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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Bridge Disaster Anniversary (Open Thread)

Bridge Disaster Anniversary (Open Thread)

by | 120 Comments

This post is in: 

On this day in 1980, a fast-moving storm with high winds in Tampa Bay drove a freighter off course as it was approaching the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. In low visibility conditions, the freighter hit the bridge pier holding up the southbound span, causing a huge section of the bridge to collapse at its highest point. Several cars and a Greyhound bus went over the edge, killing a total of 35 people.

Here’s what the harbor pilot radioed to the Coast Guard just after the accident:

“Get emergency . . . all the emergency equipment out to the Skyway bridge. Vessel has just hit the Skyway bridge. The Skyway bridge is down! Get all emergency equipment out to the Skyway bridge. The Skyway bridge is down. This is Mayday. Emergency situation. (Nearly screaming) Stop the traffic on that Skyway bridge!”

Sweet Jesus. Imagine being in that car on the edge!

Another look at that car from the opposite angle:

One dude in a pickup went hurtling into the abyss, but his truck bounced off the freighter and into the water. That was lucky for him; it broke his fall, and he was rescued. IIRC, he wasn’t too badly harmed.

For several years after the accident, the formerly northbound bridge handled traffic in both directions while a new bridge was built. Here’s what it looks like now:

The old bridge was torn down except for a section on the south side, which serves as a fishing pier today.

I was a schoolkid in Tampa when this happened. I remember our math teacher telling us the Skyway fell, and I didn’t believe her. It just didn’t seem possible. But later, I learned it was true.

I cross the new bridge a fair amount, and I have passed beneath it in boats many times. I always think about the bridge disaster and the people who died when I do.

Photos from the Herald-Tribune here. The Tampa Bay Times has more about the disaster here.

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

120Comments

  1. 1.

    satby

    When I visited my mom we went over that bridge quite often. She loved how high it was and the view of the bay as you crossed it.

  2. 2.

    Manyakitty

    OMG. I hug the inside lane already when I drive on that bridge. The picture of that car just gave me an involuntary fear reaction.

  3. 3.

    Phylllis

    I was a senior in high school in Palmetto* when that happened. I still clearly remember how weird the sky looked that morning as I was getting ready for school. We probably drove over the bridge once a month to get to Tampa/St. Pete.

    ETA: I think my parents may have known the man driving the pickup–or at least some of his family.

    *Palmetto is the southern terminus of the bridge.

  4. 4.

    JPL

    As a family we crossed that bridge one time and my ex was driving. One son in front and one in back with me. My ex had a panic attack. He was in the far left lane and started slowing down, and I was like whoa. He thought he could back up. In my quiet voice, I gently coaxed him over the bridge. A decade later my son said remember that bridge and you will so nice to daddy. I said you mean the one where he was going to stop and back up on. The ex recently told me that he still uses the same technique now to cross bridges.

  5. 5.

    Mike in NC

    We’re visiting Tampa area at the end of the month, followed by a drive to explore Saint Augustine for a couple of days. Currently studying a map to plan the most interesting route to follow.

  7. 7.

    Elizabelle

    That’s a gorgeous bridge now. The earlier one looks kind of construction set architecture.

    A Greyhound bus went over. How especially horrible. Never knew much about this disaster. Kind thoughts to the survivors and loved ones.

  8. 8.

    Leto

    In Charleston SC, we had a set of bridges that looked very much like the old Skyway bridges: the John P. Grace Memorial Bridge and Silas N. Pearman Bridge. There was a similar accident in 1946 where a freighter hit the JPG and ripped down a 240ft section. I remember as a kid (early/mid 80s) riding across the JPG bridge, which by that time had both lanes traveling in the same direction, and being pretty damned scared as vehicles in the other lane were pretty damn close to us. My dad sort of shrugged it off, explained how it used to be the only bridge, and that traffic in the other lane ran the opposite way. I clutched the door handle even harder.

    In 2005 they erected a new bridge, the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge, to replace the other two. It looks almost exactly like your new bridge. Strange that both of our cities had/have twin look-a-like bridges.

  12. 12.

    Betty Cracker

    @Phylllis: We didn’t hear about it until the afternoon at my school, and I didn’t believe my math teacher — didn’t think it was real until I saw it on the 6 PM news. If something like that happened today, everyone would know within minutes. I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing.

  13. 13.

    Stan

    Wow, I frequently go over the new bridge and had no idea of the background story.

  14. 14.

    DocSardonic

    @Manyakitty: I know enough ways to get to God’s Reception area that I never have to touch that accursed span. I always feel sorry for the folks already on it when it gets closed for wind.

  15. 15.

    Betty Cracker

    @Elizabelle: About the same, I think. Higher if anything. Cruise ships have to go under it, plus lots of huge freighters. It’s a busy port.

  16. 16.

    Phylllis

    @Leto: Drove over the old bridges numerous times. Nerve wracking doesn’t begin to describe it. Got to the point where I couldn’t drive them at all. The new bridge is so unlike the sensation of driving over a bridge it’s almost unreal.

  19. 19.

    Betty Cracker

    We’ve fished under the new bridge quite a bit, and having seen the new set-up, I don’t worry about a replay of the 1980 disaster. There are these enormous concrete disks surrounding the piers as buffers. You could pile an oil tanker into one and not hit a pier.

  20. 20.

    Ruckus

    Betty, I lived within sight of the major parts of the 5 and 14 freeways that fell in the 1994 Northridge earthquake. On the 5 there was a section, about 75 ft up that didn’t fall. There was a car and a semi left up there, with no way down, no road in front or back.

  21. 21.

    Major Major Major Major

    That’s terrifying!

    Today’s my birthday. That’s a link to the comic strip (I didn’t draw) that I’ve been sharing on Facebook every year since… I got Facebook, I guess! Yikes.

    Didn’t have a great start. Slept through my alarm or something. I’m an anxious sleeper, so I have a policy that I don’t check the time at all in the morning (or else I get up at 5:30 and check it every ten minutes), which means that when the alarm fails, as it rarely does, the results are catastrophic. I got up at ten. The cat was really mad and attacked my legs—bad Samwise! I was three hours late for work. (I would have just worked from home and been one hour late, but it’s mandatory teambuilding week, so I had to take a slow local Caltrain.)

    Then I got to work and found that a super passive aggressive developer from the team that bought us broke my pull request and made it look like my fault. So, boo her.

    And of course I’m sure everybody thinks I slept in intentionally.

    THANK YOU FOR LISTENING

  23. 23.

    Leto

    @Phylllis: Agreed; I used to travel over to Mt Pleasant for club soccer games 2-3 times a month and I always hated coming back to the Charleston side. I’ve only gone across the new bridge twice and it’s a marvel.

    @efgoldman: Wow, that too is a nice looking bridge! Apparently the Arthur Ravenel Bridge is similar to the Talmadge Memorial Bridge and Sidney Lanier Bridge (Savannah and Brunswick GA, respectively; pictures in my AR Jr link above).

  24. 24.

    Barbara

    I don’t remember this incident at all. I do remember the incident in Louisiana in which a barge lost its bearings and slammed into a rail trestle and pushed the tracks off a straight course enough to derail a passenger train. I used to have problems driving across bridges although I seem to have adapted as an adult. There is a limo service that you can hire if you are too afraid to cross the Chesapeake Bay Bridge over to the Eastern Shore. They send someone to drive your car across the bridge, with you sitting or lying down or quivering in fear in the backseat.

  26. 26.

    eclare

    @JPL: I had a panic attack once as I approached the I-40 bridge over the Mississippi in Memphis. As I approached from Arkansas, there were continual signs warning “No Stopping on Bridge!” and “No Exit in Five Miles!”, etc. I pulled over before I got on the bridge and called someone to come get me. I now use the older bridge (the I-55 bridge), which is not as intimidating.

  27. 27.

    Betty Cracker

    @Phylllis: I’m certain I must have crossed the old Skyway at some point, but I don’t recall it. My mom disliked high bridges on general principles and really hated them after the Skyway disaster. She was perfectly willing to go miles out of her way to avoid it. I don’t really enjoy driving over the new one, but I will to save time — in a car. I’ve never crossed it on my motorcycle and probably never will.

  29. 29.

    Yarrow

    Great post for Infrastructure Week!

    Seriously, though, it’s a reminder that we need to maintain bridges and roads and repair and replace them as needed. It takes money. It would be great if we could as a country decide such things are important.

    That picture of the car is terrifying. How did they get out of there?

  31. 31.

    Schlemazel

    There are pictures from the I35 collapse in Minneapolis that have cars just inches short of going over the edge. I imagine those people still have nightmares.

    I was a firefighter in the 80s and we we on standby because of severe weather. A tornado touched down on a strip mall in in a different part of the county (our radios were all assigned by the county & we shared some common frequencies which helped in mutual aid). But the first cop to roll up on the scene sounded a lot like I imagine that harbor guy sounded “THE WHOLE PLACE IS DOWN! WE NEED AMBULANCES! WE NEED RESCUE SQUADS! THE WHOLE MALL IS LEVELED – SEND EVERYTHING YOU CAN GET!” It took a bit for the dispatcher to calm him down enough to get straight answers out of him. Fortunately it was after hours & there were no people there

  32. 32.

    different-church-lady

    So what are the hazards of opening a Google account? I don’t plan to use it for anything important or private, I merely want to be able to edit a publicly-shared Google map project.

  33. 33.

    Leto

    @Betty Cracker: Hopefully they have the same design criteria (from my link):

    The bridge superstructure is designed to withstand shipping accidents and the natural disasters that have plagued Charleston’s history. The span is designed to endure wind gusts in excess of 300 mph (480 km/h), far stronger than those of the worst storm in Charleston’s history, Hurricane Hugo in 1989. Engineers also considered the 1886 earthquake that nearly leveled Charleston. The Ravenel Bridge is designed to withstand an earthquake of approximately 7.4 on the Richter magnitude scale without total failure. To protect the bridge from errant ships, the towers are flanked by one-acre rock islands. Ships will run aground on the islands before colliding with the towers.

    @Major Major Major Major: Happy birthday!

    @schrodingers_cat: Wow, another good looking bridge! We’re all bridge buddies :)

  36. 36.

    Roger Moore

    @Leto:

    Strange that both of our cities had/have twin look-a-like bridges.

    There are a limited number of standard bridge designs. Unless you pay extra for fancy details, a lot of those bridges are going to wind up looking alike.

  37. 37.

    efgoldman

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Mumbai’s Bandra-Worli Sea Link looks pretty similar too.

    Seems to be a popular design/construction last 30 years or so. Was revolutionary.

    @eclare:

    I now use the older bridge (the I-55 bridge), which is not as intimidating.

    mrs efg isn’t quite as bad as she was some years ago, but anything larger than the lagoon bridge in the Public Garden still gives her the teremblies, including most of our more or less local big bridges: Pell (to Newport RI), Sagamore and Bourne (over the Cape Cod Canal); Mystic/Tobin Bridge (North out of Boston), etc

  39. 39.

    DocSardonic

    @Betty Cracker: The new bridge is higher at 180 or so feet versus 150 for the old bridge. The found out when they did a study in 2014 that there is a problem with the much larger new cruise and container ships fitting under the bridge.

  40. 40.

    Schlemazel

    @Barbara:
    The missus is unhappy on bridges. A few years ago we drove through Michigan and crossed the Mackinac bridge. She was OK even though the deck is a grating so you can see through it. Well, she was OK until we were stopped in the middle because of repair work. Then she just reclined her seat & closed he eyes with orders I was not to say anything to her till we were back on solid ground

  41. 41.

    efgoldman

    @Yarrow:

    it’s a reminder that we need to maintain bridges and roads and repair and replace them

    Did the RWNJ flying monkeys ever appropriate the $$ for the bridge that collapsed in the twin cities?

  43. 43.

    Schlemazel

    @different-church-lady:
    If you use google or android for anything having the account will not expose you very much more, they already track all your devices and pretty much know who you are & what you like. (don’t feel safer if you use Apple iOS, they do the exact same data collection).

    What you can do, if it makes you feel better is use a fake name & an email account created under a fake name. They will still identify you as a unique individual and know where you live but it can confuse them about specifics.

  44. 44.

    Dan B

    The West Seattle bridge was struck by a ship in 1978. The pilot, Rolf Neslund, exclaimed,”My wife will kill me.” which turned out to be prophetic. His body was never found. Coincidentally she possessed an industrial meat grinder. If I recall correctly the new bridge piling was hit by a ship shortly after opening.

    The old bridge was a low turntable span which was not functional after the collision. The new span is very tall, scary in high wind. Nothing’s blown off it yet although there’s another potential. It sits on the Seattle Fault… Stay tuned.

  46. 46.

    Leto

    @Elizabelle: It’s definitely a wonder what mechanical/structural engineers can do!

    @Betty Cracker: I would agree with you regarding crossing these bridges on a motorcycle. I know people do it, but I hate wind gusts on my bike. It’s an eerie and unsettling feeling.

    @Yarrow: Part of the impetus for replacing the original Charleston bridges was that they scored a 4 out of 100 on a state safety/integrity inspection in 1995. It’s kind of insane to think about the amount of traffic that went over those, daily, and for them to be ready to fail at any moment. Of course we’re still there with most of our major infrastructure, just kind of floating along with “thoughts and prayers” that nothing happens. Not really an effective policy, as a whole.

  47. 47.

    lowtechcyclist

    When we visit Anna Maria Island each summer, we cross the new bridge on the way from the airport to the island, and we can see the part of the old bridge that’s still there, so we remember. My wife grew up in the area, and was 15 when it happened.

    Got a great view of the new bridge from the deck of the house we stay in each year. (Reminds me, it’s time to make reservations for this year!)

  48. 48.

    different-church-lady

    @Schlemazel: Pretty much the only thing I actively “use” Google for now is searches and maps-thru-a-browser (I refuse to download their app on my Apple phone or pad). I know they track “me” plenty just through cookies alone, but I’ve never volunteered any personal info to them in the past.

    I figure I will sign in on a computer when I want to edit the map, and sign out immediately when done. Probably will never sign in from a mobile device.

    Thanks for the advice.

  50. 50.

    Kay

    NEW: The Senate Intelligence Committee released its prelim findings into Russian targeting of election infrastructure during the 2016 election.
    “In a small # of states, Russian-affiliated cyber actors were in a position to, at a minimum, alter or delete voter registration data.”

    We need a kind of citizen reporting system on the ground. Voting is so fragmented and the oversight is so localized that there could be system-wide problems that won’t show up for weeks after the election, if ever. More likely “never”.

    Ohio hasn’t even started the analysis they’re supposed to do before the 2018 midterms. Just the analysis. That’s to find out what they might need to fix it. They haven’t done one bit of work on it and it’s been 2 years. They just don’t care in GOP states and why should they? All the Russian interference helped Republicans. All of it.

  53. 53.

    jharp

    Bridges scare the fuck out of me.

    And they give me vertigo symptoms.

    The Mackinaw Bridge comes to mind as one of the most frightening for me.

  54. 54.

    Schlemazel

    @efgoldman:
    They sort of had to because little TImmy was going to run for Senate and having cheap-screwed the maintenance he was already in a bad light. They used the company and the technique that was used on the pedestrian bridge that collapsed in Florida earlier this year. I avoided the bridge before that and have no better feeling about it now

  55. 55.

    Kay

    Someone could go back and look if the states that were weakest in voter protection had complaints about voters being de-listed and if those complaints were more frequent than usual and where they were clustered. I don’t know and the system is so fragmented, down to the county or precinct level, that one would really have to look to see it. The US system is really tailor-made for fuckery because it’s so incredibly decentralized. No other country has voting systems like we do, where they’re 99% local.

  56. 56.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    Good thing nothing like that could happen today, with the way our infrastructure has improved so much in the last 38 years.

  57. 57.

    different-church-lady

    @Major Major Major Major:

    a) Privacy hazards outside of the obvious. (I know they now have a name and e-mail to attach to the tracking data, but what else?)

    b) Manipulation and abuse, a la Facebook (“We do every fucking thing we possibly can to keep you logged in and constantly screw around with the privacy settings in a way that opens up all the things you worked so hard to close.”)

    c) Larger social ramifications (again a la Facebook: “We sell anything and everything to every comer, who cares what the side effects are!”)

    d) Anything I haven’t thought of.

    Can’t be too careful nowadays. The way things are going I log in to edit a map and the next thing I know I’m beating off a robot dog with a hockey stick that’s trying to deliver a CD from Amazon that was automatically ordered when I got Spotify-curious for five minutes.

  60. 60.

    PaulWartenberg

    I was a student in Palm Harbor back then. Man, the St. Pete Times photos of the aftermath were horrifying to look at.

    That one shot of the car dangling at the broken edge was used as a book cover about that accident. I think my library’s got a copy of it still. Here it is: “Skyway the true story of Tampa Bay’s signature bridge and the man who brought it down”

    I drove that new span repeatedly when I lived in South Florida and drove back to Palm Harbor to visit the folks. It’s pretty to look at, but its high point is insanely blustery. There are days they gotta shut the span down because of high winds.

    It’s painful to note how the old bridge was in questionable condition, and how it took that tragedy for something to get done about it. Now we live in a nation where many of our bridges are older and in worse shape than Skyway was (think of that I-35 span in Minnesota), and Gods help us there’s another collapse coming that will be heartbreaking to watch.

  61. 61.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    Kay,
    In all seriousness, can you write your question in a letter and email it to Ari Berman. If anyone would know, he would.

  63. 63.

    rikyrah

    @jharp:

    Bridges scare the fuck out of me.

    Me too.

    The bridge going over Lake Pontchartrain terrifies me everytime I drive into New Orleans. I am panic stricken from beginning to end.

  66. 66.

    TenguPhule

    @Schlemazel:

    She was OK even though the deck is a grating so you can see through it.

    For the love all that’s unholy what sick planner designs a bridge with a GRATING floor?

  68. 68.

    misterpuff

    Front page NY Daily News Pic with headline: “SHIP HITS SPAN”

    Kept that one taped in my cube for years.

    Ranks up with “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD!” another headline I got to read in person.

  69. 69.

    Major Major Major Major

    @different-church-lady:

    Privacy hazards outside of the obvious. (I know they now have a name and e-mail to attach to the tracking data, but what else?)

    Oh honey google already has that. And you don’t have to provide them with your real name. b) is fairly minimal, since google isn’t really in the social-sharing business, and you should already be using ghostery anyway to shake off trackers. c) is obviated with an ad blocker.

    And all of these are irrelevant if you don’t stay signed in all the time.

  71. 71.

    TenguPhule

    @Kay:

    Ohio hasn’t even started the analysis they’re supposed to do before the 2018 midterms

    Kay, they haven’t been doing that since 2004. The Republicans have fucking invested in putting their thumbs on the scale at every step of the voting process where ever they have any legal power. Every single fucking step.

  76. 76.

    VOR

    The I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, MN collapsed in 2007. It turns out that over the years the load on the bridge had steadily increased beyond the original design specs as things were added to it. The Republican Lt. Governor did double-duty as the DOT commissioner. The state DOT knew there was a problem, but the Lt. Governor directed them to do the cheapest possible monitoring and maintenance strategy. The 8 lane bridge failed early in rush hour, dumping cars into the Mississippi river. A replacement was quickly approved and built. You see, Governor Pawlenty was in the running to be McCain’s VP and the 2008 Republican Convention was held in St. Paul, MN. The new bridge is very nice.

  77. 77.

    different-church-lady

    @Major Major Major Major:

    And all of these are irrelevant if you don’t stay signed in all the time.

    I guess that would be my most major concern — the idea that I can’t know when I’m on and when I’m off.

    A friend and I went through several incidents with Facebook where, at her house, we found my iPad logged in to her account when she had not used my device.

  80. 80.

    JCJ

    @jharp:

    The Mackinaw Bridge comes to mind as one of the most frightening for me.

    I had to cross it one time in a convoy – it was quite windy so the bridge operators had everyone follow a lead car going about 30 miles per hour. It was quite anxiety inducing.

  81. 81.

    trollhattan

    @jharp:
    One of those experiences where it’s a very good thing you’re too busy to put much thought into it at the time. That’s what nightmares are for. I would have similar reservations about walking the GGB.

  87. 87.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    They’re replacing a couple of bridges here in SoCal, the 6th Street bridge over the LA River and the 5 and the Gerald Desmond Bridge in Long Beach is being replaced by a cable stayed bridge.

  89. 89.

    JPL

    @eclare: That was the first time that I actually witnessed one. After that on road trips, my ex would stop before a bridge and I drive over the bridge. I have no idea what I said but what ever it was he uses the technique now. It’s scary and it’s real so I do understand your pain.

  95. 95.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @different-church-lady: The log-in session will only last while the private window is open. Any cookies and other data will be deleted when you close the window.

  97. 97.

    JeanneT

    I don’t know about other big bridges, but at the Mackinac Bridge you can pull over, call the Drivers Assistance Program and have a bridge staffer drive your car across for you. They’ll also help you get your motorbike, snowmobile or bicycle across. And take you across if you’re hiking the North Country Trail.

  98. 98.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    On the page at Yarrow’s link, click on “The Map and How It Works” at the top left. Works fine for me on Android and Windows.

  99. 99.

    Elizabelle

    Peeps: Betty’s second link, to this year’s Tampa Bay Tribune story, has a photo of the Greyhound bus after it was recovered. Roof split open like a tunafish can. Apparently landed on its roof. Terrible. 16 women, 10 men on the bus. A handful were Canadians. The youngest was a 7 month old baby girl; the oldest a 92 year old Swedish woman. One was a 20-year old college student at Tuskegee Institute, who has since had a tennis tournament named after him.

    And found a really informative May 2000 St. Petersburg Times article, author Jean Heller, via the (recently unfairly maligned) Wayback Machine. (link below) By the minute account, with stories of the pilot guiding the Summit Venture, to the four men who were riding in the yellow car that stopped 14 inches from the edge. The driver went back for his golf clubs.

    A lawyer stashed the harbor pilot and his family in a hotel under an assumed name for a few weeks. The lawyer’s Irish setter dog was kidnapped for 3 days, and abused, but returned alive.

    Incidentally, 23 Coast Guardsmen aboard the cutter Blackthorn had been killed in a collision with the oil tanker Capricorn under the bridge in late January, only 102 days before the span came down.

    When they rebuilt the bridge, they widened the shipping channel (although the problematic 13 degree curve still remains) and they installed concrete “dolphins” — deepset concrete and wooden barrier pillars that protect the new bridge. As of 2000, nearly every single dolphin had been hit at least once. In fact, a dolphin took out a shrimper boat a few weeks prior.

    The new bridge rises to 197 feet.

    The Summit Venture was practically brand new; built in Nagasaki, Japan in 1976. It was sold a few times after and renamed; finally sank in a storm off the coast of Vietnam in 2010; no loss of life.

    The visibility and weather changed dramatically while it was en route through the channel. The storm knocked the radar out. Pilot not held legally responsible, but Coast Guard determined he contributed by operating in no visibility conditions. He was kind of screwed by the time that happened; no good options and he was afraid of another big ship he knew to be underway outbound (but which had anchored and was no longer a threat).

    Here’s the 2000 recap, very detailed with lots of illustrations and graphics: https://web.archive.org/web/20071017040518/http://www.sptimes.com/News/050700/TampaBay/Horrific_accident_cre.shtml

  101. 101.

    CZanne

    My great-grandparents had a winter place in North Port; my grandmother lived in Port Charlotte. When I was 3, my smother and I spent Easter with the maternal progenitors after a couple of years at whichever duty station we were at. (I really don’t recall and Smother is an Unreliable Narrator First Class.) I loved the (old) Skyway bridge so much that my great-grandfather paid the toll (I think) 6 times one weekday afternoon. Smother resented the hell out of her grandfather paying attention to me and indulging me. (Smother is why I firmly believe that nobody should become a parent unwillingly or at too young an age. Maturity of a vindictive 16 year old, forever.)

    So… a few months later, when I was four, Smother woke me up one morning and made me watch the news about the bridge accident. There was deep malice in the act. At the time, I was having serious issues in my swimming lessons and some other (very normal for 4 year old) phobic behavior about heights and falling. (I’d had a panic attack about half-way up the Eiffel Tower between Easter ‘78 and this accident, but again, I’m not sure when.) Smother got her jollies that day telling me about how those people drowned, how they fell, how hard and cold the water was when they hit… Which did not help with swimming lessons or having to be in airplanes over the next few years. Smother extended it, too; she convinced Great-grandmother to send clippings and put them in my scrapbook. St Pete had great coverage, and I learned how to write an inverted pyramid article (I was reading at that age) but jeezus crispy rice.

    Then when I was 7, The Asshat got stationed somewhere in South Florida, so Smother decided she’d rather live near her grandparents and mother. Which meant driving over the remaining span multiple times while we moved and over that year. Smother laughed and recounted the story of the accident and my panic near water/heights every time we drove over the bridge for months. The bridge was still one lane in either direction and far over-capacity, so any accident near the top delayed traffic and made the bridge tremble. Just thinking about it makes me a bit fluttery. Smother enjoyed making those phobias.

    I like the new bridge; it’s beautiful and stable and paved rather than grating so you can’t look down. I’ve driven over it a few times. But I have to drive it. I tried to let someone else drive so I could look… nope.

  104. 104.

    Lunwood Allen

    I seem to remember that the Greyhound bus had students from Tuskegee University on it.

  105. 105.

    J R in WV

    A grate for the bridge deck save a ton of dead weight in construction of a bridge.

    I think the creepiest bridge we’ve crossed has been the Mississippi River and Ohio River bridges at Cairo, Illinois. Route US 60 crosses both rivers on bridges of a really old vintage, two lanes, one in each direction. You only spend about a mile in Illinois, between getting off the Mississippi River bridge and driving the short way to the Ohio River bridge.

    The beams aren’t big forged steel I-Beams, they’re fabricated beams mad of little cross-shaped trusses. The deck is a grating. Big trucks use the bridges to avoid weigh-stations, because they’re either old and in poor shape OR because they’re overweight. They do move quite a bit.

    We frequently travel on the older US highways to avoid the interstates and see more of the countryside. Sometimes that works better than others.

    I was once crossing a downtown bridge over the Kanawha River in Charleston, back in the late 1970s, in an old Chevy PU truck, when I felt the bridge move, bounce even, under me. I thought a big tow had hit a bridge pier and moved the whole structure, but nope.

    It was an earthquake about 30 miles east of us. Upper 3.something on the Richter scale, scared me on the bridge. I can’t imagine being an underground coal miner in the area where the quake actually happened during that event. OMFG that would be scary!!! And that was at the time a huge coal mining area…

  106. 106.

    Jack the Second

    I was a schoolkid in Tampa when this happened. I remember our math teacher telling us the Skyway fell, and I didn’t believe her. It just didn’t seem possible. But later, I learned it was true.

    This is my main memory of 9/11 as a college student in the midwest. I heard something about it in one of my morning classes but basically disregarded it, because it was so far-fetched. It wasn’t until an hour or two later that I actually realized what was happening.

  107. 107.

    marv

    OMG – Maybe 20 years after this disaster, I wrote a kind of prose-poem, or something, about a Philadelphia Phillie Whiz Kid, Granny Hamner. It came out in a small baseball periodical. I have a copy of the magazine but just found it posted online. You can see what 20 years did to my memory about the timing of the event, but I’m as certain as can be that an old ballplayer named Granny Hamner just missed being in this disaster: In 1979 he was driving to a spring training game when a rainstorm forced him to pull over just short of the St. Petersburg causeway. Several cars passed him as a freighter hit the bridge and took it out. The cars disappeared.

  109. 109.

    J R in WV

    We had a bridge disaster here in WV, the Silver Bridge catastrophe, back in December 15, 1967. The bridge was painted with aluminum paint all it’s life, hence the Silver Bridge name. It crossed the Ohio River between Point Pleasant, WV and Gallipolis, Ohio from it’s construction in 1928 until it’s collapse during the evening rush hour. Being near Christmas meant even more traffic than usual.

    There were 46 deaths, two presumed victims were never recovered. The bridge was over-stressed as cars weighed 1400 pounds and truck only 9 tons when it was built. By the time it fell, those weights were many times heavier, and during a rush hour there were dozens of vehicles. The bridge was a single-point-of-failure design, so any flaw that failed would have caused the whole structure to fall.

  112. 112.

    SgrAstsr

    @trollhattan: oh, walking/running the GGB, cycling the GGB…I’ve done both many, many times. It is really beautiful and very worth doing. Cycle the Bridge into Sausalito for a San Ramos Fizz- infested brunch, then a woozy ferry ride back to the City. What could be more fun? It’s not scary at all. Promise!

  113. 113.

    Origuy

    Living in the Bay Area, I cross bridges a lot. The Golden Gate doesn’t bother me much, although I generally stay on the outside lane. It’s better now that they have the movable lane divider. The Richmond-San Rafael gets me a little unsettled, maybe because it’s supported from below. Not having sides seems to be an issue. Same with the San Mateo Bridge. I don’t take the Bay Bridge often, since I live in the South Bay. Some engineers say that the new span is unsafe; they’ve had bolts rusting since it was built.

    The Confederation Bridge between Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick is 8 miles long. That was a little nerve-wracking. I’m glad I only took it one way, off the island. I took a ferry over. That way you don’t pay either way.

  114. 114.

    dp

    When I was 15, a similar collapse, caused by a barge allision, happened on the Manchac South Pass bridge on U.S. Highway 51, about 15 miles south of where I grew up.

    https://www.facebook.com/LouisianaTreasuresMuseum/posts/487987351222562

    https://www.heraldguide.com/lifestyles/norco-woman-still-remembers-horrific-manchac-bridge-collapse/

    I’ve been leery of bridges ever since, but the absolute worst experience was one where, driving a Ford Expedition with a luggage carrier on top, I accidentally ended up on the lower section of the George Washington Bridge heading from Manhattan to New Jersey. There were all kinds of “low clearance” signs, but it was okay because everyone around me was honking and pointing at the top of the vehicle! And of course, there was no turning around or anything. Anyway, we made it through. But my hands start shaking to this day whenever I think back on that.

  115. 115.

    boatboy_srq

    I remember when that happened. I also remember every time the family went up to St. Pete we went through Tampa – for years after the event – because the folks were spooked by the collapse. It didn’t help that it was the NEW span of the two (by about 15 years) that got clobbered, and the old span which was I-35-grade end-of-life which had to support the extra bidirectional traffic.

    I can remember driving the surviving span with my foot to the floor because the angle was so steep my little rollerskate couldn’t make it up with less than full throttle.

    And I remember my first crossing on the new bridge: so smooth, and so gradual, that by the time you realised you were going up you were at the top and headed back down again.

  116. 116.

    Ruckus

    @Betty Cracker:

    I’ve never crossed it on my motorcycle and probably never will.

    That is understandable for someone without a lot of experience. But really it’s like any other piece of road. Yes some times the bridge is steel lattice rather than pavement but I’ve never had an issue on any bridge. I used to cross the various bridges in SF on motorcycle and none of them is a problem. I’ve also crossed the country twice on a bike so it’s not like I haven’t seen a few miles. I added up my mileage in 2000 and had well over 1/2 million at the time. I’ve added about another 100,000 since.

  118. 118.

    Aleta

    @Ruckus: When I used to ride I hated going over wet steel grate on a bridge or approach ramp. Slippery. I know they can be made non-slip, but not all of them are, esp rural ones. Riding in the rain across metal might be a reason I stopped, come to think of it.

  119. 119.

    CapnMubbers

    I could not drive over the old Sunshine Skyway (circa 1962-63) after a hurricane blew a car off the very steep approach as they were closing the bridge to traffic. Still gives me vertigo picturing that climb.

  120. 120.

    btom89

    @VOR: And now he’s hoping to run as the Republican candidate for the Senator from Minnesota, the job vacated by Al Franken and occupied by Tina Smith. Fun fact—he, as Governor, stopped Franken being seated as Senator for seven months, taking it all the way to the State Supreme Court, even after Norm Coleman conceded the election to him not long after the voting ended. The State Supreme Court slapped him down in June 2009 and Al Franken finaly was sworn in as Senator. Pawlenty actively deprived Minnesota from having full representation in the Senate so the Democrats couldn’t get the filibuster proof majority in the Senate.
    I had to laugh at the irony that when he tried to get attention during his presidential run in the Iowa Caucus in 2012, he never registered in the polls despite being Governor of a neighboring state and he dropped out. Same thing happened with Walker in 2016.

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