobs have low barriers to entry and the openings are plentiful. Stable construction jobs can also allow a path to upward mobility.

“We’re not just here trying to change our lives and achieve our goals and dreams. It’s also everyone we have left behind in our countries, we sustain them, we help them,” construction worker Reinaldo Quintero said to CNN. “We are the ones people call when they’re sick, when they can’t afford food.”

That’s why, from immediate disaster response like Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana and Hurricane Ian in Florida to longer-term reconstruction, Latino immigrant workers flow in to help rebuild communities. These laborers perform a variety of jobs throughout the country. They rake out heaps of debris from flooded homes, tear down moldy drywall, rebuild streets, reconstruct residences and repair faulty electrical wires — and when it’s time, they’ll likely help rebuild the Key Bridge.

Read more.

The US Army Corps of Engineers Baltimore District announced Thursday it is aiming to reopen the Fort McHenry Channel by the end of May and restore access to the Port of Baltimore to “normal capacity.”

The announcement comes just over a week after a cargo ship that was leaving the port slammed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge, causing the structure to collapse into the channel and killing six construction workers.

In a news release, the Army Corps of Engineers said it plans to open a “limited access channel” to the Port of Baltimore by the end of April.

Lt. Gen. Scott A. Spellmon, USACE commanding general, called the timelines “ambitious,” and said they “may still be impacted by significant adverse weather conditions or changes in the complexity of the wreckage.”

““We are working quickly and safely to clear the channel and restore full service at this port that is so vital to the nation,” Spellmon said in the statement. “At the same time, we continue to keep faith with the families of the missing and are working with our partners to help locate and recover their loved ones.”

CNN’s Gloria Pazmino contributed reporting.

President Joe Biden will today meet with some of the relatives of the six construction workers who died in the collapse of the Francis Scott Key bridge, the White House said.

The White House previously announced Biden would be meeting with local officials and viewing the wreckage of the bridge, which collapsed early last week after a massive cargo ship hit one of its support pillars, sending the bridge into the water and choking the port of Baltimore, which sees millions of dollars of trade every day.

Tom Perez, the White House director of intergovernmental affairs who visited with some of the families last week, described “inconsolable” relatives and the urgency with which officials are working to recover the remaining four bodies that remain accounted for in a twisted mess of steel.

Perez told CNN he was in touch with the families and is coordinating with various government agencies, including US Citizenship and Immigration Services to coordinate visits to the United States for some relatives.

“We’re working very closely with the folks in the immigrant affairs offices to identify those needs – and there’s a range of needs,” Perez said.

Perez noted that the US is engaged in different processes involving four different countries, in addition to specific requests from the families, including some who want to visit the US and at least one who wants the victim’s body repatriated.

They worked the overnight shift fixing potholes on a famed bridge that 30,000 Marylanders relied on daily.

But their work ended in tragedy last week when a 213-million-pound cargo vessel crashed into the bridge, plunging the construction workers into the dangerously cold water below.

Here’s what we know about the bridge collapse victims: