We are back in Florida for this weeks video, scarily it seems the state has had more than
its fair share of disasters.
It is the 20th April 1987, and a new 4 lane bridge across the Tampa bay is being opened
to the public.
It is a welcome relief to commuters, it represents a doubling of capacity for traffic, but this
is only reinstating a previously achieved throughput.
For the last 7 years motorists have been squeezing along a two lane bridge, originally built
in 1954 it is a little bit of a bottle neck.
But a new bridge wasn’t the original plan, up until 1980 the crossing had 4 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
so sunny.
My name is John and today we will be looking at the sunshine skyway collapse.
Background
Our story begins with not a bridge but a ferry, in 1927 the bee line 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 world wide events got in the
way, including the Great Depression and ww2.
Eventually in 1944 in preparation for the building of a bridge the St. Petersburg 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 that wouldnt begin for another
6 years.
Over the remaining years of the 1940s several concepts were produced, but again the bridge
seemed far away when contractor Bail, Horton, and Associates failed to raise the 10 million
in funding required.
Finally in 1950 another contractor Parsons, Brinckerhoff, Hogan & Macdonald was hired
and this time the money was secured.
The bRidge was to be one of the longest in the world and would require the construction
of its own concrete factory.
It was to be 15 miles long, and would require 12,104,000 pounds (5,490,000 kg) of structural
steel, 8,536,700 pounds (3,872,200 kg) of rebar and 115,980 cubic yards of concrete.
I should say that this bridge is only 1 of two that made up the final sunshine skyway
that would experience tragedy.
This first structure consisted of 32 concrete piers set every 135 feet apart from a central
shipping Chanel 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 2 lanes had a maximum speed limit of 45mph and was unlit.
The bridge was built between 19th October 1950 and September 9 1954, on its opening
day some 15,000 cars would cross the bridge in a 12 hour span.
Eventually the 2 lanes would become a bit of a bottleneck, and a new addition to the
crossing was planned.
The new bridge would essentially be a carbon copy of the Already established crossing,
keeping the vital shipping channel and cantilever truss design.
In 1966 the construction permit was issued.
Initial works were delayed when it was discovered that pier 1s had developed cracks needing
immediate remediation work.
But eventually in 1971 the new bridge was complete, this gave a total 4 lane capacity
2 going north and 2 going south.
The original bridge was converted for northbound traffic.
And thus the crossing was complete, on average roughly 12k vehicles would make the crossing
per day in each direction, and this generated some income for the state.
The bridges, although built with shipping traffic in mind, didn't have much in the way
of protection.
A 400ft wide channel had been cut into the river bed when the original bridge was constructed.
Wooden piles had been installed to protect either side of the Original bridges center
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 to the bridge, in comparison to
more Modern designs essentially the sunshine skyway was a sitting duck.
But strangely it wasn’t that the bridge had never been hit in its history queit the
contrary:
At least 7 times the bridge had experienced minor collisions from waterborne vessels.
one of which was caused by an earlier maritime disaster, the sinking of the USCGC Blackthorn.
During recovery operations an alternative shipping route was set up next to piers 1n
2n during the diversion a vessel struck the bridge on the 16th February 1980, but the
year would welcome a far worse collision.
The disaster.**
The mv summit venture was a bulk carrier and in 1980 it was still relatively new being
built in 1976, by Oshima Shipbuilding Co. of Nagasaki, Japan.
The 609 feet (186 m) long, 85.5 feet (26.1 m) wide, gross weight of 19,735 ton ship was
owned and operated by Hercules Carriers, Inc., of Monrovia, Liberia.
And in all intents and purposes was a perfectly 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 the ship does.
Pilot John E. Lerro.
assigned to the mv summit venture arrived at the tampa bay pilot station at 0420 am,
at this time he had determined the visibility to be at least 2 miles in the light mist.
Lerro contacted the Summit venture to ascertain information on the ships size and characteristics
and began to plan his shift.
Before departing for the ship he found out about the expected traffic for the morning
around the bay and got weather reports for the day.
At 0500 lerro contacted the summit venture again and informed the ships 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 vessel; today lerro had
some company a trainee; the two departed at 0540 at roughly the same time the summit venture
was raising its anchor in preparation to head out towards the entrance of Tampa bay.
The two reached the ship at 0620, 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
onboard.
Visibility was between 3-4 miles at this time but the mist had turned into a light rain.
At 06:30 the pilot assumed control and ordered half ahead from the engine, shortly after
the pilot-trainee was given a go and assumed the conn and maneuvered the SUMMIT VENTURE
into the egmont channel.
At 0650 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 bUoy 8 visibility was still
at around 3-4 miles.
The Egmont Key lighthouse was passed about 0706, and visibility was still good, however
quickly a rain shower set in, the pilot requested a lookout be posted as well as an anchor watch
at the bow in anticipation of reduced visibility.
Next the ship passed 13 and 14, buoys 13 was seen and verified by the pilot, 16 was visually
as well, and bUOyS 15, 16, lA, and 2A, as well as the sunshine skyway bridge could be
seen on the radar at 6 nm.
The rain was increasing but nothing to worry about yet, as 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 to
be approach to the bridge, the pilot took over control from the trainee.
The SUMMIT VENTURE passed between buoys 15 and 16, buoys 1A and 2A were not visible,
but they still remained clearly visible on radar.
A sudden heavy downwash hit the vessel, this had 2 effects on the ship 1 was to reduce
physically being able to see anything as and 2 it obliterated the radar's ability to see
as well, because the radio waves bounce off the rain, causing a thing called rain returns,
not 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 to 10, 20, 30 seconds later.
I don't know how long."
The trainee frantically tried to find buoys 1 and 2 on the radar, they got a glimpse for
a brief moment at a distance of 3/4 of a mile but again the rain returns destroyed the view
on the radar screen.
Frantically the lookout tried to see the buoy but no luck, the ship was turning all still
blind, at About 0731, the pilot ordered the vessel's speed reduced to slow ahead maneuvering.
Pier 2s came into view just 1 ship's length away, the pilot ordered full astern on the
engine order telegraph and ordered "hard to port-let go both anchors.
The summit venture struck the sunshine skyway’s pier 2s at 0734 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 piers 3s and 1n fell into the water.
A 100ft section of the bridge crashed across the ship's bow, the pilot immediately broadcast
a mayday 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, the poor visibility wasn’t just affecting the ship, vehicles making the
crossing as well many couldnt see what had unfolded, Six cars, a truck, and a Greyhound
bus were dropped into the water below.
In a twist of luck Wesley MacIntire who was driving a pickup truck went off the bridge
only to hit the mv summit ventures bow slowing its descent into the water, mcintire managed
to escape when his Ford Courier momentarily floated on the surface, he was fished out
the bay by some of the ship's crew.
Noone else who crashed into the water survived which totaled 35 lives, tragically the survivor
guilt would haunt mcintire for the rest of his life.
Tragically 23 of the deaths were from the greyhound bus.
Emergency services shut the bridge and attempted to recover and rescue any victims, by 0955,
two tug boats 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 1200.
Needless to say the cause of the disaster had to be found out, ands this leads us on
to the 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
un-protected bridge succumbing 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 pier 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 pier protection, something that 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.
Again the official report said that Upon loss of visual and radar navigation the NTSB stated:
“The SUMMIT VENTURE probably would not have struck the Sunshine Skyway Bridge if the pilot
had turned the vessel hard to starboard immediately upon the initial loss of navigational 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 a 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 the initial blame at the summit venture, that's kinda obvious, but the lack
of pier protection and roadway warning systems meant that the collision became fatal.
Although John E. Lerro was cleared of any wrongdoing in a grand jury and coast guard
inquiry; he was quickly forced to retire on medical grounds.
I order to eventually resume traffic, the surviving original bridge was converted back
to two way traffic whilst the state decided on whether to repair or replace the sunshine
skyway crossing.
A tunnel seemed difficult to build, 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 oldBridge.
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 30, 1987 ironically
a day before the ribbon cutting, a ship actually collided with one of concrete dolphins, but
this time the crossing was safe.
The remains of the older crossing was finally fully 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 to another company in 1993, but would sink just of the Vietnamese coast
in 2010 under the name of Jian Mao 9, luckily none
of her crew were killed.
https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/MAR8103.pdf
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Collapse-of-the-Sunshine-Skyway-Bridge-in-Tampa-FL-1980-due-to-ship-collision_fig1_267936569
https://www.flmd.uscourts.gov/maritime-matters