SHINE — Searchers looking for a Hood Canal Bridge maintenance technician who is thought to have driven off the bridge have been compiling data from sonar equipment and will resume an active search this afternoon, said a state Department of Transportation spokeswoman Saturday.
On Friday and Saturday, crews working with advanced sonar equipment from Global Diving and Salvage of Seattle completed a survey of a large swath around the bridge, said Claudia Bingham Baker, communications manager.
“Now they are downloading all the data they have collected,” she said.
Once hot spots — areas worthy of exploration by a submersible unmanned rover — are identified, the active search will resume as tides and currents permit, she said.
Because of tides, the underwater search is expected to begin at about 4 p.m. today.
“We won’t know anything for another 24 hours and maybe longer than that,” Bingham Baker said Saturday.
A state Department of Transportation worker is thought to have driven through a pedestrian cable railing on the lower deck and off the side of the Hood Canal Bridge as he left his shift Monday night.
The worker has not been identified at the request of his family, according to acting Secretary of Transportation Roger Millar.
