1980 Sunshine Skyway Bridge tragedy

What we learn from history is we don’t learn from history.

Enjoy life now. Because in a blink of an eye your entire life can change.

I remember this bridge collapse in 1980 like it was yesterday. How did we all get so old. The clock keeps ticking

An old friend of mine, Art Mathews, was driving the yellow car shown sitting on the bridge. He said he saw the buss ahead of him dissappear along with the pick up truck behind it before slamming on his brakes. The truck hit the ship and guy driving it flew out of the truck and into the water. Art watched them "fish the guy" out of the water, as he put it. I worked with Artie, as I called him, for a couple of years , down in Fort Myers. He was in his late 80's back then. Art grew up in Lakehurst New Jersey and witnessed the Hindenburg crash when he was 9 years old. He said it happened right behind his house. His parents transported burn victims to the hospital in their car to the hospital. There was so much burnt flesh stuck to the inside of the car that the navy bought them a new car. He once showed me a small piece of the Hindenburg he still had after all those years. I'm sure Artie has passed on by now. He was a helluva nice guy. RIP Artie.

I live in St. Pete at the time… and my fiancé was in the Coast guard he dove for bodies when that bridge collapsed. I will never forget it. He was so upset that day. It was so hard to listen to the news and know he was out there looking for bodies

Everyone forgets this one... "On September 22, 1993, an Amtrak Sunset Limited passenger train derailed on the CSX Transportation Big Bayou Canot Bridge near Mobile, Alabama, United States. It was caused by displacement of a span and deformation of the rails when a tow of heavy barges collided with the rail bridge eight minutes earlier. Forty-seven people were killed and 103 more were injured."

My wife passed over the Minnesota 35W Bridge about an hour before it too collapsed in 2007.

In the Seventies we teased my cousin in St Pete who was afraid to drive over the Sunshine Skyway. Our teasing didn’t age well.

My uncle was on the greyhound bus that morning when that freighter hit that broIt was during a bad thunderstorm and the power went off then He along with others on that bridge died They have a memorial plaque put up at the end of the new bridge and everyone that died that morning their names are on it

Why on earth do we not build these bumpers/dolphins around all of our U.S. bridges?!

You can clearly see in the video the ship lost power.... you can not steer a ship that size without power! It's become part of our culture to play the blame game before the facts are in!

I remember that day.That was so sad.I still remember it to a stay and my prayers still go out to all their families and friends

It was horrible drivng on the Skyway and going past the section that fell. Those poor victims.. RIP....

I also thought the captain was drunk. I’m saddened that this bit of misinformation has apparently got staying power.

I was there that morning. We were headed north and had already paid the toll when suddenly an Highway Patrolman went by us just as we were about to get on bridge and pulled sideways in fr9nt of us. He got out of his car, walked over to us and said sorry bridge is down. With the most somber look. I can still see it in my head. The sky was grey, the wayer was grey and real choppy and the boat was grey. If we hadnt stopped for 10 minutes in Oneco because raining so hard could'nt see we would have been on opposite span when it it. I remember the original bridge. Now that was scary.

Very well stated. A bridge that is a fracture critical design that doesn’t have significant pile protection will catastrophically fail by removing just one of the piles holding up the bridge. There is ABSOLUTELY NO EXCUSE for NOT having massive pile protection in place after similar circumstances of hitting and removing just one pile destroyed the Florida Sunshine SkyWay bridge tragedy. I remember that well studding the failure in my College engineering classes.

Nice professional & heartfelt reporting, well done. We need more stations around the country to report in detail like this one did. In order to improve & plan for the unthinkable, these reports are critical to remember.

I was in Tampa at High School.... We were headed to Sarasota...for a field trip to Ringling Art Museum... they thought we were on the bridge

loss of power happens usually. My father is a captain. He told me a story just last week he lost power and was drifting to shore. Coastguard tugboats asked them if they're ok. They said yes, emergency generator kicked in and they moved out slowly. Coastguard was still asking if they're ok. The reason is they get paid A LOT for emergency rescue. New ships dont have that problem but older ships do. In that case, ship was too big for emergeny generator to kick in and stop. Usualy cargo ships are 10k tons. This one was 15X times bigger. It's basically 15 cargo ships combined into 1.

Was working at Longboat Key PD that day…What a tragic scene…..😞