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

I was a senior at Maritime when John joined the faculty. He was a sad guy at that point and was probably a bit of charity on the part of Adm Miller. Joe Hazelwood joining years later was more perplexing.

I was in High School in East bay High Near Tampa when this happened .

That is the weirdest looking bridge I’ve ever seen.

I remember when this happened. My daddy and his friend has just crossed southbound a few hours before this happened coming from the airport. I remember hearing it on the news and just feeling sick to my stomach. We have crossed over that bridge so many time. We live in Bradenton, the next town over from it too. My heart still goes out to those people. I think about them every time we cross the new one.

My former brother in law was only 2 cars behind the last of the cars to go off the end of the bridge. Horrifying!

I was in third grade when this happened and clearly remember that morning, which was extremely stormy in Tampa. My grandfather drove me to school in those days but the weather was so bad that he waited for conditions to improve before leaving the house, the ONLY time he ever did that. Right as the storm was letting up, local TV stations broke the news of the disaster. I'll never forget the shot from a helicopter of the shattered bridge with rescue boats all around. Never made it to school that day.

This video is pretty well made but a few details are wrong. For one, it wasn't foggy. The storm that morning was a brief but very intense squall line associated with a cold front, and the combo of blinding sideways rain and sudden strong winds is what quickly pushed the ship off course at just the wrong time while simultaneously rendering its radar and steering temporarily useless. Also, the Summit Venture was coming in to the bay, not going out as stated at least twice. That's why the sudden NW wind pushed it to starboard into the support pilings south of the channel. And the main support pilings DID have concrete bumpers. However, the ship got pushed so far out of the channel that it collided with secondary supports that no one ever expected to get hit.

I also notice a few commenters mention something about the original bridge being a drawbridge. That's wrong; it was a fixed span, just like the current bridge. As (correctly) mentioned in the video, it was designed to be high enough that it wouldn't interfere with shipping. If it HAD been a drawbridge, the gates could've been lowered after the collision to keep traffic from reaching the gap. But it wasn't, so there was no way to stop or even warn drivers.

This is chilling. Typical american ingenuity not taking prevenative measures to insure safety as much as possible i.e. no concrete column bumpers. To everyone this tragedy impacted...you have my prayers.

It wasn't just the weather that caused this accident. The route that vessels needed to take required the ships captains to make several turns as much as 10 degrees. In a huge vessel, that's a big turn in a slow moving boat. In inclement weather this becomes extremely difficult to make. Other large vessels would stop, but this vessel could not see and lost power to its steering. It wasn't just a wayward pilot driving reckless. It was a series of unfortunate events.

About the weather was a understatement that was one hell of a storm. I know I was in it.

My uncle was on the greyhound bus and died that day. My gma had to go from NC to Fl to identify him.

This bridge has claimed many lives. The amount of ppl who jump off and kill themselves is so high there's suicide nets now and motion detectors so if your car stops a Florida Highway Patrol races up there in his car to try and save you. Drove it once in the rain when the high winds light was flashing. Sketchy as hell.

I'm visiting Florida soon and was using Google Maps to plan my route. I want to go to Ft DeSoto Beach and then go to Sarasota. Just seeing the bridge on the map, I thought no way am I driving on a bridge over that much water, I'll spend 2 hours going around. I just got a bad feeling. Then I thought I'd find a video to see what it actually looks like and maybe reconsider. Then, this disaster comes up. First instincts were right. How terrible for the people in this awful tragedy.

IfI recall, the captain was using alcohol at the time that his vessel hit the bridge. Lived in Clearwater at the time of the disaster. Remember it well.

People are maddeningly stupid! I feel like no one here learned the true lesson life was telling ALL these people. DO NOT OPERATE A VEHICLE OF ANY KIND IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO SEE WHAT IS IN FRONT OF YOU. If only this super smart, super experienced captain knew the importance of being able to SEE when manuvering a mobile 10 story building. Who could've known......

My big brother was flew into Tampa-St Pete that morning;heading to see my other brother who was in the hospital in Venice clinging to life. This horrible tragedy happened a few hours before he was to cross it and it was before cell phones. We saw it on the news but heard nothing from him for hours and the terror for all reasons was indescribable. He finally arrived (having seen the wreckage and felt the horrors)-we got him to the hospital in time for him to be at my brother’s side. He passed away 2 hours later. Somehow he held on even though he was in a coma(despite the Bridge tragedy)so that my big brother could say goodbye. I will never forget that day worrying about losing two brothers..

In the early years of computer mapping on your phone the TomTom version had told a driver a bridge existed on the road he was driving. The bridge was out because the drawbridge has been left open. That driver went off the end never to be seen alive again!

We had moved to Florida Lake Wales in 1975 . I had heard about this when it happened it was horrific! I was in my 20s just horrific! I was going to college in the Tampa area.

🙏🙏🙏

The Chesapeake Bay bridge looks so much similar.

The Sunshine Skyway was in actuality a draw bridge. There was a lift section on the very apex of the bridge which could be raised if needed. While this would not have helped get all the information correct.

It was that bridge that taught me that I hate traveling at heights for long sustained times! I crossed 1 lane, clean and brand new. Had to be the 70’s, probably. I plain hated the rickety, windy thing, I was the only 1 in the family who was not enjoying it. I just knew that we would go through the guardrails into the water!

Often people will say that if their vehicle fell in to the water from some height they would just swim out. I have some personal knowledge of what happens to people when they are in a car that falls from any sort of height and hits the water.

In the 1980's I was a paramedic and we responded to a call for a vehicle that had fallen off the side of a bridge and was in the water. It ended up being a recovery operation (deceased) but the mechanism of death was not by drowning.

The car only fell about twenty feet off the side of a bridge and hit the water upside down. Not an unusual thing for a vehicle to do when going over the side of a bridge. The driver was immediately killed when their car landed upside down on its roof and his neck was broken when his body slammed downward in to the inside roof of the car.

The roof had a (slight) external dent to it from hitting the water; I would of expected more of a smooshed roof from falling twenty feet but it didn't do that much to it. It was the mass of his own body that was like being dropped on his head on to the unyielding metal surface of the inside of the roof.

Even if it had not broken his neck he would of just suffered a slightly slower death by drowning as he would of probably been knocked out and unable to escape.

The ship was not leaving Tampa bay, it was entering Tampa bay going from west to east.!

We traveled the new bridge several times. I was always anxious going across.

That beige Buick at the edge of the bridge is insane, what a lucky guy.

What is the name of your theme song? And who plays it?

Traveled on this bridge several times on the way to South Pasadena

I lived in Tampa for 11 years
I had to cross the bridge occasionally
But since I was a child, I did not know about this

So glad i didn't know about this until now because two weeks ago, my annual family vacation was on Ana Maria Island and i was scared af crossing this bridge. I wasn't even driving. I would have stayed home😅

My dad had just moved from California four days before, and all I knew was Whew!destination St Pete. No cell phones back then and he finally called 2 days later!

Just like Titanic, it was the guys EGO that slammed into the bridge. Same w Kobe’s helicopter pilot. Men and their asinine ego. Just wow. This falls in line with them refusing to ask directions.

I was in the Navy, and we were due to get underway that morning. I remember the rain coming down that night you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. They came in and told us to secure the boilers. We were going nowhere. Sad sad day.

Florida is my home state. As a teenager I crossed the old Sunshine Skyway bridge both going to and returning from Sarasota. I went across this bridge again after the new expansion was installed. The newer span is beautiful. Who ever designed it did a great job. Thank you for this documentary on our Sunshine Skyway bridge. It was very informative.

So they built another bridge then the broken bridge is a fishing pier

The people passed the driver who stopped probably thinking "what a crazy idiot stopping on a bridge and yelling at me" before continuing and immediately regretting that decision. I wonder if anyone them regretted ignoring that guy in that moment

One tough 56 year old man

I crossed this bridge many times going to florida. It is a fun ride.

I went over that bridge once and I will never do it ever again. winds are really high up there at the middle portion.

The guy in the last car who didn’t go in the water my god how lucky can you get

😢

52 days after the Mt. St. Helens eruption in the opposite corner of the States.

great video thank you

A similar accident happened in Sweden in the 80s. It was in the middle of the night and foggy, 8 people died since they couldn't see the bridge had fallen and drove over the edge

I have vivid memories of riding over the original bridge as a child. I would lay in the back of the station wagon, looking up at the huge Iron pillars above us as we passed under them. It seemed almost unbelievable when it collapsed.
I was almost 7 years old and lived in St. Petersburg, when the Skyway was struck.
I remember that morning vividly. My mother always put my older brother on the high school bus then, woke my brother and I to get us ready. That morning, when she put my brother on his bus, the weather was fine. By the time she woke us, 15 minutes later, the TV was issuing tornado warnings & this torrential storm had come from out of nowhere.
It was the first time I ever saw my mother scared and upset. She told me she had a gut feeling something bad was gonna happen. She was calling the bus compound and my older brothers school frantic to make sure his bus arrived safely at school.
This storm was so sudden and so severe that she had decided to keep my other brother and I home. We were told to sit on the couch while she made the calls to search for my brother's bus.
I remember looking out the front window, the yard was flooding, the wind was grabbing garbage cans and debri. It was literally worse than the lower grade hurricanes I saw later in life. I remember thinking, I've never seen a storm like this before.
Suddenly, the TV made an emergency announcement, "The Sunshine Skyway has just been struck by a barge!" My mothers premonition was right, but, it wasn't about my brother's bus, he made it to school safely.
I stayed home that day while the news slowly informed us of what had actually occurred. It showed the pictures of this bridge I thought was indestructible, just torn in half.
It was the first time I had witnessed mass grief that lasted for days. The stores were so weirdly quiet. There was either complete silence or quiet talk amongst strangers about the Skyway.
The remaining span was turned into 2 way traffic across the bridge. My father drove the family over it to see the other spans destruction. It taught me nothing is indestructible no matter how strong it may seem.
I am almost 50 years old and this memory is vivid like yesterday. I have a special connection to this bridge because of it. My heart goes out to everyone who lost their lives that day.

Probably should have done more than slap his car.

I worked with the man who testified and was the one who first noticed something wasn't right and tried to warn the other vehicles. He said the bus driver either didn't see him or ignored him.

I KNEW i wasnt dreaming this. Well, sorta