A faulty bridge and an untamable river claim eight lives
Every era looks back to good old days, often foolishly. The memory of earlier Fourths of July, with their pop-bottle rockets and Black Cat firecrackers, is apt to be a lot more cheerful than the real thing. Still, viewed from an often difficult present, it seems that not many years ago, an ear of sweet corn and a gin fizz were enough to turn Independence Day into pure bliss.
By that wistful reckoning, the last such ingenuous summer came along about 1960. American self-confidence was at its zenith. Ambitious public works were in vogue. The brand-new Interstate Highway System was growing by 40 miles a week. In Arizona's Glen Canyon, just over the border from Utah, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation had started building the dam its engineers believed would finally tame the wild ups and downs of the Colorado River.
Consider the state of things in 1983. Last week, in Greenwich, Conn., a 100-ft.-long slice of an Interstate bridge fell away, dropping three motorists 70 ft. to their deaths in the Mianus River. In the Southwest, melting snow and bureaucrats' miscalculation produced a deluge: Colorado River water was gushing through dam spillways at almost three times the normal rates, flooding towns in California and Arizona, causing $12.2 million in damage and threatening to rise higher. In both cases, behind the sadness of immediate events was a niggling sense of disillusion with U.S. engineering know-how: Glen Canyon Dam is only 20 years old, the Mianus River Bridge just 25. By contrast, the Brooklyn Bridge, a full century old and solid, was celebrated in May with the best fireworks show of the year.
Last week's mishaps could have been far more disastrous. The six-lane Interstate 95 is a main route for tens of thousands of Connecticut suburbanites who commute daily to Manhattan. When the bridge collapsed just before 1:30 a.m., however, only four vehicles were zooming over the affected eastbound lanes: two tractor-trailers and two passenger cars. A few hundred feet away, Gordon Oilman was drawn to his home's riverfront window. "I thought I heard an explosion," he says. "I looked out and saw a truck and a car coming off the bridge."
Dead of injuries was Louisiana Trucker Harold Bracy. Drowned in their car were Luis Zapata and Reginald Fischer, both area residents. Driving abreast was Truck Driver David Pace, hauling a load of empty beer bottles to Hartford and accompanied in the cab by his wife. "I felt my wheels going soft on me," Pace told his father later from a hospital bed. "I screamed to Helen to duck and grab the pillow because we're going down." Eileen Weldon of nearby Darien, driving alone in her car, sailed off into the dark river too and survived. The Paces, seriously injured, were snatched out of the water by a fisherman who had been asleep in his boat. "I heard all kinds of noises," said the rescuer, Billy Ebrech. "I heard screaming and yelling."