The sole survivor of a work crew that was wiped out in the deadly collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge has spoken out for the first time — and says he still relives the tragedy to this day.
“I relive it all the time, the minutes before that fall and when I’m falling,” Julio Cervantes Suarez told NBC’s “Today” show Thursday, almost four months after the tragedy. “I think maybe there is still a goal for me.”
Cervantes Suarez, 37, was part of a crew of seven workers patching potholes on the doomed bridge on March 26 when the span was hit by a massive cargo ship and crumpled into the Patapsco River.
Among the other members of the lost crew were his nephew and his brother-in-law, he said.
He said the workers were all in their vehicles taking a break when The Dali, bound for Sri Lanka, lost power and floated into one of the bridge’s support columns, collapsing the span.
Cervantes Suarez’s truck fell 18 stories into the dark waters.
“That’s when I realized what happened,” he told Today during the interview in Spanish. “I looked at the bridge and it was no longer there.”
Cervantes Suarez said he doesn’t know how to swim, but was fortunate that the truck had manual windows, which allowed him to open them and float to safety after the water reached his neck.
H was able to make his way to a piece of the collapsed bridge — then began calling out to his coworkers by name.
“But no one answered me,” he said of the painful moment he knew they were gone.
With the light on his construction helmet somehow still functioning, he hung on until rescure crews arrived.
Heartbroken over the loss of his friends and relatives, Cervantes Suarez and the families of those lost in the tragic mishap have now announced plans to file a lawsuit against the cargo ship’s owners.
“He ingested all of that bad water,” Justin Miller, one of the survivor’s attorneys, told “Today.” “He has a torn meniscus. He has other kinds of psychological problems that he’s going to deal with forever.”
Dramatic video footage captured the horrifying crash, showing the cargo ship go dark and glide into one of the main support columns, dropping the main span of the bridge into the river.
According to subsequent reports, The Dali suffered earlier power blackouts as recently as 10 hours before the Key Bridge mishap when crew members mistakenly shut off an exhaust damper.