I read a Capitol Gazette article this morning (it has paywalls). A couple things stood out to me:
The MTA had a police DETAIL assigned to the construction crew for traffic control, if necessary. As such, their presence allowed them to stop bridge traffic access within the 90 seconds they had. Absent the assigned detail, that wouldn’t have occurred in that short amount of time. Those people are HEROS.
There was a State Inspector at the site, in his car, and he literally cleared the point of breakage as the collapse occurred (my add, so he must have had notification and was able to get out quickly).
Two construction workers were in a truck. And not recovered. Speculation was the noise level prevented them hearing radios. Or they were on break in the truck and didn’t receive notice. MTA could not go onto the bridge to get them bc they would be in harms way. All presented in the article.
The construction company has strict safety guidelines. They practice all sorts of emergency contingencies, but not a ship hitting a bridge.
There are hero’s in this story. There are things that went right. There are also lessons to be learned.