Delaware Memorial Bridge to close early Saturday morning for about 30 minutes between 12:30 a.m. and 1:30 a.m. Daniel Sato/The News Journal/Wochit
The Delaware Memorial Bridge will be closed early Saturday morning to accommodate the passage of heavy cargo bound for Philadelphia.
The shutdown will take place for about 30 minutes between 12:30 a.m. and 1:30 a.m., according to the Delaware River and Bay Authority. The shutdown is a safety precaution because the cargo will clear the bridge by only 4 to 9 feet.
The Zen Hua 16, a heavy lift cargo vessel, is carrying new ship-to-shore cranes. The distance from the water level to the top of the cranes is 188 feet, 5 inches, requiring the ship to travel under the bridge during low tide, according to the Delaware River and Bay Authority.
Both lanes of traffic on the bridge will reopen when Zen Hua 16 clears the structure.
The ship was anchored off Lewes Thursday afternoon.
The two container cranes are some of the world's largest. They're called super-post-Panamax cranes and can weigh between 1,760 and 2,200 tons.
The cranes are bound for PhilaPort’s Packer Avenue Marine Terminal. They were purchased at a cost of $23.5 million, according to the port.
“These new cranes will be the largest and most modern, capable of unloading containers from the largest container ships in the world," PhilaPort CEO Jeff Theobald said in a December news release.
The cranes are the first to arrive of four purchased over the past year bound for the port. Under a 2017 port development plan, an agreement was made for Greenwich Terminals, a subsidiary of Holt Logistics, to buy one of the cranes and for the port to buy three.
The second shipment of cranes will arrive in 2019.
Contact at aduvernay@delawareonline.com or (302) 319-1855 or @duvINdelaware.