Complex, time-sensitive assignments are nothing new to Col. Estee S. Pinchasin. In August 2021, just weeks after becoming the 69th commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Baltimore District, she led an expedited effort to identify, lease and outfit suitable properties in the Washington, D.C., area to temporarily house and process thousands of incoming Afghan evacuees, a critical first step toward their eventual resettlement in communities across the country.

Just over two years later, when a disabled container vessel struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore in the early morning hours of March 26, 2024, causing the main span to collapse, Pinchasin’s leadership would again prove critical as she became a member of a multi-agency unified command tasked with coordinating the emergency response.

Since the Corps is responsible for maintaining the deep-draft Patapsco River channel to the Port of Baltimore, she was the point person to oversee a massive federally contracted salvage effort to reopen one of the nation’s main ports of entry. Enlisting expertise and resources from the U.S. Navy’s Salvage Operations Division and the maritime salvage industry, the operation ultimately removed more than 50,000 tons of bridge wreckage, an effort that required meticulous planning and execution given difficult underwater conditions and the intricate, unstable juxtaposition of large sections of steel and concrete.

The Corps also provided underwater assessments using divers, remotely operated vehicle and sonar, and structural technical expertise for bridge safety and urban search and rescue.

These and other Corps response activities required careful coordination with other elements of the unified command’s multifaceted mission, from restoring partial shipping access through the area via temporary shallow-draft channels to crafting a strategy to safely remove the massive tangle of steel and concrete from the bow of the crippled container ship, allowing the vessel to be refloated and moved back to port.

“It’s been an incredible team effort,” Pinchasin told ENR during a tour of the operation. “Our core team, bolstered by all our federal and state agency partners, has been able to present a well-thought-out plan that is continually refined and improved on by the best salvage experts in the country.”

Throughout the nonstop effort to restore the deep-draft channel, which was fully completed just 76 days after the incident, the team remained cognizant of the incident’s far-reaching economic impacts, as well as the fate of the six construction workers who had been working on the bridge at the time of the collapse. “Not a day went by that we didn’t think about all of them,” Pinchasin said after the last victim’s remains had been recovered. “That kept us going.”

Completion of the mission coincided with the end of Pinchasin’s scheduled stint as Baltimore District Commander, and a transition to a new role as director of logistics for the National Security Agency. Praise for her work included a tribute from Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), published in the Congressional Record.

Along with citing Pinchasin’s many other achievements during her Corps tenure, Hollen praised her “leadership and operational expertise” as being “instrumental in the execution of recovery operations, which were critical to clearing debris and restoring access to the Fort McHenry Channel. Her effective use of mobilized resources facilitated a swift and efficient response that provided the Unified Command with the technical expertise needed to ensure success.”