Posted on 11/18/2004 12:06:46 PM PST by Kaslin
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -Passengers stopped a charter bus from plunging nearly 200 feet off a bridge after the driver collapsed, apparently from a heart attack.
The bus was near the top of the Sunshine Skyway bridge Wednesday afternoon when Thomas Grove, 61, fell out of his seat, passengers and authorities said.
It slammed into the 3-foot concrete wall, which blocks vehicles from tumbling into Tampa Bay. Three of the five passengers jumped out of their seats and ran toward the front.
"Grab the wheel!" 70-year-old Kenneth McAllister recalled shouting to his wife, Mary, and another woman.
The women held the steering wheel until McAllister could slide into the driver's seat. He struggled to keep the bus in its lane and hit the brake. It stopped just before the highest part of the bridge.
The passengers — all unharmed — called 911 and Amtrak, which uses the bus to shuttle passengers from Fort Myers to Tampa. They spent another another 10 minutes in the bus because they didn't know how to open the door.
Two nurses driving by stopped to help, performing CPR on the driver. Grove, of Pinellas Park, died within hours at a hospital. Early reports suggested he may have had a heart attack, authorities said.
"It happened so fast," McAllister, of Bradenton, said from his cell phone aboard an Amtrak train to New York City late Wednesday. "We all felt so lucky to be alive."
Wow...another small miracle!
Jerome, stay off those bridges we need you healthy for the Bengals game.
P.S. For those who don't know of the SkyWay Bridge, it is one of the most beautiful bridges I have ever seen
http://users.lmi.net/tcs55/ is deeply saddened.
Holy cats. Which Murphy's Law governs such an occurrence?
Thankfully I only had to go over it a few times, and not in over 15 years.
The original Skyway did have a Greyhound bus go off it into the water when the middle span collapsed due to barge hitting it.
"Supe? Is that you?"
Wouldn't be the 1st Bus to fall off the Skyway.
The bridge you see in the pic above is the repacement for the original Skyway Bridge. Back in the early 80's a freighter during a storm crashed into the bridge and collapsed one side of it. A Greyhound Bus over half full went into the bay, all aboard were lost. A guy in a car went over the edge and landed on the ship below and spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair.
The new bridge is very pretty, since 9-11 the local police have kept a keen eye on it. Boaters get chased off if they linger near the base of it for too long.
I live in Ruskin sout of Tampa, I used to go to school over in St. Pete a while back in my mis-spent youth and would se how fast I could get my Trans-Am to go by the time I got to the top of the bridge. Can't do that now, they have cameras and WILL grab you.
All the same - it is a pretty bridge.
We used to go over it all the time to get to Anna Maria Island.
After the new one opened if our mom was the one taking us to visit our grandmother, she would take the long way rather than use the bridge.
It is the kind of thing that is seared into one's memory especially since I was still in single digits when it happened.
We lived north of Tampa, but went over it often to get to AMI.
We had a friend that was on it the morning it collapsed. He was heading south toward Bradenton, and stopped to "help" a guy who was standing out in the rain, frantically waving his arms. Little did he know that stopping to "help" the guy was actually saving his life, since the guy was trying to signal to cars that the bridge was out.
The whole time the new bridge was under construction, when we'd drive over the remaining span and see the drop that those folks took off the bridge, I would always get butterflies in my stomach.
The new bridge makes you feel so much safer than the old one when you're crossing it. The steep incline and narrow lanes on the old bridge, especially when there was just a single span, was just scary!
When we went to Florida last year, we went across the bridge, just so I could show my hubby what it was like. I well remember the collapse, and do believe this one is built better. It still causes butterflies to go over it for me.
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