10-13-2024 W2W - Flipbook - Page 38
Donna Marie Fallon Batkis, a bilingual therapist and social worker, was part of the team helping the families of the Key Bridge disaster victims immediately after the
bridge collapse. PHOTO BY BARBARA HADDOCK TAYLOR
support to the workers’ family members to
remove the threat of deportation from the still-ongoing grieving process and the years of expected
bridge-related litigation.
“It is going to take so, so, so much longer for
healing and resolution and for questions to be
answered,” she said. “People need to be able to do
that without thinking about whether ICE is going
to come up tomorrow.”
Meanwhile, removing the fallen Key Bridge
from the Patapsco River, freeing the entangled
Dali and allowing ship traffic to resume was a
massive undertaking, one that required smooth
coordination among state, federal and local
authorities, as well as private companies.
When Bianchi, who attended the U.S. Naval
Academy, arrived at Unified Command to begin
the salvage operation, she realized quickly that
even rival companies were willing to put egos
aside to deal with such a severe event. “If we try
and attack this problem individually, we’re gonna
fail,” she said.
Bianchi grew up fishing and diving with her dad
38 | 2024 | WOMEN TO WATCH
“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.”
— Giuliana Valencia-Banks, Baltimore
County’s chief of immigrant affairs
and brother in Florida and always dreamed of a
career as a diver. She joined Donjon Marine after
serving in the Navy, including a stint in Bahrain.
More recently, she returned to Maryland again to
help free the 103-foot yacht the LoveBug, which
capsized in July at the mouth of the West River.
Divers played a key role in extracting the Key
Bridge wreckage from the bottom of the Patapsco
in “bite-sized chunks,” Bianchi said. Often working in murky conditions, divers first surveyed
where the bridge had fallen and its condition.
Later, they placed diamond wire saws underwater to slice sections of debris so workers could use
cranes to lift pieces up and carry them off in boats.
“This was a very, very large scale, massive
salvage effort. I can’t compare it to anything I’ve
been involved in,” she said.
The work to coordinate divers and lead the
operations side of their efforts was grueling. Bianchi lost weight and lost sleep fretting over dive
reports or a major lift planned for the next day,
but she relished the challenge.
“I thrive in chaos,” Bianchi said. “I love to be in
a situation where we have to do the impossible
on the impossible timeline with a group of people
and you just bring [them] together. There’s just
something so satisfying about taking a challenge
like that —that not a lot of people can do — and
just learning and getting through it and getting
the job done.”
