Every person who moves to the Tampa Bay area will eventually hear about, if they weren’t already aware of it, the darkest day in local history: May 9, 1980, when the Sunshine Skyway Bridge fell.
Saturday is the 46th anniversary.
Thirty-five commuters died at 7:33 on that Friday morning when an unladen 20,000 ton freighter, inbound to the Port of Tampa, butted against a support column of the southbound Skyway span. There were two identical bridges in those days, running parallel over five miles of open water.
It was drizzling, and not particularly foggy. Visibility was fair. Tampa-based harbor pilot John Lerro had taken command of M/V Summit Venture at approximately 6:30, as required by U.S. maritime law, in the Gulf of Mexico off Egmont Key. Harbor pilots are employed to navigate ships both foreign and domestic in and out of American ports (Summit Venture was owned and operated by a Hong Kong shipping firm)…