A college student who survived the pedestrian bridge collapse at Florida International University is recalling the moment the structure fell.
Richie Humble, a sophomore at Florida International University in Miami, says that he was driving back from a doctor’s appointment with his best friend, Alexa Duran, the moment that the 950-ton structure collapsed while they were stopped at a red light with his friend in the driver’s seat.
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“We were parked at a red light and I started to hear the bridge creek, so I looked up and I saw the bridge falling on top of us,” Humble told Today. “It fell on the roof of the car and…kind of caved in on my neck and squished me down. But I didn’t really know what was going on at all.”
Humble said that after the structure fell, his attention immediately turned to his friend, who had been in the driver’s seat of the gray Toyota SUV. Video footage from the scene as well as pictures showed that the vehicle had sustained the most damage on the driver’s side.
“I screamed her name over and over again, but I didn’t hear anything,” he said.
“‘He said, ‘I have a lot of blood around me. It’s not mine, Mom. I have a lot of blood,’” Humble’s mother, Lourdes Humble, recalled the phone call she had with her son just moments after the collapse.
Miami-Dade Police say that the death toll of the collapse is up to six people and that at least nine have been rushed to nearby hospitals, some in critical condition. Alexa Duran has not yet been accounted for.
Miami-Dade County Fire Chief Dave Downey said Thursday night that his crew is using high-tech listening devices, trained sniffing dogs and search cameras in a race to find anyone still alive in the rubble.
The $14.2 million bridge, touted as “the first of its kind,” was not opened yet when it collapsed on vehicles waiting in traffic. It was supposed to open in 2019 as a safe way for students to cross the busy road after an 18-year-old woman had been hit and killed by a car. The bridge was built using “Accelerated Bridge Construction (ABC) methods,” which are meant to reduce “potential risks to workers, commuters and pedestrians and minimizes traffic interruptions.”
