WASHINGTON -- Two members of the National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday they believe weather service failure to warn mariners of a severe storm was a cause of a freighter-bridge collision that cost 35 lives last year.
The board sent back for rewriting a staff report on the collision of a freighter with the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Tampa Bay during a storm May 9, 1980.
Board members Francis McAdams and Patricia Goldman objected that the failure of the National Weather Service to issue a severe weather warning was listed as a contributing factor when they felt it should be considered a cause of the accident.
There was general agreement, however, with the staff finding that the probable cause was the vessel's encounter with high winds and heavy rain as it was preparing to go under the bridge, 'and the pilot's failure to abandon the transit when visual and radar navigational references for the channel and the bridge were lost in the heavy rain.'
Staff member Douglas Rabe, chief investigator of the accident, said pilot John Lerro acted reasonably under the circumstances -- a howling storm with winds in excess of 60 miles an hour -- and on the basis of the information he had available.
Lerro was guiding the 608-foot Liberian freighter Summit Venture into port when it hit the support column of the bridge's southbound span.
A 1,300-foot section of the bridge collapsed, and a Greyhound bus with 23 people aboard hurtled 150 feet into the water, along with six cars and a pickup truck. In all, 35 persons died.
The Coast Guard conducted a separate investigation, but has not released its findings.
Rabe said the ship lost visibility and effective radar about eight-tenths of a mile from the bridge, and the pilot was worried that the high winds would blow the ship into the bridge.
Rabe noted a crew member reported briefly sighting a channel marker in the storm, apparently contributing to the pilot's belief that he knew the ship's bearings in relation to the bridge.
Based on subsequent analysis, Rabe said, the pilot should have made a hard right turn to get the ship out of the channel, because it was several hundred feet too far south.
But based on the information at hand, Rabe said, 'We believe he made a reasonable decision of attempting to transit under the bridge, in view of his fear of slamming into the bridge broadside.'
Halting the ship, which was traveling at around 11 knots, would have meant ordering the engines full astern, which would have made it 'totally uncontrollable,' he said.
