Word: skyway
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Many Tampa Bay residents feel a surge of civic pride as they drive across the new $244 million, 4.1-mile Sunshine Skyway Bridge, the centerpiece of a 13- mile causeway connecting the tip of St. Petersburg's peninsula to the mainland. The span replaces a pair of cantilevered bridges, built in 1954 and 1971. The newer of the two collapsed in 1980, killing 35 people, when it was hit by a freighter during a blinding rainstorm. After the accident, more than 20,000 vehicles a day crowded onto the single remaining two-lane span. Government officials could have repaired...
...occurred since 1940, out of 301,016 municipal bond issues. In terms of money lost, each of the three largest were around one-twentieth the size of last week's fizzle. The West Virginia Turnpike Commission defaulted on $133 million in bonds in 1958. Chicago's Calumet Skyway collapsed under bond indebtedness of $101 million in 1963, and investors were short-changed in 1978 when the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel Commission reneged on $100 million worth of bonds...
...moment later, the end sections fell free as well. Said a witness, Richard Howard: "You could watch people grab hold of the walkway. Then they just flew all over." Ann Dunford came within a hairbreadth of tumbling into the chasm. "I had one foot on the skyway," she said, "and I don't know if I felt it or heard it give. I stepped back and could see the middle going down." Hospital Administrator Tom Edgarton was in a restaurant just off one of the lobby mezzanines. Looking out toward the atrium, he saw "debris just pouring up like...
...Skyway has been the scene of three other major accidents this year. On Jan. 28 a collision between the Coast Guard cutter Blackthorn and a 605-ft. oil tanker killed 23 Coast Guardsmen. On Feb. 6 a boom from a Greek freighter slammed into the center supports of the bridge. Ten days later a Liberian-registered oil tanker hit an abutment. In the last two cases, damage was slight and there were no injuries...
Asked in February if a future accident could conceivably cause a section of the bridge to topple, Skyway Inspector Glen Arvi replied: "Certainly. That's why we put all those lights on it, so ships won't run into it." Last week, after officials closed the remaining sections of the bridge to all traffic, the lights were still shining brightly...