 We're back in Florida for this week's video. Scarily it seems the state has had more than its fair share of disasters. It is the 20th of April 1987 and a new four-lane bridge across the Tampa Bay is being opened to the public. It is a welcome relief for commuters. It represents a doubling of capacity for traffic. But this is only reinstating a previously achieved throughput. For the last seven years motorists have been squeezing along the two-lane bridge. Originally built in 1954 it has become a bit of a bottleneck. But a new bridge wasn't the original plan. Up until 1980 the crossing actually had four lanes. But a series of events would result in a partial collapse of a vital bridge in the region. The bridge is called the Sunshine Skyway. But a day in May 1980 would prove to be not very sunny. My name is John and today we're looking at the Sunshine Skyway Collision and Collapse. Background Our story starts not with a bridge but a ferry in 1927. The Beeline ferry company started operations, transporting vehicles and passengers across the Tampa Bay. It ran between Bay Vista Park in St Petersburg and Piney Point. A number of bridges were proposed for the area but a few worldwide events got in the way. Most notably the Great Depression and World War II. Eventually in 1944, in preparation for building of a bridge at some point, the St Peter's Port Authority bought the remaining of the 50-year franchise for the ferry service. It was to be operated until a new bridge was completed. But construction wouldn't begin for another six years. Over the remaining years of the 1940s, several concepts were produced. But again, the bridge seemed far away when contractor, bail, Horton & Associates, failed to raise the $10 million required in funding. Finally, in 1950, another contractor, Parsons, Brinkanoff, Hogan and McDonald, was hired and this time they secured the money. The bridge was to be one of the longest in the world and would require construction of its own concrete factory. It was to be roughly 15 miles long and would require 12 million pounds of structural steel, 8.5 million pounds of rebar and 1115,000 cubic yards of concrete. I should say that this bridge is only one of two that made up the final Sunshine Skyway, that would experience the tragedy in the 1980s. This first structure consisted of 32 concrete piers set every 135 feet apart, with a central shipping channel, which had a space of 864 feet between piers. On the piers sat post-tensioned concrete girder trestles with a steel cantilever and central suspended section. The roadway was two lanes and had a maximum speed of 45 miles per hour and was also unlit. The bridge was built between the 19th of October 1950 and the 9th of September 1954. On his opening day some 15,000 cars were crossed the bridge in just a 12 hour span. Eventually the two lanes would become a bit of a bottleneck and a new addition to the crossing had to be planned. The new bridge would essentially be a carbon copy of the already established crossing, keeping the vital shipping channel and cantilever trust design. In 1966 the construction permit was issued. However initial works were delayed when it was discovered that Pier 1S had developed cracks needing immediate remediation work. But eventually in 1971 the bridge was complete and this gave a total four lane capacity, two going north and two going south. The original bridge was to be used for the northbound traffic and thus the crossing was complete. On average roughly 12,000 vehicles would make their crossing per day in each direction and this generated some considerable income for the state. The bridges, although built with shipping traffic in mind, didn't have much in the way of protection. A 400 foot wide channel had been cut into the riverbed when the original bridge was constructed. Wooden piles had been installed to protect either side of the original bridge's centre span pylons but over the years they had rotted away. The structure itself was designed to withstand 50lbs per square foot of horizontal load from wind. That pretty much made up the only protection available for the bridge, essentially the sunshine skyway was a sitting duck. But strangely it wasn't that the bridge had never been hit in its history, quite the contrary. At least seven times the bridge had experienced minor collisions from water borne vessels, one of which was caused by an earlier maritime disaster, the sinking of the US Coast Guard Blackform. During recovery operations an alternative shipping route was set up, next appears one N and two N. During a diversion a vessel struck the bridge on the 16th of February 1980 but the year would become far worse with another collision. The M.V. Summit Venture was a bulk carrier and in 1980 was still a pretty new ship being built in 1976 by the Oshima Shipbuilding Company of Nagasaki Japan. The 609ft long, 85ft wide and nearly 20,000 ton ship was owned and operated by Hercules Carriers Incorporated of Monrovia, Liberia. And in all intensive purposes was a pretty good modern vessel, built to transport goods and on a day in May 1980 it was doing just that. As you may know local pilots are often mandated in tricky areas to assist with navigating difficult waterways and Tampa Bay was no different. Although when on board the pilot is controlling the vessel it is still up to the captain to make final decisions on what a ship does. It is the 9th of May 1980 and pilot John E. Lero assigned to the M.V. Summit Venture arrived at Tampa Bay Pilot Station at 4.20am. At this time he had determined the visibility in the area to be at least two miles in the current light mist. Lero contacted the Summit Venture to ascertain information on the ship's size and characteristics to start to begin to plan his shift. Before departing for the ship he found out about the expected traffic for the morning around the bay and weather reports for the day. At 5am Lero contacted the Summit Venture again and informed the ship's master of the location and time he would meet the vessel. It would take roughly 45 minutes for the pilot's boat to reach the M.V. Summit Venture. Today Lero has some company, a trainee. The two departed at 5.40am. Roughly about the same time the Summit Venture was raising its anchor in preparation to head out towards the entrance of the Tampa Bay. The two reached the ship at 6.20am. Upon boarding they were escorted to the bridge of the Summit Venture. There they were introduced to the crew on shift and shown the navigational equipment on board. Visibility at this time was roughly three to four miles but the mist had started to turn into a light rain. At 6.30am the pilot assumed control and ordered half a head from the engine. Shortly after the pilot trainee was given a go and assumed the controls and manoeuvred the Summit Venture into the Egmont Channel. At 6.50am the pilot trainee ordered full ahead to overtake a tug before meeting an outbound ship, the M.V. Good Sailor. By the time the Venture reached Boy 8 visibility was still around three to four miles. The Egmont Key Lighthouse was passed at 7.06am and visibility was still good. However quickly a rain shower started to set in. The pilot requested a lookout to be posted as well as an anchor watch at the bow in anticipation of reduced visibility. Next the ship passed 13 and 14 boys. 13 was seen and verified by the pilot. 14 was also visually verified and boys 15, 16, 1A and 2A as well as the Sunshine Skyway Bridge could be seen on the radar at 6 nautical miles. The rain was increasing but nothing to worry about yet. The pilot would later say just rain but not heavy rain. Over the next few minutes the rain would become more intense. This coupled with the soon approach to the bridge meant the pilot took over control from the trainee. The Summit Venture passed between boys 15 and 16 and boys 1A and 2A were not visible but they still remained on the radar. A sudden heavy downwash hit the vessel. This had two effects on the ship. The first was to physically reduce anyone being able to see anything and the second was it obliterated the radar's ability to see as well. This is because the radio waves bounced off the rain causing a thing called rain returns which is not very good. The pilot now faced essentially with a blind approach to the bridge had to act quickly. He would later say I started reviewing my options immediately. The rains came but the wind had to be 30 seconds later. I don't know how long. The trainee frantically tried to find boys 1 on 2 on the radar. They caught a glimpse for a brief moment at a distance of three-quarters of a mile but again the rain returns destroyed the view on the radar screen. Frantically the lookout tried to see the boys but no luck. The ship was turning all still blind. At about 7.31am the pilot ordered the vessel's speed to be reduced to slow ahead manoeuvring. Pier 2S came into view just one ship lengths away. The pilot ordered full astern on the engine, ordered telegraph and ordered hard to port let go both anchors. The summit venture struck the sunshine skyways Pier 2S at 7.34am. The 20,000 ton ship along with strong winds from astern pushed the bow into the bridge with tremendous force. The shock vibrated through the structure. A significant portion of the bridge between pier 3S and 1N fell into the water. A 100 foot section of the bridge crashed across the ship's bow. The pilot immediately broadcast a made-a-message. He informed the coast guard that the bridge was down and told them to notify the sunshine skyway bridge authorities to stop vehicular traffic. Don't forget though the poor visibility wasn't just affecting the ship. Vehicles making the crossing as well had issues seeing what was unfolding. Six cars, a truck and a greyhound bus were plunged into the water below. In a twist of luck Wesley Malkintyre who was driving a pickup truck went off the bridge only to hit the summit ventures bow slowing its descent into the water. McIntyre managed to escape when his forward courier momentarily floated on the surface. He was fished out of the bay some time later by the ship's crew. No one else who crashed into the water survived which totaled 35 lives. Tragically the survivor guilt would haunt McIntyre for the rest of his life. Emergency services shut the bridge and attempted to recover and rescue any victims. By 9.55am two tugs and an additional pilot were on the scene and it was found that the venture was taking on some water. The vessel was pulled clear of the impact site at about 12pm. Needless to say the cause of the disaster had to be found out and this leads us on to the NTSB's investigation. The investigation. Investigators initially inspected the bridge and found that Pier 1S showed lots of cracking throughout. Clearly there was a serious failure of the bridge but that's hardly unsurprising an unprotected bridge are coming to such a serious collision. This means that the lack of proper protection must take some of the blame. The NTSB report even hints at this. Several bridges with peer protection systems have survived collisions similar to the ramming of the sunshine skyway bridge without major damage to piers or superstructure. Most collisions between bridges and shipping are caused by human error. Again as pointed out in the NTSB report. And because of this you need to be able to mitigate this risk with proper peer protection. Something that the sunshine skyway lacked. But of course we need to find someone to blame and this falls at the feet of the summit ventures crew and the pilot. The NTSB report pretty much says as much. The summit venture probably would not have struck the sunshine skyway bridge if the pilot had turned the vessel hard to starboard immediately upon initial loss of navigation information on the radar. The severe sudden weather was the spark that set off the chain of events that led to the crash. But the pilot should have made the evasive action to avoid collision. However the ultimate blame has to be laid at the feet of the ship's master and by extension the captain. As they have the ultimate command over the ship, even if the pilot is at the controls it was found that the company that owned the ship often relied heavily on pilots and failed to take over when required on several occasions. The report put initial blame at the summit venture. That's kind of obvious. But the lack of peer protection and roadway warning systems meant that the collision became fatal. Although John E. Lerow was cleared of any wrongdoing in a grand jury and coast guard inquiry, he was quickly forced to retire on medical grounds. In order to eventually resume traffic the surviving bridge was converted back to a two-way flow. This was whilst the state decided on whether to repair or replace sunshine skyway crossing. A tunnel seemed difficult to build in the area and the cost to repair the pretty old design pushed the state to go down the route of a clean sheet new bridge. Governor of Florida at the time, Bob Graham, had an idea to build a signature cable-stayed bridge with a span that would be 50% wider than the old one. The bridge would also have a wider shipping lane area and importantly proper concrete protective dolphins for the structure's piers. Construction would start in January 1983 and finally be completed in April 1987. Ironically the day before the ribbon cutting a ship actually collided with one of the concrete dolphins. But this time the crossing was safe. The remains of the older crossing were finally demolished in 2008. But what of the MV summit venture? Well she was repaired and did sail again continuing service under the same name. She would be sold off eventually to another company in 1993 and sadly would sink just off the Vietnamese coast in 2010 sailing under the name Duann Mau 9. Luckily none of the crew were killed. This is a plainly difficult production. All videos on the channel are Creative Commons attribution share alike licensed. Plainly difficult videos are produced by me John in the currently sunny corner of southern London UK. I'd like to thank my Pat Johns as well as YouTube members. Your financial support definitely helps keep the lights on round here. 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