Maryland’s Department of Transportation is asking the Biden administration for $60 million to clean up the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore that collapsed after a cargo ship ran into it early Tuesday morning.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore declared a state of emergency Tuesday, which will allow the state to receive federal aid, but on Thursday, the state requested $60 million more in emergency federal funding to help clean up the wreckage. The total cost of the cleanup and recovery remains uncertain, MDT wrote.
Following the bridge’s partial collapse, President Joe Biden pledged that the government would cover the cost of rebuilding efforts. Though it is “too soon to be certain” how much the rebuild will cost and how much time it will take, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Wednesday.
“I do not know what the total costs are going to be. I do not yet know what the full timeline is going to be,” Moore told reporters Wednesday. “But the thing that I do know is that the task in front of us, it will be real, and it will be daunting. Despite this task ahead of being daunting, I can tell you right now our resolve is unshaken. We will get to completion. We will do it together.”
While the state will have access to the aid in the next couple of days, funding in the long term could take longer to get pushed through Congress, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) told the Washington Post.
The Department of Transportation’s relief program requires the federal government to pay for 90% of damage repairs, while the remaining is left up to the state. Federal agencies will reimburse all repairs conducted in the first 270 days after a disaster to restore essential travelways, minimize damage, and protect remaining facilities, the Post reported.
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So far, six individuals from a construction crew who were filling potholes on the bridge have been presumed dead, and two victims have been recovered from the wreckage.
The National Transportation Board has recovered the audio recordings leading up to the crash and produced a preliminary timeline in the moments before the ship collided with the bridge. The agency has not yet revealed a formal cause of the crash, though it was reported that the ship had lost power before it hit the bridge.
