For nearly half a century, Mother’s Day weekend has been tragically linked to one of Florida’s worst disasters as this Sunday marks the 45th anniversary of the catastrophic Sunshine Skyway Bridge collapse that claimed 35 lives.
On May 9, 1980—a Friday just like this year—the freighter Summit Venture struck a support pier during a sudden violent storm, sending 1,200 feet of the massive bridge plummeting 150 feet into Tampa Bay below.
Headlines Trending Right Now:
The Day St. Petersburg Lost Its Innocence
The Skyway disaster fundamentally changed St. Petersburg, marking the moment when this once quiet Gulf Coast city lost its innocence. What had been a sleepy coastal community experienced a tragedy of unprecedented scale, according to St. Pete Catalyst.
“To this day, it remains the worst ship/bridge collision, in terms of human casualty, in world history,” said Bill DeYoung, Senior Writer and Editor at St. Pete Catalyst and author of “Skyway: The True Story of Tampa Bay’s Signature Bridge and the Man Who Brought it Down.”…