WASHINGTON -- A freighter pilot, o erating without navigational aids during a severe storm, should have abandoned an attempt to get his vessel under Tampa Bay's Sunshine Skyway Bridge last year, federal safety experts ruled Friday.
The 608-foot Liberian freighter Summit Venture hit the bridge that links St. Petersburg with Bradenton, Fla., and a segment collapsed, killing 35 persons.
On a 2-1 vote, the National Transportation Safety Board held the probable cause of the May 9, 1980, accident was the freighter's unexpected encounter with severe weather approaching the bridge; the National Weather Service's failure to issue a severe weather warning for mariners; 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.'
The bridge links St. Petersburg with Bradenton, Fla.
The majority rejected a staff conclusion harbor pilot John Lerro acted reasonably, on the basis of available information, in deciding to go under the bridge despite losing visibility and radar eight-tenths of a mile from the structure. Lerro feared that otherwise the freighter might be blown into the bridge.
They held trying to transit the bridge 'was not a reasonable and prudent decision.'
Instead, said the board, Lerro should have made a sharp right turn when he lost radar. That turn would have taken the vessel out of the channel where it could have dropped anchor.
The ship hit the support column of the bridge's southbound span. A 1,300-foot section collapsed, and a bus with 23 people aboard fell 150 feet into the water, along with six cars and a pickup truck, killing 35 persons.
The board listed among contributing factors the lack of a protective barrier around the bridge pier to absorb impacts, and the lack of a warning system for motorists similar to danger signals at railroad crossings.
The NTSB made several recommendations, including a call for improved navigational aids near the bridge, and a study of the feasibility of installing bridge protection devices. It also asked the Federal Highway Administration to develop standards for bridge warning systems for motorists.
Lerro's license was suspended after the accident but he got it back last month. He rode as an observer for a while, and Thursday made his first solo trip, piloting a tugboat pulling an empty gasoline barge from the port. The trip took him under the bridge, where the shattered southbound span still stands. The undamaged span is open to one lane of traffic each way.
