10-13-2024 W2W - Flipbook - Page 34
Answering
THE CALL
When the Key Bridge fell, women rose up to
play important roles in response, recovery
By Cassidy Jensen
N
inety-nine days after the Francis Scott
Key Bridge fell, Robyn Bianchi’s job
was finally complete.
On July 3, the assistant salvage
master for New Jersey-based Donjon Marine
lingered on a pier to watch a container ship pass
through the channel where she had worked seven
days a week, sometimes 18 hours a day, directing
divers’ underwater efforts to cut and clear away
the bridge’s wreckage.
The shipping channel was clear and the Port
of Baltimore was open. The families of the six
construction workers who died had some closure
in the form of the men’s remains, some discovered
underwater by Donjon divers. As Bianchi drove
away from Baltimore, she felt a twinge of sadness.
“You put your whole life into a job for so long,
three months, and it’s just over with. I kept looking in my rearview mirror and I was like, ‘All right,
this is done. What’s next?'” she said.
In the hours, days and weeks after the March 26
collapse, hundreds of people sprang into action to
attack the logistical puzzle of removing the fallen
bridge, offer relief for port workers who couldn’t
work, and support families who had suddenly lost
their fathers, sons and brothers.
Many were women — some, like Bianchi, working in male-dominated fields — who labored
tirelessly behind the scenes to respond to an
engineering, economic and human disaster with
far-reaching consequences for the region.
34 | 2024 | WOMEN TO WATCH
When news reports about the bridge collapse
began to emerge on the morning of March 26,
Giuliana Valencia-Banks, Baltimore County’s
chief of immigrant affairs, found she couldn’t
stay away.
As soon as she learned that there had been a
construction crew on the bridge when the Dali
struck it, Valencia-Banks left the education
conference in Montgomery County where she
had just arrived and drove back to Baltimore.
“I immediately knew: It’s immigrant workers. And then in my head, I started to spin about,
‘Well, who’s reached out to their families? Was
it through an interpreter? Are they getting crisis
mental health support?’” she said.
By 11:30 a.m., she was with the families and a
team of FBI interpreters, calling bilingual mental
health workers and faith leaders who could offer
immediate support, and already thinking about
the obstacles particular to immigrant families
with lives defined by shifting legal realities.
Valencia-Banks, whose regular job involves
making county government more accessible to
immigrants, worries that a sense of humanity can
be lost in those political debates. “We forget that
immigrants aren’t just a workforce, that they’re
somebody’s child, that they’re somebody’s
parents, that they’re community members,” she
said.
One of her first phone calls that morning was
to Donna Marie Fallon Batkis, a Towson-based
Robyn Bianchi, an assistant
salvage master and dive master,
was a key part of the Key Bridge
response. PHOTO BY KEVIN
RICHARDSON
The container ship Dali, right,
is seen in the wreckage of
Francis Scott Key Bridge on
April 1, 2024, almost a week
after it hit a structural pier
causing the bridge collapse.
BALTIMORE SUN FILE
