An Uber driver said she is lucky to be alive following the Baltimore bridge collapse after her passenger took their time to come out to the car.
Gayle Fairman received a call to pick up someone from the Amazon facility in Sparrows Point and take them to the Brooklyn neighbourhood of the Maryland city. However, she had to wait a few minutes for the customer - a delay that was most likely a massive blessing in disguise.
“In all honesty, if my passenger wasn’t a little late coming out to my car and getting in, we probably very well would have been on the bridge when it collapsed,” she told WBAL. She went on to describe how she was “right at the front of the line” ready to cross over the Francis Scott Key Bridge.
Aerial view of cargo ship Dali after running into and collapsing the Francis Scott Key Bridge (Getty Images)Instead, at around 1.30am on Tuesday she was stopped by a police officer who told her what had just happened. She said: “I rolled down my window and asked him what was going on, and he said the bridge was gone."
Gayle said she didn't see the bridge collapsing into the Patapsco River because it was too dark and also never heard the sound of any metal crashing as her windows were up and the radio was on. She remained unaware of the gravity of the situation until she saw social media videos posted later on in the morning showing the cargo ship colliding into the bridge.
Uber Eats driver sobs after getting 84p tip, asking how he is 'supposed to live'
The Uber driver was unware that the bridge had collapsed moments before she arrived ready to cross it (WBAL-TV 11)Police were alerted about the possibility of a crash just 90 seconds before it actually happened after receiving a mayday call from the crew of the Singaporean container ship named Dali saying it had lost power. Harrowing audio of Baltimore officials rushing to stop traffic on the bridge seconds before it collapsed emerged.
One officer is heard saying: "I need one of you guys on the south side, one of you guys on the north side, hold all traffic on the Key Bridge. There's a ship approaching that just lost their steering so until we get that under control, we've got to stop all traffic."
The cargo ship sent out a mayday saying it had lost all power (Getty Images)For all the latest news, politics, sports, and showbiz from the USA, go to The Mirror US
A total of eight people went into the water after the bridge collapsed, with two being rescued. The bodies of two more construction workers who were stuck in a truck have been pulled from under the bridge while four more are presumed dead as efforts are still being made to find them.
Jeffrey Pritzker, executive vice president of Brawner Builders, who employed the workers on the bridge, said the crew was working in the middle of the bridge when it came down. “This was so completely unforeseen,” Mr Pritzker said. “We don’t know what else to say. We take such great pride in safety, and we have cones and signs and lights and barriers and flaggers.”
Miguel Luna, 49, from El Salvador, was the first of the six people who were on the Francis Scott Key Bridge when it collapsed to be named. Miguel's wife María del Carmen Castellón told Telemundo 44 in Spanish: “They only tell us that we have to wait, that for now, they can’t give us information. [We feel] devastated, devastated because our heart is broken, because we don’t know if they’ve rescued them yet. We’re just waiting to hear any news.“
While father-of-two Maynor Suazo, 37, a native of Honduras was identified in his homeland as another worker who is missing. The identities of the other workers have not yet been revealed, although among the missing were people from Guatemala and Mexico, according to diplomats from those countries.
Read more similar news:
Comments:
comments powered by Disqus
