A sad anniversary: The Skyway Bridge fell 46 years ago

Every person who moves to the Tampa Bay area will eventually hear about, if they weren’t already aware of it, the darkest day in local history: May 9, 1980, when the Sunshine Skyway Bridge fell.

Saturday is the 46^th anniversary.

Thirty-five commuters died at 7:33 on that Friday morning when an unladen 20,000 ton freighter, inbound to the Port of Tampa, butted against a support column of the southbound Skyway span. There were two identical bridges in those days, running parallel over five miles of open water.

John Lerro

It was drizzling, and not particularly foggy. Visibility was fair. Tampa-based harbor pilot John Lerro had taken command of M/V Summit Venture at approximately 6:30, as required by U.S. maritime law, in the Gulf of Mexico off Egmont Key. Harbor pilots are employed to navigate ships both foreign and domestic in and out of American ports (Summit Venture was owned and operated by a Hong Kong shipping firm).

After 45 minutes, when Summit Venture was less than two miles from the bridge, it began to rain harder. And soon the pre-dawn sky went black.

A squall had appeared, out of the southwest, and was moving with tremendous speed towards Tampa Bay, towards Summit Venture and towards the Sunshine Skyway.

This system had not been detected by the National Weather Service, so no advisory was issued. The most recent NWS forecast, from 5:30 a.m., told Lerro and the other mariners that they should expect light winds and cool temperatures.

Lerro was keeping the vessel in the deep dredged shipping channel which, under normal circumstances, would allow Summit Venture to glide safely beneath the 150-foot-high Sunshine Skyway and on to Tampa.

By 7:20, the ship was moving through a wall of water. The bridge was a quarter mile in front of him, but Lerro and the others in the wheelhouse could not see it. At that moment the ship’s radar ceased functioning. They were flying blind.

As he saw it, Lerro had two choices. He could bring his ship hard port, to the left, come around in the wide shipping channel and steer away from the bridge.

But there was an empty gasoline tanker headed across the bay from Tampa, he was aware, and he couldn’t take the chance that it might be in his vicinity. He was unable to reach the pilot on that ship over the staticky radio.

Turning to starboard was out, too, as he did not, and could not, know how deep the water was to his right (most of Tampa Bay is extremely shallow). Summit Venture could self-ground, or it could present a broadside to the hard wind out of the southwest and blow like a steel balloon into the Skyway Bridge.

It was at that moment that Summit Venture co-pilot Bruce Atkins, who’d been assigned to monitor the radar, called out that the clutter had cleared for once crucial sweep, and that they were still at the correct spot in the shipping channel.

This told Lerro he could proceed, cautiously, at a reduced speed and pass without incident beneath the bridge.

He did not know – in fact, the term had not yet been invented – that the passing squall contained a powerful energy cell called a microburst, sending gusts of tornado-like wind as forceful as 100 miles per hour in all directions.

The microburst, it was explained by meteorologists at Lerro’s subsequent hearing, exploded at the precise moment Summit Venture was approaching the bridge. The vessel was blown south of the shipping channel.

The ship strike caused 1,300 feet of roadway to buckle and fall, up to and including the highest point of the steel and concrete cantilever bridge structure.

Eight vehicles making the southbound crossing dropped 150 feet from the broken edge and plummeted to the water below. The last to fall was a Greyhound bus, on its way to Miami. All 26 people on the bus were killed.

Lerro was not held accountable for the 35 lives lost; although the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board ruled that he should have opted to leave the channel at the first sign of bad weather, he was neither officially reprimanded nor charged. His pilot license was returned to him.

Fast facts

Lerro returned to piloting, but was forced to leave the profession the next year due to the sudden onset of physically-debilitating multiple sclerosis. He died in 2002 from complications of the disease, which is exacerbated by stress.

The only survivor was Gulfport truck driver and mechanic Wesley MacIntire, whose 1974 Ford Courier pickup had just cleared the span’s apex, and was traveling down the southward slope, when the bridge began to collapse. His vehicle was flung into the black hull of Summit Venture; it ricocheted off and dropped backwards into the water. MacIntire, who’d been a Navy swimmer in World War II, was able to free himself and reach the surface, where he was rescued by the ship’s crew.

Divers from the Department of Transportation, and from Eckerd College Dive and Rescue Team, searched for and recovered bodies trapped in the sunken vehicles. The last body was recovered May 14, five days after the incident, floating near Tampa.

A design submitted by Governor Bob Graham (from a bridge he’d seen over the River Brotonne in Normandy, France) was approved as a replacement. The four-lane cable-stayed bridge was built, at a cost of $244 million, in the mid ‘80s. The Bob Graham Sunshine Skyway Bridge – the one that’s still in use today – was dedicated in February, 1987, but did not open to vehicular traffic until April 30.

A series of concrete, steel and stone bumpers, known as dolphins, were constructed on both sides of the bridge to deflect any potential ship strike. Other safety measures, never part of the original spans, were installed.

The Skyway Fishing Piers, on the Pinellas and Manatee County sides of the bridge, are what remains of the two original spans. The rest was demolished in 1992.

Catalyst Senior Writer and Editor Bill DeYoung is the author of Skyway: The True Story of Tampa Bay’s Signature Bridge and the Man Who Brought it Down (University Press of Florida, 2013).

A crowdfunded memorial to the 35 victims of the Skyway tragedy was dedicated on the 35th anniversary, in 2015. It is located near the rest area on the Pinellas County side. Photo by Bill DeYoung.