New director faced with setting stalled Port of Baltimore back on course

BALTIMORE — Jonathan Daniels was just weeks into his new role as head of one of the nation’s busiest ports when his job changed overnight.

Since the March 26 collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, Daniels has instead overseen a nearly closed Port of Baltimore. The executive director of the Maryland Port Administration since Feb. 5, Daniels now spends his days pursuing goals that may seem at odds, steering the port through a calamity while planning for its growth.

A 30-year-veteran who has managed ports through hurricanes and a global pandemic, Daniels said Friday he feels confident Baltimore’s port will see a resurgence when the crisis ends.

“We’re confident that we’re going to get [cargo business] back,” said Daniels, a 55-year-old native of upstate New York who previously headed Port Everglades in Florida and the Mississippi State Port Authority.

“While we’re dealing with this catastrophic event, we have not lost sight of the fact that there’s still a port to run,” he said. “I came here to work with this port team on managing the assets … while setting forth a plan to grow our lines of business.”

In the weeks since the Dali freighter struck the bridge, collapsing the span and killing six construction workers, authorities have been working to recover bodies of two of the men who remain missing while clearing the Patapsco River of bridge wreckage.

Already, Baltimore’s port has reached a milestone with the opening Thursday of the first deep-draft channel since the collapse, allowing five vessels that had been trapped by the wreckage to leave and another five to bring in cargo such as dry bulk material and some empty vessels that will load at Baltimore’s docks. That 38-foot channel was the fourth to open, besides others ranging from 11 feet to 20 feet that have let smaller vessels and barge traffic resume, including 14 million pounds of raw sugar delivered this week to Domino Sugar’s Inner Harbor refinery.

It’s too soon to say how much of an economic boost can come before the temporary channel is closed in a few days until May 10. Some of it is weather dependent and all is under the direction of the Coast Guard.

Each day, sometimes multiple times, Daniels joins briefings on salvage effort progress at the Unified Command headquarters with federal, state and local officials.

But much of his time is spent communicating with stakeholders and businesses that use the port.

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