At her gas station on the outskirts of Baltimore, Patricia Sisk generally sees regular drivers and parents in a hurry pass by at dawn. After the spectacular collapse on Tuesday of a large bridge less than two and a half kilometers away, it was a ballet of police, rescuers and shocked customers.
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“It’s scary,” confides this 82-year-old American woman, looking affable under her work cap. “When I arrived, I was told. I saw all these police forces and they told me what happened. And you know, I feel for all these people,” she continues as the sound of sirens echoes around the small gas station supermarket on the east coast of the United States.
The police and emergency services were deployed en masse around the Francis Scott Key bridge, blocking the roads leading to it for safety reasons, the accident being “major” a representative of the emergency services on site told AFP.
This major Baltimore highway bridge collapsed early Tuesday morning after being hit by a container ship, dragging vehicles and people with it. Rescuers are searching for at least seven victims in the water and on the seabed, around the huge twisted metal structure.
Getty Images via AFP
Patricia Sisk says she hasn’t felt such a sense of fear since the September 11, 2001 attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people and traumatized Americans. “You know when the towers… it’s just this slightly creepy feeling,” explains the octogenarian in a calm but worried tone.
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“Panic, fear and trembling”
At the checkout, Patricia Sisk spends the morning talking about the accident with customers, from regulars to those stranded due to roads blocked by police, many showing her on their phone screens the spectacular images broadcast on the networks social.
“Everybody talks about it. They were scared, they thought it was an explosion. It was horrible,” continues the saleswoman during a coffee break.
AFP
Among the customers, Jennifer Woolf does not show fear unlike, she says, her 20-year-old son, who narrowly escaped the disaster. After an argument in the night with his girlfriend, he drives furiously from Dundalk, on the other side of the bridge.
He turns around to finally find his girlfriend. “He went over the bridge a second time. And exactly three minutes later, the bridge collapsed,” reports his 41-year-old mother, ordering her long coffees from a machine.
“He came home panicking, crying, shaking, and I started crying too,” says this confident entrepreneur, in a big red hooded sweater. Her son refused to accompany her, she said, for fear of getting too close to the bridge.
“Never seen that”
“He still hasn’t slept, watches the news and keeps writing to me,” she continues, saying she is “grateful” that her son escaped the worst. “I pray for all the families going through this tragedy that they will be reunited with their loved ones.”
AFP
With his breakfast in hand, a large cup of soda and a packet of chocolate biscuits, Paul Kratsas assures us that he has long feared that such a tragedy would occur on the bridge.
“Yesterday, I almost took it but,” the 59-year-old Baltimore resident begins with a confident air, “when I pass by sometimes, I’m there hoping that thing doesn’t fall, I could Don’t tell me it couldn’t happen. But he has “never seen that before,” he admits.
Like other Baltimore residents, he wonders about the amount of ships passing under the bridge. “These ships come and go all the time. And they usually come with big tugs,” he notes.
His wife, who accompanies him, but does not wish to give her name, questions the quality of the infrastructure before concluding with an ironic air: “It’s America.”
