watch 'the bridge',
a documentary movie about 'golden gate' bridge jumpers, now on this
site.
.
skyway bridge incidents
last update: 06.10.10
incidents occur on and
around the skyway bridge. skyway accidents.• what happened
here?
links could be broken at any time.
.
10.01.08:
man slips on sardines, falls into tampa bay
theledger.com, ST. PETERSBURG TIMES, Published: Wednesday, October 1, 2008
at 3:23 p.m.
ST. PETERSBURG | A 47-year-old Mulberry man who
fell from the south fishing pier of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge and into Tampa
Bay Wednesday morning was not injured, according to the St. Petersburg Fire and
Rescue Marine Unit. Rescuers said
Richard Allen Khoory slipped on sardines he was using for bait while fishing on
the pier and fell in. The Coast Guard
scooped Khoory out of the water and took him to shore, where Manatee County
paramedics examined him and found him not injured. (not an
incident of staggering proportions, just somewhat humorous. this isn't really
newsworthy, yet gets reported, while actual jumper news get ignored. that's our
biased media, hardly at work. we are glad mr. khoory was fine after the coasties
used their people scooper on him.)
11.17.04: bus passengers prevent a skyway
disaster when driver dies. Thomas Grove, 61
thank you, jumpnews
contributor, bill e., brandon, fl.
11.18.04, cnn.com:
Passengers stop bus from falling off bridge, Driver dies from possible heart attack
Thursday, November 18, 2004 Posted: 8:28 AM EST (1328 GMT)
ST. PETERSBURG, Florida (AP) -- Passengers stopped a charter bus from plunging nearly 200 feet off a bridge after the driver collapsed, apparently from a heart attack.
The bus was near the top of the Sunshine Skyway bridge Wednesday afternoon when Thomas Grove, 61, fell out of his seat, passengers and authorities said.
It slammed into the 3-foot concrete wall, which blocks vehicles from tumbling into Tampa Bay. Three of the five passengers jumped out of their seats and ran toward the front.
"Grab the wheel!" 70-year-old Kenneth McAllister recalled shouting to his wife, Mary, and another woman.
The women held the steering wheel until McAllister could slide into the driver's seat. He struggled to keep the bus in its lane and hit the brake. It stopped just before the highest part of the bridge.
The passengers -- all unharmed -- called 911 and Amtrak, which uses the bus to shuttle passengers from Fort Myers to Tampa. They spent another 10 minutes in the bus because they didn't know how to open the door.
Two nurses driving by stopped to help, performing CPR on the driver. Grove, of Pinellas Park, died within hours at a hospital. Early reports suggested he may have had a heart attack, authorities said.
"It happened so fast," McAllister, of Bradenton, said from his cell phone aboard an Amtrak train to New York City late Wednesday. "We all felt so lucky to be alive."
04.27.97: skyway
swing stunt. Steve Trotter, Jeff Sargent 26, Lori Martin 30, Glenn Rohm 29,
Steven Bunker
from
wikipedia: Trotter's attempted repeat of the stunt in 1997 at the
Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Tampa, FL ended in disaster. Trotter and four other
people jumped, attached to the same cable. The plan had not been tested
previously, and the cable snapped during the effort, causing Trotter and the
others to plunge at least 70 feet into the bay.
12.11.07, punchpixie, Tampa, Fl., video of the jump is available on Spike TV's "Whacked Out Sports" compilation which shows several times a year. Just set your Tivo to capture it, and you'll find it. The Spike TV episode also includes the fact that the injuries were extremely serious: "The five plunged at least 70 feet into the bay, still tethered together by pieces of
cable. This time, Trotter escaped with a bruised lung and a stiff neck. Sargent, too, came away banged up and bruised, but escaped major injury. Lori Martin wasn't so lucky. She broke a vertebra in her neck and was so medicated on Tuesday she stayed away from the
cameras. Rohm also broke a vertebra, but was walking around on Tuesday, his head held still in a metal halo drilled into his skull."
(anyone wishing to slip us a copy of this video will
forever be way cool.)
12.02.09, thanks to Spencer from Zionsville,
Indiana. he is now forever way cool. (this video could disappear again
without notice.)
The Skyway bridge, a beautiful sight in itself. From the top you can see countless miles of open water, and experience the peace, that nature has to offer. It is unfortunate the bridge is also associated with suicidal jumpers. Throughout the years several people have taken their life by jumping from the Skyway bridge. Is it possible some they never left the place, where they chose to leave it all behind? Fishermen of the Skyway pier tell countless stories of seeing "ghost". What is now the Skyway pier used to be the old Skyway Bridge where the stories of the jumper, and the hitchhiker will live forever.
Throughout the 1960's and 1970's scores of motorists using the Sunshine Skyway Bridge claimed to see a young blonde lady dressed in a tight T-shirt in an off-white or tan outfit poised to jump off of one of the main spans. She was reported during both day and night, many times when the structures were shrouded in fog. When Sheriff's Deputies would investigate, no trace of the young lady could be found, either at the top of the bridge, or in the waters below. By the end of the 1970's reports of a lady of similar appearance filtered in to toll collectors and local Sheriff's Deputies, only this time she was hitchhiking. Several motorists would pick her up.
She explained in a nervous tone that she had to get to the other side of the bridge. She would become more notably agitated the closer to the top of the bridge that the motorists went. When the drivers of the cars would turn around to reassure her that everything was all right she had simply vanished. These incidents involved many out of state drivers not familiar with these stories! Once the old southbound Skyway span was destroyed in May 1980 by the freighter "Summit Venture", the spectral Skyway lady was never seen again. Was she the spirit of a young lady who unbeknownst to others jumped to her death from the Skyway in the 1960's, or was she a harbinger of the death and terror that would occur on the old south span on that fateful May day in 1980?
Another legend or haunting of the Skyway involves a Greyhound bus and it's 22 passengers. Now known as the "ghost bus". On the morning of May 9, 1980, a storm born in Texas several days earlier slammed into the Tampa Bay area, pelting it with heavy rains and winds. At 6:20 A.M. that morning, Harbor Pilot John Lerro climbed the pilot's ladder in order to navigate the empty 606' long phosphate freighter, the "Summit Venture" from the mouth of Tampa Bay to port of Tampa. As the ship continued to head east in the channel not far from Egmont Key, visibility became near zero.
The storm became so intense that Lerro lost his bearings by 800' and the result was that the bow of the ship struck the southbound span's support pier at 7:34 A.M., resulting in a horrendous collapse of the main span. Six automobiles, one pick up truck, and one Greyhound bus bound for Miami plummeted almost 200' down at an estimated speed of 67 miles per hour into the waters of Tampa Bay-only one person survived-the pick up truck landed first onto the ship itself, then into the Bay-the driver of the pick up truck was recovered from the water, hospitalized and later released.
All in all 35 people died that morning. The Greyhound bus, a 1975 MC-B Crusader, had one driver and 22 passengers onboard. The bus was sheared by the impact so severely that the entire top 2/3rds of it was shorn off "like a pop top". More then 20 people have reported seeing the shadow image of a Greyhound driving down what is now the fishing pier, as if on the main road. The driver has the looking straight ahead, with both hands on the wheel, as if nothing was wrong. Some say a lady wearing black is looking out the back of the bus, smiling, and waving at those who are staring. The the bus the just disappears off the end of the pier. Others say every now, and then you can feel a strong breeze, and smell gas, as if a bus just drove past you.
Does the stories just make for good fisherman tales, perhaps they are just stories. It makes for a good spooky tale whether you believe it or not. The Sunshine Skyway bridge connects Tampa / St. Petersburg to Sarasota. The Skyway pier is great for night fishing, so grab a pole, and let me know if you see any ghost.