No timetable yet for reopening Port of Baltimore

US Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg said today he is unable to provide a timetable as to when the Port of Baltimore will fully reopen.

The channel that vessels use to access the majority of the port is blocked by the 116,851dwt container vessel Dali and the remains of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which collapsed when the crew lost control of the Dali and it slammed into a bridge support.

"No matter how quickly the channel can be reopened, we know that it can't happen overnight," Buttigieg said in a briefing at the White House.

While the original bridge took five years to construct, that does not necessarily mean it will take five years to replace, he added.

Buttigieg, in a televised interview, said administration officials are in discussions with the operators of a logistics center outside the main port, Tradepoint Atlantic at Sparrows Point, to see if it can step up operations to handle more cargo, at least on a temporary basis.

On Wednesday the Wolfsburg, a regularly scheduled roll-on-roll-off vessel for Volkswagen, was able to stop at Tradepoint's site. Tradepoint said it was the first cargo arriving at the Port of Baltimore since "the tragic accident on Tuesday."

The Army Corp of Engineers, which has been brought in to restore the waterway, is moving "very aggressively" to deploy resources and equipment, said Vice Admiral Peter Gautier, deputy commandant for operations of the US Coast Guard.

And the ship's operator has brought in Resolve Marine, a marine salvage company, to refloat the vessel and remove it from the area, according to the Coast Guard.

Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) boarded the vessel late Tuesday and are back on the ship on Wednesday. The agency has recovered the data from the voyage data recorder and sent it to the NTSB lab.

By Stephen Cunningham