Danny Jones Podcast - #57 - The Skyway Bridge Disaster | Robert Raiola & Mike Betz

Episode Date: October 13, 2020

Robert Raiola and Mike Betz are former Florida DOT divers who were in charge of inspecting thousands of water bridges over the span of their careers. Their job was to dive under every bridge and thoroughly inspect each piling for structural integrity below the waterline.  On may 9th 1980 At 7:38 in the morning, a freighter hit the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay. A 1,400 feet section of the bridge collapsed, killing 35 people.  My guests today, Bob & Mike were the first divers in the water that day to attempt to rescue and retrieve victims of what is known as one of the worst disasters in Florida’s history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We're going to start posting each podcast episode that you see on YouTube a week earlier on Patreon. So feel free to join for early access to all episodes. Plus, we're going to start doing bonus podcast episodes every week at patreon.com slash concrete videos. Feel free to go check it out or just get it a week late here on YouTube. Talk you later. Hello, world. Bob Riola and Mike Betts, our former Floridian. DOT divers who were in charge of inspecting thousands of Florida bridges over the span of their careers.

Their job was to dive under every bridge and thoroughly inspect each piling for structural integrity below the waterline. On May 9th of 1980 at 738 in the morning, a freighter hit the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay. A 1400 foot section of the bridge collapsed into the bay, killing 35 people. And my two guests today, Bob and Mike, were the first divers in the water that day. to attempt to rescue and retrieve any victims of what is now known as one of the worst disasters in Florida's history. I must warn you, this conversation gets graphic and extremely tense at times. Without further ado, please welcome Bob, Riola, and Mike Betts. All right, we're live. Thanks for coming on, guys.

Oh, thanks for having us. It's been a while coming, and we certainly appreciate the opportunity to tell our side of the story. Yeah, you guys' story is super fascinating. For the people out there that don't know, could you please just give me like a brief background, each of you, on to us to like where you came from and what your background is? Great, Mark. Well, I joined the Florida Department of Transportation in May of 1980, having just served about five years in the Navy. I was an underwater photographer, diver in the Navy.

And when I got out, the Florida State Employment Service pointed me to a job in Tampa with bridge inspection, and I went over and interviewed, and Bob hired me, and we went from there. And yourself, Bob? Unfortunately, I didn't have any choice in where I was born, but I was born up north in Connecticut, a small town called Clinton,

where I taught myself to dive about 16. Join the Marine Corps. Did my time in Vietnam. Got some military training and diving. Ended up working for the Department of Transportation was hired in January, 1974, after several years as a commercial diver after I left the Marine Corps. Back then we were statewide.

There was only eight divers in 1974 that covered the entire state. So we basically divided up into four different sections, and we traveled all around statewide and did every bridge that was longer than 20 feet and deeper than two foot of water for about, six or seven years, and then we were assigned to District 1, which is on west central coast of Florida, covered about 14 counties, fresh and salt water, same routine, provided inspections to ensure the safety of the traveling public for the Department of Transportation. Strictly underwater, that's what we were.

We were professional, commercial divers. So that was the beginning of that, and I got my tutorship under a fellow named Vic Griswold. who was the second DOT diver hired in the state in 1969. The first diver hired was a fellow named Dick Barthill. The bridge inspection program didn't begin until 1969, so I got in kind of in the basement, and Mike did as well. It was pretty interesting back then, so it was a lot of one-on-one training and a lot of water time, a lot of water time.

Is it right when you started that there was two divers, in the entire state of Florida whose job was specifically to inspect these bridges all around Florida. And there's hundreds of bridges in Florida, right? Absolutely. There's about 12, there's currently ballpark, about 12,000 bridges in the state of Florida.

Not all or water bridges, but 12,000 bridges, give or take, probably about 3 or 4,000 water bridges. December 17th, 1968, northbound, across the Anklote River, the bridge collapsed. US 19. That's right up there in Tarpon Springs in Pinellas County. One person lost their life. Immediately, the media suspected sinkholes, because we did have sinkhole problems back in Florida back then. There was no DOT bridge inspection program, period, in the state of Florida, above water or underwater. There were very few in

1969. That tragedy brought forward legislation that was passed in 1969 that mandated that all of the bridges in Florida be inspected once every two years according to National Bridge inspection standards out of Washington. A young fellow named Ed Burkett, who is still pretty active at work at Campo Kissinger over in Tampa, was assigned that responsibility of creating and developing and putting together a bridge inspection. The first two divers hired were hired in 1969, and there were only two divers,

two divers that covered the entire state. Wow. When that bridge collapsed, it was later determined that it collapsed based on the fact that the piling were constructed out of steel. They corroded to a wall. They corroded to a point that led to failure. They then understood through that legislation that it needed to be corrected

to ensure the safety of the traveling public and to let them know that bridges were being maintained and taken care of. When they were hired, the immediate task was to inspect all steel bridges in the entire state, just the two of them. they did it for about four years and they hired two other divers named Pete Gaddy, Jack D and now there were four divers they split the state basically up into four sections north south, east and west

and as a team they all swept around and did as many bridges as they could starting with the steel inventory inspecting from scratch there was nothing there was nobody even had an idea how many steel bridges there were. From there, they eventually completed that task,

and then they went around and did all the timber bridges because there were a lot of old bridges that were created back in the day out of Creosope timber piling, especially down south. Still are. Really? No, yeah. Quick and fast.

With concrete roads on top of them? They overdeck them eventually. Back in the 30s and 40s, when they started building bridges out of timber, they just had planks. They eventually over top. them with concrete and asphalt you know as the applications came along there's some fantastic pictures of the old alligator alley and being created in the 30s and whatnot that show that very well

they found obviously that the majority of the problems were going to go ahead and be for some of the older bridges many of them have never been inspected so those those divers ended up hiring four more divers which created eight that's when i came aboard in 1916 74. So eight divers in the total 174. That's correct. And there was only two-man teams. That's the way it was set up. Everybody understood and understands now, of course, that the best way and the safest way would be three-man teams. Sometimes if you're out in the water, the two-man team, having one guy in the water is not always good. Having two guys in the water is not always good. Best would have been three. However, in 1969, wait, wait, did you say the best,

is to have three divers in the water at once? No, no. It would be to, I misspoke, would be to have a three-man dive crew. Got it. So that you could have one diver in the water or two divers in the water and somebody qualified to watch them in the water rather than just have two divers and have them both in the water with nobody in the boat.

With nobody on top. Or have one guy in the boat watching the other guy's bubbles. You know, it doesn't work that way. The best way would have been. However, in 1969, that's just the way it was. In 1969, nobody had any idea that the waters that they were getting into. As you can imagine, they were full of alligators. They were full of unknown hazards like pollution and contamination.

Some of the waters back in the 60s and 70s were considered industrial canals and stuff. Fenn Holloway and some of the bridges up in the panhandle with the paper products. Jacksonville. Fertilizers and pesticides and shit. I don't want to get anybody upset, but it sounded like the chemicals that he, used to create paper products. They had a lot of problems with the discharge. How do it have been worse back then?

Yeah, with the discharge. Yeah, the water quality back in the 60s and 70s, it was kind of atrocious. Yeah. I can remember diving in the sky with the first couple of times. It was miserable. And then back in the 90s, you know, when I left, it was significantly better. And we began to see a significant change. But back in the day when we were doing the inspections, there are eight-man team.

we were based out of Orlando, OVito, technically, and we traveled all around the state and did our inspections. We eventually were absorbed by the districts, but then again, we were still in West Central Florida, so we had that responsibility in the Skyway. So I had, by the time the Skyway accident had occurred, I had a good four or five years of firsthand knowledge

and experienced diving on that structure. How did you guys meet? He came for a job interview. as he advertised he didn't tell him you worked in the paper for a little bit you worked the paper car used to be a stringer for the old clear water newspaper what's your stringer shooting freelance shooting pictures oh okay you know just picking up weekend assignments things like that that's awesome yeah it was fun the application uh back when we had dark rooms yeah ancient technology yeah mike mike applied for the job as a diver back in 1974 the

minimum qualifications for a DOT diver, dive inspector, or five years full-time commercial diving with military training or military diving experience, a minimum of five years. It was not a recreational activity. It was not a sport activity. It was not a fun. It was commercial. It was work. So in other words, we didn't get to choose which waters we went into, whether it was cold, whether

it was warm, whether it was clear, whether it was dirty, whether it was. that was full of critters or not full of critters. Critters. Defined critters is a widely defined term, I feel like. You live in Florida, however, I can honestly say, and I think my can too, I'm so happy. Eight full critters with big teeth. So happy that we no longer have to dive out there. Now you've got lionfish.

Oh, yeah. You've got the crocodile population has exploded. The alligators are off the endangered species list. We should have been on the, the U.OT divers should have been on the endangered species list back in the day. city allegation. However, that's just the way it worked out. So you said you needed military diving experience. Did you, what did you do? Did you actually dive in the military? Yes. What did you do in the, what did you do? Secret. Can you just give me like, my military specialty was a, you were in Vietnam, right?

Yeah, fine. So Vietnam, Mokhnyan, Chintram, Shammu, Ba'i, Shama Uttamu Itam. To chowalai, we tham. Yes, I was in Vietnam in 1967 and 1968. Sorry, we're out of that. And I returned it in 1968. Yes, I was in Vietnam. I had combat experience.

Really? You were combat? Yes. Yes. And so did you do a lot of stuff? Like, obviously, I don't know much about that, but did you do a lot of underwater stuff? With my diving experience, I had the ability to blow up anything that they They wanted blown up whether it was above water or underwater.

My military specialty was the 1372, which is a nuclear weapons technician. So I was a 19-year-old Marine with a key to the nuclear weapons locker. Holy shit, that's pretty crazy. But it's secret. We can't tell anybody there. Yes, no, I was... That's intense. That's intense.

So you were more than qualified to be a... DOT diver inspecting these bridges. I met the qualifications, and like you say, we had one-on-one for five years. That was a minimum before you got your certification. It was five years on-the-job training, one-on-one. That's incredible. Yeah, we did. So how many bridges would you say you dove and inspected over your career?

Oh, my goodness. Go ahead, Mike. I can tell you that... You can see a little bit closer to you when you're talking. I can tell you that a typical bridge inspection crew, and I'm talking about a top side crew would get approximately depending on the size of the structures

you know, discounting the large Howard Franklin, Courtney Campbell types, but normal three, five, ten, 15, 20 span bridges, a crew of two people might get 30 of those a month to expect. Of those, perhaps 20% maybe

would be a, bridges over water and would require a dive team to come in and do their part of the inspection. And then the top side crew takes the dive report, combines it with their inspection findings, and produces a standalone document that reflects the underwater and the top side. So 30 a month times 12 months, times 30 years. I don't have a calculated, but it's a lot. That's a lot. Yeah.

And I think probably because I was strictly diving, and we covered actually two districts by the time I left. Thousands. Thousands. And some of the longer ones, like the Skyway, when you talk about doing the Skyway, the Skyway isn't. That's like the scariest bridge I could think of. Good.

Good. That's what Steve Irwin said, too. Steve Irwin came out here and dove on that one time and said that the scariest one. Did he really? I don't understand why. Why is that scary? I don't know. I mean, there's scarier bridges,

scary bridges that we have, even in Pinellas County, probably one of the scariest ones for me would be John's Pass, because it's right there. Right on the Gulf. I feel like it's scarier because there's so much water. Like, there's such a big distance between each piece of land. John's Pass, I can hit a golf pole over John's Pass. Absolutely, which concentrates all the bad things in one spot, doesn't it?

Ooh, interesting. So what's so scary about is John's Pass? Would you say that's the scariest channel you dove? Well, number one, it's right on the water like Sebastian and some of the other ones. A lot of times. It's almost impossible to dive whenever you want. You have to pick your time cautiously and carefully. Because of the currents.

Because of the velocity, four, four, five, six feet a second. That's pretty fast. Back in the 70s and 80s, there was a lot of commercial fishing going on. And a lot of the commercial boats came into John's Pass. That's a group of capital of the world on the west coast of Florida. And they would flay their fish and discard the carcasses near the pass because that's where most of the commercial fish houses were. There was a lot of traffic in and out for following the boats, people fishing, swimmers.

It was also 50 feet deep. People don't realize that. It was 50 feet deep. they recently replaced it due in large fact that many of the piling had completely washed out and become unsupported and were dangling in the air or dangling in the water so it was you know replaced and they put a fantastic new structure up there velocity fish animals they've had several drownings there people getting sucked off into their pass and the current stuff it's pretty dangerous boat traffic pretty narrow also we didn't you know necessarily back then have three people in the boat. Like I said, a lot of times we would tire a boat up and just both of us go in to make sure we were okay in the water. So there was a lot of stuff that made different bridges here.

There were some bridges down in the alligator alley that, you know, you really had to think twice and look twice before you went in. When they opened that up, those alligators had ever seen divers before. I can guarantee you. Did you run into alligators when you were diving those bridges? frequently. Really? Well, that's...

How do you do? What do you do when you're underwater? Well, I tried to call Manny, but I couldn't get Manny to come out. You needed one of those tridents over there that you needed. He's going to go ahead and go out there and lift them up and play with him and stuff. But, uh, mani, how you doing? You know, I just, I'm not a mani. Um, unfortunately, we've had, we've had a couple of brushups with some allocators and stuff that

didn't end up very well for the alligator because we're both still here but uh you know we don't look for it it's just one of those things if you're in florida you can almost always count on bump it into an alligator in the water and especially now uh with the population i would say generally they're they're not territorial or aggressive they're more likely to retreat than attack as my experience and my experience because i dove with the d o't a little bit longer than mike was if you get a construction crew that's out there feeding them for three months, they're left over lunch. Yeah. Then they usually are pretty interested in seeing what you're going to bring in for lunch when you get

into water. So it made it kind of interesting. We had a hard time, a lot of time. We would stop down any Everglades at places where the people would stop in the bus and actually feed them, even though they weren't supposed to be back then. Like you said, it made it more difficult to do our job. It's just part of that thing that you signed up for. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense how now that I think about it, that does that.

is so, like such a narrow channel in John's Pass. It makes sense that there's so much more sea life. And plus with the fishermen and everything. And people and boats. How deep is, can you explain what it's like on a typical, how many times did you dive the Skyway bridge? Oh, my goodness. Oh, gosh.

I had, I'm going to say, 22 years of diving out of the Skyway bridge. So that's kind of tough. The Skyway, like every other. regular bridge in Florida gets inspected every two years. Every two years. Some structures that are weight restricted for whatever reason or have structural deficiencies that the inspectors want to monitor more closely than a two-year cycle can be as frequently as 12, 6, even one month.

They could go look at a structure every month to make sure that it doesn't need to be closed. So when you talk about how many times did you dive the skyway, a typical inspection of the skyway for a dive crew would probably take two months. Really? Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's with, like I say, you don't get to pick your weather or pick your visibility. Sometimes you go down and it may only be two or three feet.

And a lot of it's tactile. It's not swimming across and just looking at stuff. It's swimming across finding the concrete piling. really almost shimmy up and down each side and each face it's right in your face it's more like a telephone alignment when you're climbing up and down the piling and not only that but you have to remove all the barnacle growth to see what's underneath so that that in itself is a difficult task or enough so that you can see what you're inspecting and stuff and then if you find more you can go ahead and bring in heavier equipment there were times out in the early 70s when we first saw the cracking on the main piers on the

north side. We spent hundreds of hours out there with pneumatic and with hydraulic equipment cleaning the large piers as big as this room to find cracks as small as eighth of an inch, a quarter of an inch, and then documenting them so that we could bring it back to the engineer so that they could take a peek at it. Once they saw that we had some large cracks, large up to a half an inch, they would send us back out on those cracks with a homemade jig. with a hydraulic drill, two-inch core, and we would set it up on that concrete structure and take core samples at that crack location

to see how far in, if we could. That crack went and see what kind of material it was. There was about, I'm guessing now, about 12 or 14 piers on the north side and the south side of both old skyways, and I think we only found cracking on the north side of the newer of the two bridges in 76.

So a few of them were broken, are cracked. But you could spend 100 hours just on one peer taking samples. We put pieces of glass on either side of the crack and epoxyed up there. And that way if the pier did shift or move,

that glass would more than likely fracture or crack if it got that bad. That was our early strain gauges. They hired consultant companies to actually put strain gauges on the opposite sides of the crack to see if there was a any movement and stuff.

There was a lot of testing going on before the bridge was struck to see if they were going to make significant repairs to those piers and other parts of the bridge as well. So you could spend hundreds of hours just on an assigned task out of the skyway. By the time that bridge was struck in May 9th, I figure I had at least a documented 200 miles of underwater bridge inspection. Because back then, we traveled the insurance. entire state. The seven-mile bridge is not a seven-mile inspection. Talking about the bridge and the keys. In the keys. It's nine miles because it's not just

swimming across and look at it everything. It's swim to that pier, swim around it, if you can. Go to the next pier, swim around it, if you can, and keep going. So that ends up to be about nine miles. The skyway was about four, four and a half miles. By the time you got done with that, it was five, almost six miles, because you didn't just swim from peer to peer. You swam up and down. You swam the vents and stuff. So I know Mike, when he first started,

I think it was a new experience for him, but for me I had been out there. So I based my comments on five years of, you know, full-time diving out there and stuff. So, you know, that was quite an experience back in the earlier days. So the Skyway wasn't scary for you to die? I think I was more comfortable. I just as comfortable at the skyway.

You had to be so comfortable diving that you didn't think about it. Diving was simply a mode of transportation to get back and forth to our job. Yeah. You had to put everything else out so that you could concentrate on your inspections. Yeah. And typically we had pretty good visibility out there. We were very fortunate. West Coast of Florida, other than the Keys, you know, has some excellent visibility on and off.

Jacksonville. Not so much. Not so much. Banyl, not so much. I mean, you know, we've had good water. There were times out there when it was a lot of feel and stuff, but on the day that the Skyway went down, based on my time out there, like, see,

we had a good 30 foot of visibility. Because Mike was taking pictures of the entire roadway down there with this camera. What's the deepest it gets under the Skyway, like the main channel? The main channel is probably 50 to 53 feet, maybe 60. Okay. It varies. The Egmont Key is a little bit deeper. There's a hole out there, of course.

Okay, so walk me through the day that the bridge was struck by the ship. What were you guys doing like that morning? How long had you guys been working together at that point? Can you walk me through that day? Sure, I'll start. Go ahead, Bob. If I can fill it. Mike was interviewed and hired on May 2nd, which was a Friday.

called him up Friday afternoon and told him a report to work on Monday. So technically he was hired on the second. Came into work Monday, got his equipment and his gear, dive shop, showed him around the office, told him what our responsibilities were, got them all geared up, went to the tackle shack in Pinellas Park and got some equipment and stuff. Explain to him what were responsibilities were. spent some time diving at the skyway with Mike. Prior to May 9th, we did a couple of dives within 200 yards of that location where the bus fell on the water.

We were inspecting the fender system, what was left of the fender system. The fender system was a big issue. It wasn't protected as it should have been, not in my wheelhouse way before my time. What do you mean when you say fender system? By the time I started in 1974, the timber fendent, system that was built on that structure to protect both of them, had been demolished bus ship traffic. There was very little protection.

Absolutely. There was no protection to speak of for any large vessels, as obvious, as was obvious. So we spent a couple of days diving out at that location and a couple of days before that. So actually, by May 9th, he had only been with me two or three dives and actually five working days. And Mike put it very, very well when we were being interviewed by the Times.

That's like somebody now joining the New York Fire Department on September 6th, and then walking up the stairs on September 11th. Mike had no idea, neither did I, that morning on Friday, May 9th, when we got to the yard. When we got to Pinellas Maintenance Yard, DOT Yard at the intersection almost to 49th in Olmerton, it was pretty miserable out. It was rainy. That was what the forecast was.

I had a portable radio on my hip, called the office, told him we were going to step out. We hopped in the car at about. about 7 o'clock in the morning after we met. And we knew we were going to have a long day because we were headed out to the skyway after the weather cleared. We stopped down at a restaurant, local restaurant called the Bunny Hut.

We were going to get some coffee and some breakfast and stuff. And at 734, give a take, the girls came out from the back and started talking about the skyway got knocked down. they were pretty excited. It sounded pretty real.

That was, it was kind of a bad joke and not an unusual one for the guys, you know, to always give us the business or me the business about, you know, this bridge got hit and this went down. You got to do this and you got to do that and stuff. So it was kind of like teasing me. So when they came out, I, you know, my first thing was, okay. They brought the radio out and I heard. I think it was Al Ford. This guy in the eye and the same.

Guy in the sky, and he was on the radio, and he was talking about it. He said, the skyway had been hit, and it's down. And they were serious. I remember they had TVs going, too. We could see some live footage from the restaurant of the accident. Yeah. So we hopped in the car, went back to the yard. The boss was on there.

Ron Haisley, if he was already on the radio, we knew we were headed out there. it was our duty, our responsibility to investigate any waterborne accidents. That was our position description. That's what we did. When we realized it was for real, nobody needed to tell us to get out there. We had to get out there. So we scooted back to the yard. It took us less than five minutes.

We were out of there before 8 o'clock with our gear because we were headed down that way anyways. And the boat. We hopped on Olmerton, and at that time they were just on and off completing the bypass 275 from up around Olberton and down south to the skyway. There were portions of it were asphalt and portions of it were still dirt. We had a 16-foot Boston whaler with a tank rack, six tanks, and threw all our gear in there, and hooked it up to the back of the station wagon and zipped as fast as we could down the partially built interstate, dipping on and off when we couldn't go around any further due to the construction. I think we got off someplace around 5th Avenue North or something.

I think that's right. I remember the high school. I'm pretty sure we probably ran the curb a couple of times and maybe even jumped the curve a couple of times, maybe even cut some corners a couple of times. We got down there as fast as we could. We got down to 54th Avenue south and the police barricade was up. We identified ourselves and they waved us through. we ran down to our normal launch location,

which was Skyway Jacks. The Marina, O'Neills. The Marina, O'Neills. We got dressed. We launched our boat. There wasn't much traffic there at that time. It was just us. We were still kind of early.

And started to head out from Skyway Jacks to the bridge. At our location, once we got out of the mouth of the small, Philipicreep. The small marina. Once we got out of the small marina and got out there, it was completely fogged up. It was very, very foggy. I had been out there numerous times,

numerous times, and it had a difficult time navigating out. Very thick fog. I couldn't see the channel markers. I mean, from the reports, like watching the documentary, they're talking about how it was, like, hurricane force winds

and just downpouring rain as well. That was, obviously way earlier. Yes, that's absolutely correct. Absolutely correct. Yep, it was dead still when we got out there because the fog was thick. It was a fog bank, almost solid.

It's a coincidence because it broke so that we could actually, first time we saw the bridge was where the current Skyway Memorial is. Okay. Where the very first time is, where that memorial is today was where we started to see that.

Also where the Blackthorn Memorial is. It's almost like fate or something that that was there. from that location we could see the bridge i could see that the bridge was down i could see that the boat was still stuffed up underneath there uh we headed out there and the obvious location to start as far as i was concerned was at the end of the bridge because that's more than likely where we would start an inspection would be to go ahead and start measurements and stuff like that rather than just drive around look for something to do.

So what? We had it definitely, we had a, a plan, started at that location and start documenting what we had. We were on an accident investigation. So that's what we were doing. But when you guys first got in the boat and put it in the water, had you guys communicated with anybody about what your mission was or what your objectives were? No. Other than it's an accident investigation, get out there as fast as you can.

On the way down, listening to the AM radio, we overheard that there was a bus that did go off and potentially 30, 40, 50 people were in the bus. You know, we did hear that. We did hear that there was traffic that had driven off the bridge. So we knew that they were victims. We knew that there were cars and vehicles and trucks and people underwater. So what were you guys like talking to each other about?

Like what were you like, what were you guys going to do once you got there? I don't think we were doing much talking. I think it was more just trying to get. down there and you know it's really hard to grasp the whole enormity of the situation until we actually got there and could see what was happening i think the when we saw these students from Eckerd college in the water and their boats out there of course we we were already familiar with who they were and what they would normally be doing but when we could tell that that they were over the site of the accident probably over the side of that bus and that

They had divers in the water. At the same time, working above the dangling steel stupor structure that was still in place above them, that could potentially start dropping at any second and crash right down on top of them, I think we felt it was our duty to relieve them, to move them away from danger and assume that responsibility ourselves. We're the state inspectors. These kids had no business. I don't think being out there doing what they were doing,

although they were well-meaning, good intentions, but taking an unnecessary risk for nothing, I thought. I agree in large part with Mike. I don't think the kids had any say in where they anchored up. I'm pretty sure it was the person who was responsible for the rescue operation. Let me say this before I go any further. Mike and I completely understand that if it wasn't, for those kids in that equipment being there that we would have never been able to accomplish

what little we could under those circumstances. It would have been very nice to have a little more cooperation from the man in charge, but the kids were fantastic, all of them. there was only one person that was being a ding-dong and he was quickly ignored we never asked them to leave that location we simply asked them to back off a little bit so that we could take that responsibility like mike said my opinion was they were directly in the flight path of anything coming off of that bridge. Anything.

We only went under there after I picked up my radio and asked my supervisor who was up there, Ron, who was a bridge inspector, if it was safe and if it was okay for us to go under there. So we had communications with topside people when we were out there. and he did say yeah bob you got it he later climbed down the ladder and entered our boat but like mike said i i'm not i'm so happy as the kids were out here because mike and i had a 16 foot open whaler we had no place to put any victims we were a two-man team we simply asked them to back off there was some unnecessary conversation that happened

Mike eventually asked if we could tie off to the back of their boat they let us they said what did the young fellow say go ahead or thanks yeah have at it have at it and I'm pretty sure that that young fella name is Mike

Rosalett I think and I think he also was mentioned in a book not too long ago and so that's kind of like where I got his name and stuff but they were that the kids were fantastic. What specifically were the kids doing? The kids, when we first got there, they were kind of scattered at the surface.

Were they in the water? Yeah, they had no, you know, the skyway isn't a place to go to learn how to dive or to be your first couple of dives. I don't think they were prepared for the current and the velocity, let alone the commotion and the water and the stuff going on, the other activities, the boats and people buzzing around. Several of them were bobbing at the surface. drifting away from the boat. I could tell that they were not going to be around.

Apparently, a couple of the kids did enter the water and go around the boat, the bus, I'm sorry. And I was kind of disturbed. I believe I read in the Times or the evening independent that one of the divers indicated that he went around to the back of the bus. Now, remember, as far as I'm concerned, when we first got there, this is an accident investigation, see? Okay. State representatives, we identified ourselves. They knew who we were. That's what we were doing, investigating an accident. I had read in the paper that one of those divers from the Eckerd Rescue Team went to the back of that bus and opened up the door and saw a mass of bodies and left them there.

Or couldn't get them out. That's okay. You know, that's tough. But didn't make an attempt to close the door. So that kind of like bothered me. a little bit. I mean, we appreciate the help and stuff, but they actually were disturbing the scene. I didn't

think that that needed to be done, and I wish that somebody would have told us back then that that had occurred. I'd have gone back down and closed that door. Do you think maybe they originally thought maybe they just had good intentions, like you said? Absolutely. I'm sure. And they thought there could have been some potential survival.

Absolutely. I'm sure they did. And that's why I say, I'm not mad at the kids. I just wish if we could have communicated and somebody would have said, I'd left the door open. that, you know, I'd have jumped back in and closed it. Was there any possibility of any survivors when you got there? When you guys got there, what was the feeling? Did you think there could be some survivors, or do you think that it was just?

It was, that was a tough call. At that specific time, we really didn't know. What we did notice was that the back of the bus was still relatively afloat. It was held up mostly by the dual wheels in the back. Early pictures of that will show that the bus was at a severe, I had a pretty good angle with the back wheels up. So there must have been some air in there. To the best of my knowledge,

and I haven't found anybody to tell me anything different, I was the first and the only person to go in that bus. I had hoped, beyond all hope, that I would. Unfortunately, I was not able to find anybody that was alive or even looked like they had been. I believe the coroner's report on the 35 victims were 28 individuals perished from severe trauma impact, and that seven people had drowned, which would have meant that they, it survived the crash, but drowned. That was the Hillsborough County Coroner's report, I believe.

That was the final count. So it was possible, unfortunately, for us. it didn't work out that way. So the back of the bus was kind of near the surface, and then when you guys got there, you decided that you needed to get in the water and get inside the bus and try to,

what was your plan? After we tied off, after we asked them, we asked them to please just get back in the boat and help us recover the victims, receive the victims, and take care of them. Because like I say, we had 16, 14, Boston Whaler. There was no way we could do that. We suited up. We rolled over. We were in the water

for less than 10, 15 minutes. When we came up to the bus, it was upside down. It was facing south. I observed the bus driver, Mike Curtis. He was still behind the wheel. He was inverted. I had Mike by my side. He was with me. Flipper stroke for flipper stroke. You guys were dying. Side by side. Visibility was very good, about 30 feet.

Wow. The front of the bus was anywhere between 10 and 15 feet low the surface of the water. After the bubble's cleared, we rolled in. We could see the bus inverted. I could see Mr. Curtin upside down. I headed to the front of the bus. I positioned Mike. I asked Mike to stay outside.

Didn't think there would be any need for two of us. Plus, I obviously felt that it was my responsibility as a senior man to take that responsibility, which I did. I positioned Mike outside the window near what would have been the entrance door. He handed Mr. Curtis to Mike. Went in a little bit further and recovered another victim and passed him out from Mike. so Mike was outside with two victims. I went back in a little bit further. I didn't realize how far I was going in the bus

because I wasn't concentrating on that. I didn't realize until recently, Mike and I really haven't talked about that until recently when Mike told me that a couple of times that when I went in the bus that he couldn't see me, which to me meant that I went in a little bit further than I thought. In the documentary they mentioned that

The roof had been like sheared off. Yes, it had. Yes, it had. The pictures are available on plenty of places that had been. Just about where the seats were, where the hard portion ends and the windows are, was completely sheared. There's nothing there. If it was upside down, it would probably be less than, less than four feet of crawl space. It was a mangled mess.

This is what I crawled into. So were you actually in the aisle? You were in, in the aisle, but were you surrounded by bus structure? or was there like nothing below you had we had the floor chassis was overhead yeah chassis in the walls and the seats going down okay and then below you was what the steel structure of the bridge it landed on top of the bridge the trust it tumbled on top of the bridge i went in and grabbed two more victims disconnected them from the seat uh seat belts you on the seat belts no they didn't have any seat belts Oh, yeah, yeah, Greyhound.

I want to say this to all the family members and stuff is that it was very difficult to extract many of those people. However, I did the best I could and treated them with as much respect as I could as I could. At the time, I said a soft prayer for each one that I recovered and apologized for the treatment that I was given them at the time. But I did feel it was necessary to get them out of there as fast as we can because I understood that everybody needed closure. And so did we. We did everything we could to be as respectful as we could. when I came out with the second set of victims Mike and I headed up to the surface

and handed them to the kids that were waiting on the back of the swim platforms of the boat first victim was Mike Curtin and he was a good-sized man he was over six foot tall I remember his engineer boots and his white shirt he was resting on the back of the swim platform got a picture of him here

yeah can you hold it up a little bit A little, like the same height as your head right there. Yeah, perfect. My curtain right here. This is Mike. This is me. These are some of the victims that we brought up. Kids from Eckhart College.

It's about eight or nine kids. Where was that photo taken from? I'm not real sure because I was busy at the time, but I'm pretty sure it was taken from up top. Yeah. On the second bridge. Whatever was left at the bridge. Right.

That picture was a portion of a, I guess, a film because it was featured in the documentary. Okay. So it's there. This second documentary was colorized and I had never seen that before and I tell you when I saw it recently struck home.

It was pretty hard. We had arrived at the surface. We passed the bodies off, the victims off. They seemed to struggle a little bit but I think it was because they were overwhelmed. I don't think they had any idea when they got up and were rustled up there in the morning that they were prepared for that.

I don't think they had ever seen anything. Very few of us were. Me either. Mike either. I had combat experience. I had dealt with that. I had been through some of that stuff. But even then at that time, and it was only going to get worse, I later realized, you know, that we were just trying to get everybody out and organize and get them out of there as fast I can.

they seem to have a difficult time so we had an opportunity to get back into our boat as they were putting people into the recovery boats got a call from our supervisor who wanted to come down so he climbed down in the access ladder from 150 feet by himself and came to the northbound main span and dropped the last two three feet two or three feet into the boat and the 16-foot open whaler. And he drove our boat back out to that location. We re-anchored off the back of the Eckerd College boat. So now we had three people in the boat, including our supervisor. They looked like they were getting a handle on the victims,

and there was more room in the back. A couple of divers had popped up. I think these were, that might have been one of the volunteers, and then I think there's a St. Pete Fire Department volunteer diver who came by, I think he helped also. They had done some diving down at the bottom of the bay. Right. We, after the supervisor got in there, we tied back off,

and we rolled back in for a second trip into the bus. I stationed Mike out up front again, and because I had removed some of the people from near the front of the bus, obviously I had to go in a little bit further. a second time. It was basically the same procedure. I was able to only extricate three people at this time with what I had. Brought two of them out and gave them to Mike.

That's when, for me, things got a little more intense. On the way out, I felt that I had seen a small child bag, overnight bag. and felt like I needed to see what we could do to make sure that we tried to get that child out. Things got crazy. I was unable to see anybody before I bought that last victim out, but I do remember that and feeling that I had less somebody behind. When we came out from the bus,

we went up the second time and we handed the last of the victims off to the Eckerd College kids. Again, they were having a little bit difficult time getting them in the boat, but they eventually got them all in except one, which was the bus driver, which they appeared to lash to the back of the boat. While we were down on that second dive,

apparently the Coast Guard was notified, and they had come out. I think it was in a white sumac. to that scene. Also on that Coast Guard cutter, I understand, and I only understood this recently, was the governor. The governor was in town that day. Really?

Yes. On the Coast Guard boat? That's correct. He was in Tampa at that time. And he was notified over Tampa at a meeting, and he jumped on, I think it was the White Sumac and went down there. That was Graham, right? Yes.

Governor Graham, yes. And so he was on that site with the Coast Guard been. So he may have heard some of the reports. I understood that we were not enthusiastically welcomed out there and that there was a complaint that we were interfering with an operation. So when the Coast Guard arrived on scene with the governor, the Coast Guardsman notified our supervisor who was in the boat that it was time for us to leave, which is what we did.

Well, how much later did the Coast Guard arrive? We had recovered seven victims, I'd say, in about 25, 30 minutes. They were probably into the vicinity already. They were on the way down from Tampa. Yeah, they were on the way down from Tampa. The first divers, according to the Times, hit the water at 9-12, and that would have been the Eckert College divers. Some of the first victims were reported arriving at the high.

Potter's Pier over in Fort Soto at like 10 o'clock, 10.04. That's like two or three hours after the goat hit the bridge. Yes. Yeah. Something like that. So, you know, some of the people had been in, you know, still there. So we did what we could. They did send somebody over. We were asked to leave, which we did. And the sheriff's boat was out there as well. Sheriff's boat was out there. Marine Patrol boats were out there. A lot of boats were out there. Absolutely. Absolutely. So we did as much as we could. and there's no doubt in my mind today that had we been left alone,

that we would have either recovered everybody or died trying. None, no doubt in my mind then, no doubt in my mind today. What do you think? Oh, yeah, we had plenty of air. It was relatively shallow. We could have gotten everyone out. We wish we would have been left alone, but it was such a commotion and stuff. Like I say, everybody did the best they could.

The kids were fantastic. And that's just speaking about the bus. You know, there was a sort of other private vehicles in the wall. There was 35 people total that died. Absolutely. Falling off that bridge, right? And how many people of them were in, how many of the 35 were in the bus? I'm thinking 20, I want to say 23.

I want to say 23 off top. And were the rest of the bodies recovered from the other individual cars? Eventually they were. Yes. The last victim was recovered on May. May 14th, which recovered about three miles east of the bridge. That was the last victim. Three miles east.

Found floating, yes. Several victims had washed up on Egmont Key, Fort Soto Park and stuff. So they had recovered all the bodies by the 14th of May. Good Lord. How do you got, what do you guys do after that day? Like after that happens, you guys go home and how do you, I mean, it's not just business as usual after that I don't expect. Go ahead, Mike. It was business as usual after that.

Was it? Yeah. We were working the next day, back out there the next day. At the skyway? Oh, yeah. And for many days afterwards. For me, it was a little bit different because for me, after we were asked to leave, I kind of needed to plan our next step and find out what was required of us.

Like you say, it was still, as far as I was concerned, an active, accident investigation scene. The National Transportation Safety Board was called in from Washington. They needed some information in regards to the location of the debris on the bottom, how it collapsed, you know, what it looked like, etc. When we left that scene that morning, we went back to the yard. We brought our dive gear down to the tackle shack, and that's where we rented a camera. Yeah, a 16mm movie camera.

16 millimeter movie camera, and we got four 50-foot rolls of film? Yeah, there was no video then. No video back then. Four 50-foot rolls of film. How much did that cost? We don't know. Actually, I don't think Lou charged us for that camera. I don't think he had it.

It was his camera. Right. It was a personal camera, you know, and he understood the gravity of the situation, and he trusted us, trusted Mike. The guy at Tackleshack? Yes. Was Andy there when you guys went there? No.

No, this is Lou. This is Loulevine. This is Andy's dad. Andy and Jimmy and Steve's dad. Okay. So they, we got our gear. There, he had all the gear that we needed. They took care of us.

It was difficult because he understood what was going on. Because four, five, six months before that, a short time before that, the Blackthorn had gone down in the channel. And that was still partially obstructing the channel during the. accident as well. It was still part of it in there and they had to relocate part of the channel to get around that while they were removing it. We talked about that blackthorn. We spent some time out there.

So he was aware of that type of recovery, that type of emotion and stuff. He understood and called me later on that night and talked to me and asked me if I was all right. And if we were going to go back and what we were going to do. which obviously I knew we were going to after we had our equipment. We were in contact with the bosses over at the office, the bridge office in Tampa. They told us what they needed, measurements, as many photographs as we could get. We were not much to my displeasure, but for whatever reason, we were not invited to provide any information or help or input on the recovery of the remaining victims.

But that's okay. We had a job to do. They had people to do that. I feel like you took sort of like a lot more personal responsibility in this than you were required. Yes and no. If you read, there's a book that was written about the Skyway. And I think the governor, when he was out there, one of his comments, and I only really realized it recently, was that at the time of that accident, I think it was even at the time that he was there on that scene,

his number one concern was nothing other than recovering as many victims as quickly as possible. So for me, yeah, maybe I took it personally and trying to do what I could. Mike's a Navy man. You don't leave anybody in the water. Right. I'm a Marine. Right. You don't leave anybody behind.

Yeah. I feel like that's something that may have been the reason that you felt that overwhelming sense of responsibility because I think most people, just an average everyday diver would have maybe not done what you guys did. That's probably true, but you need to understand that was our job. That bridge fed my family. That bridge and all those bridges provided leisure activities as well as work. So yeah, it was personal.

I feel at times that I need to defend that poor little thing, that poor little bridge, because it certainly didn't jump out in front of that big boat. But it was a nice little bridge and we enjoyed it. So, like I say, we probably did, but I think people can understand why I take it personally. I was responsible for making sure that when people went across it, it was safe. Right. So, yeah, every bridge that people go across, I feel responsible for. So I take some pride in that.

I didn't know Mike does. Sure. You sign your name to that, saying that it's okay. Now, during that time right after that happened, a lot of people blamed the ship captain. for that. And I understand from watching the documentary that there was an ongoing public court trial going on

where the government was trying to prosecute the captain of the ship. They were calling him an alcoholic. They were calling him incompetent. Everything under the, you know, calling him everything. Trying to blame him for this because they were trying to find a quote unquote scapegoat

for this. What was your guy's opinion of the whole situation after following the crash? following the I personally didn't know very much about the pilot Mr. Lero I didn't really know

John Lerro Yeah I didn't know anything about him So I really never Dwell too much on that He was eventually Completely exonerated Right So it

It wasn't an issue with me I didn't pay much attention to it I on the other hand When that occurred And I think that And I hope that people can understand And my perspective, when people say the Skyway accident, is the accident and the victims and the faces of those victims that I saw on that bus and that I still carry with me. So I see it personal.

I was there right up close and personal. I can't get much more. Some people fault him, I think, because he did have a rather cavalier attitude prior to the accident. And I think his quote was, we're going to shoot for the whole, meaning he's going to try to go. go right down the center of that channel between the main piers and hopefully he wasn't going to run into it he wasn't sure i don't think in 70 not winds and torrential downpouring rain right that's right it it's it's difficult to say i can guarantee everybody that he did not wake up in the morning and say boy you know what i'm going to go out and smash you in the air bridge and

kill some yeah that's right so it was a it was determined to be an action of God. Right. Back when it happened on that day, I probably would have said something that gotten into a confrontation had I ever bumped into him. I felt that way for many, many years. I have been offered numerous opportunities to sit down and talk to John Lerow. Bob Height, a local anchor wanted me to speak to him.

Asked me to go ahead and talk to him and see if I could and wanted to. For years, I took. could not. I could not accept the fact that he did what he did. However, I can say that I have evolved. It does come with age. I do see things different. I know that he was not an alcoholic and he was not drunk when he struck that bridge. I can guarantee everybody, had he been drunk and had alcohol in his system, they would have detected it and he would have, you know, just been guilty. I've seen a different side since I've been involved with reliving this. He had, there was no way he could have done anything different

because he was already on such a trajectory through that channel with the wind and the weather, all the elements that were involved. He couldn't stop the ship because the ship would have just sailed right into another piling. He had no choice but to try his best and thread the needle. Again, there's even today there's so much discussion on what he could have done, what he should have done, what he may have done. Best thing would have been not to even go that morning and leave the safety of the open water where they had pumped the boat out to make it lighter. However, he did choose to. Had he had a current, updated, accurate weather forecast from Ruskin, notifying him that there was a potential weather.

weather bomb headed in his direction with cyclonic winds shortly. I'm pretty sure that he would not have even left to go into the bay. However, he did. That decision was made. He did the best he could. It was considered an act of God. Had he not taken the actions that he did by throwing it into reverse, dropping the anchors. There's no doubt in my mind, had he completely ignored all of that and kept on plowing through,

that he would have more than likely taken down the second bridge. He probably would have taken down both bridges if he didn't take the actions that he did. You're right. I think he did a fantastic job based on what he had to work with. And isn't it true that the weather report didn't even come in until like an hour after he struck the bridge? Absolutely. Or so, absolutely.

That's why I say if he would have had proper communications like they do today, I'm sure it wouldn't happen. The radar was a complete wide. out or blackout or white out. There was no other vessels that could give him any advice on to conditions ahead. The other vessel that was headed out that had a full load of oil was called the pure oil, was headed out at the same time at about 7.30 in the morning. He saw the weather.

He didn't get a forecast. He diverted his ship out of the shipping channel and actually anchored up and waited for the storm to pass. really yes it was called the pure oil it's it's pretty well documented in the newspaper and they were leaving the docks going out to see he was headed out with a full load of oil i shuddered a think what would have happened had he not pulled out and anchored up i think you stopped i want to say less than a half a mile or a mile from the bridge on the east side on the inside had he not stopped and done what he did, he either would have been under it, in it, on top of it, or whatever, with a load of oil.

And I can only imagine the potential impact, environmental impact damage from that. So like I said, there were plenty of stories out there and plenty of conditions that, you know, people make choices. Everybody made a choice on that day, and that was the choice, and that was the results. I guarantee you that, you know, there's no way he intentionally did that or that he was drunk. That's still disgusting to this day to hear that. Yeah, it's a good point you made. It could have been way worse if he would have done something different, not put it in reverse, not through the anchors down.

He could have definitely hit that second span and killed way more people. And taking both bridges out and completely shut down the economy and everything for South. Absolutely. So how long, how many times after that day did you guys go out consecutively to try to expect? I'm going to guess we were out there for about two weeks. I know we were out here. The next day on the 10th, we started measurements. We started photography.

We swam every inch of that thing as it was down. On May 11th, which was Mother's Day, is when they brought that bus up, finally. We were out there on Mother's Day. We were within a couple of hundred yards of that location. It was very difficult. There was a lot of, for whatever reason, boat traffic. You got to call them with. what it is, gawkers.

Yeah. That just wouldn't stay away. That Coast Guard and the Marine Patrol had a very difficult time. People, keeping people away from the location as they were trying to raise the bus. Right. They had brought in a Derek in a floating barge, and they lifted eventually the bus up onto that location on Mother's Day. Mother's Day on that evening, at that time I was married and I had two children. And I can guarantee you that when I went home on Mother's Day, my wife got an extra big hug and a kiss.

not only that day but every day for about two weeks afterwards when I went out there I know that Mike's fiancee at the time Mike's fiance at the time probably would have skinned me alive if she could have caught me realizing what I had put Mike through and what I had put Mike done on that day and the following day and the next day I know it was difficult for Mike and I know it still is for both of us we were out there a good two weeks gathering information not only for the DOT, but also for, like I said earlier, the National Transportation Safety Board. We had completed a report and put it together.

It was published, I think, June of 1980. When did you guys get this thing? And how much does this weigh? I'm guessing it's, I waited. I'm guessing it's 38 pounds. I think it's more than that, Bob. This thing is like, could be. That is one of four large anchor bolts.

that anchored the bearing pad to the top of Pier 1 South. There were four of those that were holding a pad, probably about the size of this table. A concrete pad? On top of the concrete. This is one. I'll give you a picture of. Yeah, that essentially is the means of securing the trust to the concrete piers.

That's a big ass nut. Here it is. This is. I'm going to show you. this but I've got a better picture. This is the pier. Pier 1 North. There's a small speck on top of that.

You may not be able to see it, but that's the remaining bearing pad. The other bearing pad was on this side. When the bridge was pulled off in this direction, it pulled itself completely free of the bearing pad by snapping four of these

large bolts in a nanosecond. It's sheared. It's just like a Superman ripped that. Four of those. And this is what That was one. That's the remaining bolt was four feet

into the, embedded four feet into the concrete. Jesus Christ. The noise that that bridge would have made when that thing went down because all of that metal snapped and buckled and rivets were flying hundreds of yards away and steel was flying

and that thing squealed and cried the whole way down. So that was one of four that was completely shared. We recovered all four of those. On that particular day, I think we swam up. Of course, we were both younger then. How could you swim up 50 feet with one of these in your hand? Bob could, I had to tie the one I had to an anchor line and pull it up with a road.

That's what we did for. We were commercial diaries. That's what we did. I was a good thrower. You must have been jacked. We were able to recover four of those. This is one. Eventually, I'm thinking about donating it maybe to the museum over and

Tampa, there's a Skyway Museum. Well, I'll have to think about that. My kids, my grandkids may want that. But this is 104 that was snapped. That's unbelievable. Instantly. That's why I say the tremendous energy that it must have taken, and the noise that it made when that thing popped and let go,

it must have been tremendous, tremendous. Oh, yeah. Not to mention all the small rib, it's pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, yep, absolutely. How long does it take for them to start rebuilding the new bridge? Well, you're, that, that's, How long did it take them to start rebuilding the new bridge? They didn't rebuild the new bridge.

They built a new structure that was open in 87. So it took seven years? Yeah, it took seven years for the construction. And that was after the completion of what type of design and who is going to build it and what type, etc., etc. They were able to use the northbound bridge to use traffic. Oh, yeah, there was still half of the bridge. Correct. So they just split it up.

They barricaded it off and signed it up and stuff. And they carried traffic until 1987 when it was finally blown up and destroyed. Wow. And, of course, the fishing piers are still there. The remains are the original bridges. Now, the seven years later, when they started to construct the new bridge, were you guys involved in any of the inspections of that? Bob, weren't you telling me, you were showing me a photo?

You were telling me they wanted you to dive down inside of like a tube where they were a point. pouring concrete underwater? Yes. You need a cofferdam? Yes. Let me... What's it called? Cofford dam.

Cofford dam. A coffer dam. Yeah, essentially they take steel sheet piling that are interlockable, and they pound them into the ground, form a complete circle, and they can pump that out, and have a dry area right in the middle of the bay,

so they can start drilling their foundation supports. Oh, wow. Yeah. How do you want to do this? Just hold it up. You can hold it on the chair if you want. All right. Well, there's the copper dam. Okay. This is one of the bearing piling that they used,

Kaysan, that they drilled into the ground, anywhere from 80 to 100 feet. It's about eight feet in diameter, because there's a human being right there. About eight feet in diameter. I think there was about 44 of those scattered around the perimeter. That's nuts. Of the main piers, of the two main piers.

That's the one that they wanted us to go inside and check to see if it was okay and didn't collapse. That's insane, man. That's wild. Well, what made this even more challenging is that these are just unprotected steel. Okay. And so they get rust, oxidation on them, even below the water. And so if you go into one of these and create any turbulence at all, that oxidation on the sides comes off the sides and immediately clouds the water so you have zero visibility. Can't see a thing. Can't see your hand this far from your face.

How deep do those things go? What they did was they had determined how deep they needed to go. Each one may have varied. Let's just wait until you get back to the microphone so we can hear you. They were used as bearing pile of supports that tremendous weight. So they had determined, a pre-determined elevation. They were averaging, usually 80 to 100 some feet before they were satisfied that they would hold the bearing. I'm not sure. There were 44 of them, and there were a neat pier or something.

There was a bunch. So they had varying elevations. Yeah, man, it's amazing to me that there was a time when they wouldn't think of having something to protect bridges from these massive tanker or these massive cargo ships that were going through. Just like these giant objects that could easily destroy this bridge that people drive over every day. Like you see now obviously those big round, whatever they are, this big round concrete bumpers they have. They call them dolphins. That's correct. They're called dolphins. Dolphins. Right. Correct. It's amazing to me that they weren't, they, no one could think of that before this had to happen.

Unfortunately, that's part of the history of the inspection program. Like I say, it started with a tragedy in the Ankhlet River, and they developed a program. This tragedy changed the way they looked at building and protecting bridges, just like you said. After this occurred, they had determined that it was inadequately protected. So they made special effort to put in those large dolphins, which will sustain most any of them. impact, that's what they were designed for. It affected bridges being built everywhere, not just in the United States, but all across the country. They used that as an example for protection and stuff.

So it did cause, tragedy did cause a lot of advances in bridge inspections, bridge building, and bridge construction materials. Now, this was also the biggest bridge disaster or a bridge accident in history. This was the largest bridge ship accident in history. in U.S. history, that's correct. And this, I mean, the bridge, the skyway bridge is like a monument and an icon to Florida. Like even you'll see on, you go to any gas station and any Florida postcard has a big picture of the sun and then a big outline of the skyway bridge. I mean, it's like a monument for Florida.

Yeah, it's considered an icon. I think it's considered one of the top 10 bridges in the United States for aesthetics and stuff. It's very nice. They just put $1,000, $10, $50 at night when it's all lit up. It's all lit up now. I've never been, I mean, I've driven over it, but I've never, like, been in a boat under it when it's at night. Yeah, they spent millions of dollars on LED lighting that shifts, make different colors, patterns, American flag. It's very beautiful.

They've done that to many of the bridges, many of the bridges. That bridge accident also caused, like I say, special safety features now and all of the larger bridges, electronic monitoring, sensors to tell if there's any vibrations or separations in the spans to prevent that kind of stuff. They've done tremendous amount of improvements in regards to safety on large structures like that to, you know, prevent something like that from happening. That's incredible. And what was, so explain to me what the process was when these people for this documentary, the Skyway Bridge disaster. When they came to you, were you surprised or shocked at all with any of the information that they were able to unconsor? cover?

I'm going to say that we came to them. My daughter had... Oh, no one knew about you guys. Nobody had ever heard about the DOT divers, except our bridge inspection community, our family. The Skyway documentary did not, no disrespect, Frankie,

hear about us before that. I contacted them and we had our first meeting on June 26th of 20, The documentary came out in September of 2019. So I had just bumped into him. They had put a Facebook site up, and they were asking for true stories. I knew we had a true story, and I knew that it was a story that had never been told, because we didn't tell it.

Nobody asked. Nobody asked. So we pestered them. I pestered them and pestered them, and they finally said, if these guys are for real, I imagine we probably ought to interview them, so they contacted us. We had a meeting over at Derby Lane. We met with Frankie Vanderbilt and introduced ourselves. And I think it was pretty plain from Frankie that I provided the documentation that I have

and our expertise and experience in bridge inspection on our story. But I think pretty much when I put this picture down and laid it in front of them, I think he understood that we were actually out there. Most of the people in the documentary and stuff, there's not too many of them that were actually there. There are a few. There's a couple Coast Guardsmen and some of the other people. But most of the story, I think we were some of the few people that were really there.

We hadn't had a chance to tell our story. And once Frankie heard it, he made sure that we were there. I have a special announcement, if you'll allow me. Yes, please. I am proud to announce that the documentary film crew has considered and are putting together a part two of the Skyway documentary. Oh, cool. They have received reviews on the Amazon site. They ask for reviews, and they are listening to the people that reviewed the documentary.

they have taken the people's questions and are looking to tell more stories and are actually putting together a part two to be out soon as they can complete the issue but they are going to go ahead and do a part two on that include more stories such as ours so hopefully it'll be out here shortly but that's an exclusive for you. Interesting man. Well, what else would it cover besides, I mean, obviously, this documentary, I feel like it covered a lot of the story of Lero, the captain, and his attorney and their friendship, and kind of like the misconceptions of him. So the second part you think will dive more into the story that you guys told. The personal stories. What they've done is they've taken a review based on the reviews that they've got, and they're going ahead and trying to answer some of those questions of who the people want to see that have seen the, the, the documentary, what they want to hear. So they're asking more people, probably somebody like the Coast Guard people and us maybe,

would be included and tell them further stories. They're looking for stories rather than, you know, just the accident itself. That's incredible. I'll look forward to it. Is there anything else that you guys like to share before we wrap it up? Yeah, I'd like to say thanks to a lot of people. There are so many people that were out there that day that we worked with. In past, while we were still out there, we worked with the Pinellas County Sheriff's Department, their bomb squad, when we were doing bomb inspections out there also.

We worked with the Manatee County Sheriff's Bomb Squad, Hillsborough County Sheriff's Bomb Squad. We work with the dive teams. We would like to say thank you to all of those guys that we didn't have a chance to out there that day or the following months and years. that thing had received several bomb calls and bomb threats that we were involved in. Another one of those things that, you know, it wasn't in our job description, but we did it. It was necessary to open it up for traffic. We haven't had a chance to say thank you. I have a poster similar to the one over there that was signed by as many people that we could muster

that were there that day from Pinellas Maintenance that we'd like to go ahead and give to the DOT yard and say thank you to all those guys who also haven't had a chance to tell their story and give them that opportunity to at least be acknowledged and recognized. So we do have some further plans to give some posters out and say thanks.

There are so many people that were involved. Without my faith, my family, my friends, and the truth. There's no doubt in my mind that it would have been so much more difficult to accomplish what we did. Prior to us being exposed or coming out in the documentary, nobody had heard our story. We're not looking for a parade, money or badge or anything like that. We're just trying to set history straight. Tell the truth if it's going to be about the Skyway and we were involved.

I'd like the truth to be told. And so far, I think the documentary has done a very good job. definitely have to give a shout out to Gabrielle Calice and the Times for allowing her the opportunity to spend some time doing an investigative report that further solidified and documented our credibility in regards to this issue. Gabrielle did a great job, great job, and she really kept us all out of trouble and kept it as neutral as she could. She did a fantastic job, and thanks to the Times, even though it took 38, 40 years, to get to us. We appreciate the time that we've had. Well, thank you guys for sharing your story. I'm sure it takes a lot to be able to talk about everything in detail. And, you know,

I appreciate you guys for all the hard work and sacrifice that you guys have made as well. And thanks again for coming on and telling your story. Danny, I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Yes, sir. Pleasure to be here.