March 30 (Reuters) - Salvage crews worked to lift the

first piece of Baltimore's collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge

from the water on Saturday to allow barges and tugboats to

access the disaster site, Maryland and U.S. officials said, the

first step in a complex effort to reopen the city's blocked

port.

The steel truss bridge collapsed early on Tuesday morning,

killing six road workers, when a massive container ship lost

power and crashed into a support pylon. Much of the span crashed

into the Patapsco River, blocking the Port of Baltimore's

shipping channel.

Maryland Governor Wes Moore told a news conference that a

section of the bridge's steel superstructure north of the crash

site would be cut into a piece that could be lifted by crane

onto a barge and brought to the nearby Tradepoint Atlantic site

at Sparrows Point.

"This will eventually allow us to open up a temporary

restricted channel that will help us to get more vessels in the

water around the site of the collapse," Moore said.

He declined to provide a timeline for this portion of the

clearance work. "It's not going to take hours," he said. "It's

not going to take days, but once we complete this phase of the

work, we can move more tugs and more barges and more boats into

the area to accelerate our recovery."

Workers will not yet attempt to remove a crumpled part of

the bridge's superstructure that is resting on the bow of the

Dali, the 984-foot Singapore-flagged container ship that brought

down the bridge. Moore said it was unclear when the ship could

be moved, but said that its hull, while damaged, is "intact."

"This is a remarkably complex operation," Moore said of the

effort to clear bridge debris and open the Port of Baltimore to

shipping traffic.

The bodies of two workers who were repairing the bridge deck

at the time of the disaster have been recovered, but Moore said

efforts to recover four others presumed dead remain suspended

because conditions are too dangerous for divers to work amid too

much debris.

Coast Guard Rear Admiral Shannon Gilreath told reporters

that teams from the Coast Guard, the U.S. Navy's salvage arm and

the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said the debris from the

Patapsco River's deep-draft shipping channel would have to be

removed before the Dali could be moved.

Saturday's operation involves cutting a piece just north of

that channel and lifting it with a 160-ton marine crane onto a

barge. A larger, 1,000-ton crane also is at the bridge site.

The piece will be brought to Tradepoint Atlantic, the site

of the former Bethlehem Steel Mill which is being developed into

a distribution center for companies including Amazon.com ( AMZN )

, Home Depot ( HD ) and Volkswagen. The

facility's port, which sits on the Chesapeake Bay side of the

collapsed bridge, is fully operational.

Tradepoint Atlantic did not immediately respond to a request

for comment on the company's role in the salvage operation.

Maryland Transportation Secretary Paul Wiedefield said

that Tradepoint officials had agreed to allow other ships to

unload vehicles at the facility's deepwater dock to be prepared

for shipment to dealers.

In Oklahoma, authorities said on Saturday they shut down a

portion of U.S. highway 59 near Sallisaw after a barge struck a

bridge over the Arkansas River. There were no immediate reports

of injuries, according to media reports, and officials would be

conducting inspections of the bridge.

Five days after the tragedy in Maryland, the jobs of some

15,000 people whose work revolves around daily port operation

are on hold. While logistics experts say that other East Coast

ports should be able to handle container traffic, Baltimore is

the largest U.S. port for "roll-on, roll-off" vehicle imports

and exports of farm and construction equipment.

U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland said the Small

Business Administration has approved the state's request for a

disaster declaration that allows small firms affected by the

disaster to apply for emergency low-interest loans of up to $2

million through the end of 2024.

The federal government on Thursday awarded Maryland an

initial $60 million in emergency funds to clear debris and begin

rebuilding the Key Bridge, an extraordinarily fast disbursement.

President Joe Biden has pledged that the federal government

would cover all costs of removing the debris and rebuilding the

bridge.