You’re driving along, and suddenly, the road disappears from under you. You fall for a few seconds, maybe thinking about your family or friends, before a hard crash and probably getting hurt.
The collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore on Tuesday brought back scary memories for people who survived other bridge collapses.
Linda Paul, 72, lived through a bridge collapse in Minneapolis on Aug. 1, 2007. She was driving home from work on the Interstate 35W bridge, which suddenly fell into the Mississippi River during rush hour.
Paul, who was 55 at the time, was stuck in traffic on the bridge around 6 p.m. “I remember feeling that something was wrong,” she said. “I looked ahead and saw that the middle of the bridge was going down. I knew then that I might go down with it. And that’s exactly what happened.”
She fell a 50-foot slope in her minivan as the bridge collapsed. Paul got hit by pieces of concrete, breaking five of her backbones and her left cheekbone. 13 people died, and 145 were hurt in the collapse.
Jessie Shelton, now 35, was 18 when she survived the Minnesota bridge collapse. She was driving to a theater production when it happened. “I started sliding backward. It felt like I was on a roller coaster,” she said. “Then I blacked out.”
Shelton woke up in the hospital with injuries that broke her back in four places. “I had a big cement block in the backseat of my car,” she said. “It narrowly missed me. It came off one of the signs above. It’s a miracle I made it.”
Gustavo Morales Jr. was driving over the Queen Isabella Causeway in Texas when a tugboat hit a pillar, causing part of the bridge to fall into the water on Sept. 15, 2001. His truck flew over the collapsed part before crashing into the water. “Everything rushed through my mind,” he said. “It was my family.”
Wearing his seatbelt and being able to roll down the window helped him escape. Eight people died, but Morales survived.
Garrett Ebling, another survivor of the 2007 Minnesota bridge collapse, felt numb hearing about the missing people in Baltimore. He went through multiple surgeries and emotional trauma after the collapse. “We hope nobody else has to go through this,” he said. “If it’s preventable, it’s even more disappointing.”
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