Survivor of Florida bridge collapse recounts the horrifying moment his friend disappeared into the rubble

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March 16, 2018 7:06 PM

FIU sophomore Richard Humble described the collapse of the Florida bridge and its aftermath in an interview with Today.

On Thursday,
A survivor of the collapse described the collapse and its aftermath in an
The cause of the collapse hasn't been determined.

On Thursday, a pedestrian bridge in Miami collapsed, killing six people and trapping eight cars beneath it.

One survivor of the collapse, Florida International University sophomore Richard Humble, described the collapse and its aftermath in an interview with Today. He was being driven back from a doctor's appointment by a friend, Alexa Duran, when the bridge collapsed on her car. While Humble was able to escape the car, Duran has not been accounted for by authorities.

"I tried to duck, but at the same time, it was just way too fast," Humble told Today.

"We were parked at a red light, and I started to hear the bridge creak. So I looked up and I saw the bridge falling on top of us, and it fell on the roof of the car and caved in. And it kind of caved in on my neck and squished me down. But I didn't really know what was going on at all, and I screamed her name over and over again, but I didn't hear anything."

Humble's mother, Lourdes, recalled Richard's call to her after he escaped the car.

"All he said is, 'I have a lot of blood around me. It's not mine, mom, I have a lot of blood,'" she told Today.

The bridge was supposed to make pedestrians safer

The bridge was supposed to connect Florida International University's campus to Sweetwater, a city where many students live, when it opened in 2019. Its supports and bridge had been constructed separately over the course of several months and installed in a few hours on Saturday.

The innovative construction method was supposed to be safer than traditional ones for workers and pedestrians, and the bridge was designed with student safety in mind, as it would extend over a seven-lane road where a student was killed by a motorist in August.

Recovery efforts began Thursday and continued on Friday, though Miami-Dade authorities don't expect to find additional survivors.

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