The biggest Key Bridge section yet was pulled from the Patapsco River this weekend. Here’s how.

Dangling from one of the biggest floating cranes on the East Coast, the largest chunk yet of the fallen Francis Scott Key Bridge was moved ashore Sunday.

The approximately 450-ton section of truss sat Monday morning at a processing yard at Tradepoint Atlantic in Baltimore County, where orange sparks flew as workers sawed at the steel. Minutes later, a clawlike pair of shears attached to an excavator tugged on a weakened steel member, folding an entire triangular section of truss onto the ground.

“To date, this is the largest single lift of steel that we’ve had,” said James Harkness, chief engineer for the Maryland Transportation Authority. “When they brought it in yesterday, they actually had to cut it in half, because it was about 90 feet tall. So in order to make it manageable for the crews working in the processing yard, they cut it down.”

Officials estimate that a total of 50,000 short tons of debris are sitting in the Patapsco River, blocking access to the shipping channel that leads to the Port of Baltimore. The debris is steadily coming ashore in Sparrows Point, and once it’s cut down, it will be sent to local recycling companies.

Though there’s still a mountain to climb, the weekend’s operation to bring the large piece ashore is yet another milestone, said Navy Capt. Sal Suarez, the service’s supervisor of salvage and diving.

“Getting through all that, it worked out the way that it was planned. You’re a little bit ahead — a day ahead — of schedule,” Suarez said. “So it was, I don’t want to say celebratory, but it’s moving in the right direction. Everybody’s happy about that.”

Divers spent “days” studying and working on the portion of the bridge truss that was submerged in the Patapsco, Suarez said. Beneath the water, crews used a diamond wire saw to cut it into a manageable section, then attached rigging so that the massive Chesapeake 1000 crane could pull its first bridge piece out of the water and all the way to shore. The successful lift was a relief, Suarez said.

“They were pretty sure they had cut all the trusses — turns out they did — but if they had missed one, they would have had to stop the lift, go back down and cut the other truss,” he said.

The piece also may have been several hundred tons heavier, Suarez said, but chunks of the roadway fell to the bottom, rather than coming up with the steel.

Meanwhile, crews still are working to refloat the Dali, the giant cargo ship that toppled the bridge with more than 1,000 containers aboard, bound for Sri Lanka.

So far, they have removed about 40 containers, said Joseph Farrell, CEO of Resolve Marine, the maritime salvage contractor assigned to the Dali. Resolve believes it will need to remove about 140 containers to refloat the ship.

The ship has power, but the bow thruster isn’t operational, Farrell said. The crash severed electrical wiring tied to the bow thruster, a propeller-shaped system that helps maneuver the ship at lower speeds, and crews are hoping to bring the thruster back online.

“If we can, it’s a bonus,” Farrell said. “We don’t need it. It just helps, not having to have a tug (boat) up on that bow during the refloat.”

The plan is for tugboats to eventually guide the Dali back into a berth at the Port of Baltimore, Farrell said.

Meanwhile, members of the ship’s crew remain on board, completing their “day jobs” by keeping the ship running, Farrell said.

Monday, news broke that the FBI had boarded the ship, and had begun a criminal investigation into the crash, alongside investigations already underway by the National Transportation Safety Board and the Coast Guard.

Since the collapse March 26, dive teams have battled difficult conditions, said Robyn Bianchi, an assistant salvage master at New Jersey-based Donjon Marine Co. who has been working on the site.

Among the biggest struggles, she said, has been poor visibility in the murky Patapsco, caused by the ebb and flow of tides, which continually stir up muck at the collapse site.

From inside a “dive shack” on a barge at the collapse site, Bianchi said she can view video footage directly from the divers — but it doesn’t show much.

“A lot of the time, it’s probably right up to here,” said Bianchi, holding her hand about a foot from her face.

There’s also the challenge of navigating an underwater environment strewn with debris, including chunks of concrete and rebar that could snag a diver’s breathing tube, which they refer to as an “umbilical,” Bianchi said.

On top of it all, there is the emotional weight of diving at the site, where six people lost their lives. One of Bianchi’s salvage divers located human remains during a dive, she said, one of the three bodies that have been pulled from the river so far.

The diver came to the surface, and helped direct Maryland State Police divers to the body, Bianchi said.

“If we can try and help our divers, who are going to be on this project for a long time, not to have to really see that, something that is going to have a mental effect on them, we try and keep that out,” Bianchi said.

“It’s not something that we do often,” she said. “But salvage divers are prepared for that.”

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