Pittsburgh Bridge Collapse Survivor: 'I Do Feel Very Lucky Here'
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- A Swissvale woman involved in the Fern Hollow Bridge collapse said she's still in shock. She was a passenger on the Allegheny County Port Authority bus traveling across the bridge when it crumbled Friday.
Anna Nichols said she was on the 61B bus headed home from her job as a custodial engineer at Pitt when the bridge collapsed beneath them. She, another passenger and the bus driver were the only ones on the bus at the time. She said she didn't even realize what happened until she got out of the bus and saw the scene for herself.
"It just fell and we skidded and skidded," Nichols said.
That's how Nichols described what it felt like being on the bus when the bridge collapsed early Friday morning.
"I didn't even know the bridge collapsed," she said. "It was like 15 seconds. Boom, boom, boom. It was just weird. Then we saw the car come over the bridge, the one that was on the roof. That's when we thought we are in trouble."
Sitting two seats behind bus driver Daryl Luciani, Nichols said he did what he could to prevent the bus from drifting.
"He held his foot on the brake because we didn't know if we were gonna fall back (or) go forward," she said.
She said first responders came to the rescue right away, the rescue made even more precarious due to the smell of natural gas in the air following the collapse.
"The gas line broke," Nichols said. "We gotta get you out of the bus."
Rescuers formed what's called a daisy chain, a human chain of sorts to reach them. She said they then climbed down a ladder before being taken back up to Frick Park where she was checked out by paramedics and allowed to go home.
Nichols said Monday that she still feels like she's in shock, adding that she didn't realize the magnitude of how serious the bridge collapse was until she saw it on television.
"I saw it on the news," she said. "I was like, 'Wow.' I do feel very lucky here. I do."
A Port Authority spokesperson said about two hours after the collapse, one of the passengers complained of some injuries and went to the hospital to get checked out. The bus driver told KDKA-TV that he went to get checked out at a local ER, and the hospital confirmed he wasn't admitted.
A total of 10 people were hurt in the bridge collapse. UPMC said Monday that one person is still at Presbyterian Hospital. A source told KDKA-TV that man suffered a broken neck and other injuries.
