Cargo ship had engine maintenance in port before it collided with Baltimore bridge, officials say

[EarlG]

2. The report explains why they couldn't get the maintenance crew off the bridge

If only four minutes passed in between the initial warning signals and the collision -- tbh it's pretty amazing that they were able to contact the patrol units and tell them to close the bridge.

You can see the ship lights go out at about the 1 minute and 22 seconds mark in this video, and then the ship strikes the bridge at roughly five minutes and thirty seconds, so just about four minutes passed between the warning and the bridge strike, which matches the description in the article.

There is plenty of traffic crossing the bridge during those four minutes -- it looks like the last vehicle finishes crossing the span right before the five minute mark, just thirty seconds before the bridge collapses.

If the cops only got the message to close the bridge in both directions a minute before the collision, and they had no way to directly communicate with the maintenance crew, I can see why they didn't have time to get them off. Quick action probably did save a lot of lives here, considering what could have happened if they hadn't closed the bridge in time.