The Sunshine Skyway Bridge Disaster | A Short Documentary | Fascinating Horror

Spread The Viralist



“On the 9th of May, 1980, early morning travellers on the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Florida found their view of Tampa Bay obstructed by a thick fog…”

As always, THANK YOU to all my Patreon patrons: you make this channel possible.
https://www.patreon.com/fascinatinghorror

SOCIAL MEDIA:
► Twitter: https://twitter.com/TrueHorrorTales
► TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@fascinatinghorror
► Suggestions: hello@fascinatinghorror.co.uk

CHAPTERS:
00:00 – Intro
00:43 – Background
02:30 – The Sunshine Skyway Bridge Disaster
08:08 – The Aftermath

MUSIC:
► “Glass Pond” by Public Memory

SOURCES:
► “See historic photos from the Sunshine Skyway bridge disaster 42 years ago” by Martha Asencio-Rhine, published by the Tampa Bay Times, May 2020. Link: https://www.tampabay.com/news/2020/05/06/the-sunshine-skyway-bridge-plunged-into-tampa-bay-40-years-ago/
► “John Lerro, 59; Harbor Pilot Haunted by Role in Deadly Bridge Accident” by Myrna Oliver, published by the Los Angeles Times, September 2002. Link: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-sep-09-me-lerro9-story.html
► “40 years after the Skyway bridge disaster, divers can’t forget what they saw underwater” by Gabrielle Calise, published by the Tampa Bay Times, May 2020. Link: https://www.tampabay.com/narratives/2020/05/06/40-years-after-the-skyway-bridge-disaster-divers-cant-forget-what-they-saw-underwater/
► “The first Skyway bridge opened 66 years ago. It was a triumph. Then came the tragedy” by Gabrielle Calise, published by the Tampa Bay Times, September 2019. Link: https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida/2019/09/06/the-first-skyway-bridge-opened-65-years-ago-today-it-was-a-triumph-then-came-the-tragedy/
► “The Skyway Bridge tragedy at 40: The survivor” by Bill DeYoung, published by Catalyst, May 2020. Link: https://stpetecatalyst.com/the-skyway-tragedy-at-40-the-survivor/

​​​​​​​#Documentary​​​​ #History​​​​​​​​​ #TrueStories​

source

Recommended For You

About the Author: Fascinating Horror

47 Comments

  1. I was an employee in Ky of Greyhound lines and a member of the union . Greyhound charged the driver with an accident to prevent paying any retirement to his widow and avoid any possible lawsuits…..

  2. I moved to Sarasota in 1977. I had an ominous feeling driving over that bridge. Then, I would have regular dreams of the bridge collapsing. When this happened, those dreams stopped. Horrifying.

  3. I remember that morning well. My oldest son was four days old and I was driving to work and thinking that this was a really heavy rainstorm, even for the gulf coast. I got to work in Tampa and it was blowing and blinding rain. The “Muzak” that my company usually had playing was interrupted with the announcement that the Skyway bridge has just collapsed. We all looked at each other as if to say, did we just hear that right? I had to cross the bridge on the 22nd street causeway to get home and can remember that they had the ship pulled up for repairs and it still had the steel from the bridge on the bow. Eerie.

  4. That bridge was so scarey just to drive over, at the top it had a metal mesh like road way that you could see down through, It was like the road dissappeared and your hundreads of feet in the air and made a strange noise. It's a lot better today and safer from ship strikes.

  5. I legit just talked to my gf about being terrified about this sort of thing. We put so much trust in transportation infrastructure when sometimes all that keeps us from shooting of an unfinished exit ramp is a wrong turn and a couple of orange barrels that could easily not be there.

  6. This was a horrible, frightening day. We lived in Clearwater and my husband often crossed that bridge for business in Sarasota. The morning it happened the weather was awful- pouring rain and fog. A couple months later we went over the bridge- two single lanes, the grinding of the metal grates and at the top, you'd look over and the other span just ended in midair. Nightmarish. I couldn't drive it alone. It went straight up and suddenly you felt the wind, the swaying. I don't like the new one either- just too much, though it's beautiful to look at.
    It's a cautionary tale, the survivors have suffered over the years, may they and those lost that day find peace.

  7. So if the guy who saw the bridge drop and backed his truck down and stopped would have just blocked the roadway. What a shame…..

  8. I was on that bridge 1 week or 2 before in a rain storm before this happened. The bridge was scary. The day I went on the bridge, rain, fog & traffic was so bad that I didn't realize I was elevating that high until I saw the top barely. The map showed it as a road

  9. As someone who regularly drove over that old bridge hearing about the collapse really gave me a good scare. To this day I can't cross the span without remembering that day.

  10. Yikes!….. I can’t count the number of times I had crossed this bridge when I lived in Florida…good thing I hadn’t known about this then 😮

  11. I was driving to work that morning in the worst rain storm I had ever seen, and I was born and raised in St. Petersburg! I was no stranger to hard rain. I could not see beyond the end of the hood of my car. The rain mixed with the fog made visibility impossible. I heard the notice about the bridge over my car radio. It was too dangerous to pull over and too dangerous to continue. I got off the highway and tried to make my way to work. I gave up and headed for home. It took me 4.5 hours to go the remaining 10 miles home. I had to park my car blocks away due to the flooding and finally was given a "ride" home in a neighbor's canoe!

  12. The 6 or 7 years between the accident and new bridge…. the remaining main old span was reduced to 2 lanes for both directions, and it bounced/shook depending on how much/what kind of traffic was on it. Not only was it really 'up there' for the heights people, but you could glance over at the broken span still hanging over the water. I knew some people that refused to drive over it.. too nerve-wracking.

  13. my family and I are from Michigan and we went down to Florida for a vacation. We went over that bridge a day or two before the collapse. Not a close call like some people, but when you get back to Michigan and see the disaster on the news , it gives you that “holy crap” moment. I was just there. 😲🫣

  14. I was living in Florida 25 miles south from here when this happened. I’ve never liked this bridge. It’s to long above the water.

  15. Let's just wait until there's a real serious disaster with the bridge resulting in numerous deaths before we do something about the water approaches. Whatdaya say, boys?!

  16. Interesting to see the captain cleared of all charges. He was obviously guilty of gross negligence here, caution would have avoided the crash completely.

  17. I seen one of the worst accidents ever traveling on this bridges replacement. We were stopped an I called to tell my mom we were in Florida when a dump truck slammed into the back of a parked car going about 50 mph. I'll never forget that.

  18. Unreal.. of course I don't know everything, but never heard of this. Seems on level with the Tacoma Bridge or I-35 collapse, but I knew nothing about this. I was going to college at the time.. where graduation was at the Hyatt Regency Hotel where the skyways/catwalks collapsed and killed over 100 people a month after I walked on them (documentary is on youtube).

  19. Too bad some of those drivers just had to be a$$holes and ignore the driver who stopped and yelled for them to stop. But no. Some people just have to be in such a hurry that they can't take literally 10-20 seconds to slow down and use common sense. Especially that bus driver. Killing 25 innocent students all cuz you can't slow down and pay attention. There's a reason someone in front of you has stopped. Instead of being a jerk and continuing to go around them maybe just slow down and pay attention. Might have saved some people's lives that day. And I'm not talking about the ones who initially had no warning. There was nothing some of then could do. But the others who ignored the driver who had stopped and tried to warn people, there's no excuse for those people.

  20. When I was a baby mom and dad had a flat on the SSB , WITH MY OLDEST BROTHER AND ME 58 YEARS AGO HE KEPT ON DRIVING MOM WAS SCARD TO DEATH ,WELL JUST A FIGURE OF SPEACH,,, AND A WEEK LATER THE TAMPA NEWS PAPER HAD A SEGMENT ON ' IF YOU HAVE A FLAT ON THE BRIDGE KEEP ON DRIVING AND DON'T STOP .

Comments are closed.