Driving along … and the roadway vanishes beneath you. What’s it like to survive a bridge collapse?

By TRISHA AHMED and VALERIE GONZALEZ
Associated Press

What’s it like to survive a bridge collapse? Survivors of past bridge failures in Minnesota and Texas tell The Associated Press that the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore brings back harrowing memories of their own ordeals. Linda Paul was on the Interstate 35 West bridge in Minneapolis when it collapsed in 2007. She fell 50 feet in her minivan and was injured by chunks of concrete. Gustavo Morales Jr. thought of his wife and children as the Queen Isabella Causeway collapsed in Port Isabel, Texas in 2001, sending his pickup truck into the air and, seconds later, the water.