Crew stuck as ship can't move with big chunk of bridge resting on it

They are required to remain on board and help with probe while debris is being cleared

- Bhagyashree Garekar

A heavy chunk of a bridge in Baltimore that rests on a ship that knocked down the bridge will have to be hacked into pieces and hauled away by cranes before the vessel can be towed away.

Until then, the 22 all-Indian crew members of the Dali container ship will likely have to stay on board.

In the early hours of March 26, the Singapore-flagged ship "lost propulsion" and rammed into a pillar of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, causing it to collapse into the Patapsco River.

"The crew will probably move with the ship, so long as nothing goes wrong in the process of removing debris," Petty Officer Carmen Caver of the United States Coast Guard told The Sunday Times on March 29.

"They will most likely go shoreside when the boat itself does," she said, speaking from the Unified Command and Joint Information Centre set up to coordinate responses and disseminate information about the bridge.

Ms Caver, however, added that she could not specify the timeframe in which the ship will be moved.

The 300m-long ship, about the length of three football fields, was headed for a four-week voyage to Sri Lanka.