TAMPA, FLA. (WSVN) - Baltimore’s Key Bridge collapse is triggering some painful memories of a deadly bridge collapse in Florida.
A survivor who was on the Sunshine Skyway when it was struck by a freighter decades ago relived his close call.
“I had one goal, and that was to get to work,” said Aaron Peelar.
The tragic collapse of the Francis Skott Key Bridge in Baltimore brought Floridians back in time to May 9, 1980, when the Sunshine Skyway Bridge collapsed in Tampa Bay.
“When I saw that on the news, I just said, ‘Not again,'” said Gloria Peelar, Aaron’s wife.
Aaron worked in Bradenton and the bridge was part of his daily commute.
“I went to work, and I drove by the lines on the ground because you couldn’t see, it was so dark,” he said.
Aaron said he paid his toll and began the drive across but stopped when he saw lights coming toward him.
“Somebody had turned around and was coming down. I was coming up, coming up on the peak, and when I got up, I saw something that wasn’t right,” he said.
Aaron said he began backing down, not realizing that a massive freighter had rammed into the bridge, sending more than 1,200 feet of concrete into Tampa Bay and 35 people to their deaths.
Aaron’s wife feared the worst.
“What scared me so was, they told me the last car that went over was a yellow car with a black top, and that was the color of car [Aaron] was driving at the time,” said Gloria. “They had me at Fort DeSoto looking at bodies. I was like, ‘Oh, Lord, please.’ I was looking at my daughter, ’cause she was there with me, and I just said, ‘I don’t know, if he’s gone, how I’m gonna tell you.'”
Aaron said his car problems at the time delayed him, and it wasn’t until he got there that afternoon that he heard what happened.
“His job called me and said he’s OK. I said, ‘I have to hear his voice,'” said Gloria. “Please, let me hear his voice. So, they put him on the line and, you know, and all I could do was just thank God.”
Attorney Steve Yerrid, who was the attorney for the captain who hit the Sunshine Skyway, successfully argued in court that an “act of God” caused the collapse.
“It’s really hard for defense, because you’ve got to prove that nothing humanly possible could have been done to change the course of events,” said Yerrid.
Now there are protective structures in place to keep something like this from happening again.
“Those things are put there as countermeasures, right, that in the event that you have a ship or vessel that were to go off course, they’re there to effectively protect the structure from a collision like the one that we saw in Baltimore,” said Zach Haber, a bridge engineer.
The new Bob Graham Sunshine Skyway opened in 1987 and it included the safety bumpers in the waters below that span the bridge to protect it for years to come.
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