Shark bridge takes out trucks7/2/2023 ![]() “It was harder later on, years afterwards, when I started reading in the paper, usually around the anniversary.” “It was hard to leave that site knowing that there were still people out there,” Raiola said. It didn’t bother Betz, but as time went on, it started to grate on Raiola. For decades, few even knew that they’d been at the disaster. Raiola and Betz weren’t interviewed by the Evening Independent or the St. The Eckerd College Search and Rescue Team would go on to be recognized in newspaper articles and TV segments, books and documentaries. But the plan made him nervous, and he wasn’t sure how much time they had.Ī colorized photo of the Greyhound Bus that drove off the Sunshine Skyway bridge being being lifted from Tampa Bay on May 12, 1980, three days after the disaster. Covert had told his team if it fell, the best they could do was jump for it. A portion of the steel roadway was still dangling from the bridge above the boats, like an arrow pointing straight down. Covert asked the DOT divers to untie their boat so his crew could take the victims to a makeshift morgue at Mullet Key. The last thing he remembered was looking back at the mass of tangled bodies in the back of the bus.īut they wouldn’t swim back to the bus a third time.Īnother storm was coming, and the Eckerd boats were already filled with bodies. Where was the parent who owned the bag? Where was the child? He used to carry around a similar bag when he became a father. On his way out of the bus, Raiola saw what looked like a diaper bag. Raiola and Betz dove a second time to retrieve more bodies. I’ll do everything I can to help you get back to your family. I'm sorry that I have to do this, he thought. He wanted to pay similar respect to the victims, remembering their humanity even as he had to use rough treatment to free them from the bus. He’d held friends in his arms in Vietnam and watched as they died. He also tried to avoid looking closely.īut Raiola prayed as he looked at each one. He can still remember tying the body to the dive platform on the Eckerd boat. ![]() ![]() The Greyhound driver was one of the first victims out, Rosselet recalls. ![]()
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