In light of Baltimore disaster, Paul Tash reflects on Sunshine Skyway Bridge collapse

When Paul Tash, former chairman and CEO of Times Publishing Co., heard the news Tuesday morning about a cargo ship striking the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, it took him right back to May 9, 1980 — the day the Sunshine Skyway Bridge collapsed.

Then a reporter for the St. Petersburg Times, Tash was sent out to cover the story as it was breaking. A freighter slammed into the southbound span of the bridge, took out a support beam and sent cars flying into the water. Thirty-five people died.

That morning was “as searing as 9/11 would be to New York and Washington,” Tash wrote in a 2020 column commemorating the 40-year anniversary of the disaster.

In this interview, Tash discusses what he saw from the scene of the disaster and how the story unfolding in Baltimore resonates with longtime Tampa Bay residents.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Walk me through that day. How did you hear the news about the Skyway?

I think it was about 7:30 a.m. I was in the shower. It was raining almost as hard outside as it was inside.

The phone rang and it was Mike Foley, the city editor for the Times. He said there’s a report that a ship has hit the Skyway and there are cars in the water. So I got in the car and drove as quickly as I could toward the Skyway.

I heard on the radio that they were setting up a rescue operation at Fort DeSoto Park. So that’s where I went. Another reporter who was involved, Deborah Blum ... she went to the bridge.

What they were describing as a rescue operation, it turned out to be a recovery operation.

What did you see when you arrived?

The clouds were still covering the bridge. So I borrowed a pair of binoculars from somebody who was there. Just as the clouds were starting to lift, I looked toward the bridge and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. There was a quarter-mile section that was missing out of the bridge.

As the day went on, the divers went out and started to recover the bodies of people and brought them back to shore. Families were gathered waiting for word. There would be no survivors.

Are there any moments in particular, or pieces of your reporting that stood out to you?

It was the days before cell phones. So we were all jostling around, waiting for our turn at the payphone so that we could phone-in dispatches. I was dictating to a friend who was the chief clerk on the city desk, Celia Lewis.

At one point, Celia stopped me as I was dictating and said... “how can you not be crying?”

The day wore on. It turned out 35 people died. I think 24 of them were in a Greyhound bus that had gotten past the toll booth when the ship had hit the bridge and went across the top. The original bridge had two spans. There was no way to warn them or stop them before they got just across the crest and drove off.

How did you keep your cool through it all?

It was the biggest local story I ever covered. That and 9/11 were the two biggest news days of my career.

It was that journalistic engagement and temporary detachment that allows you to do your job and get the story out.

That night after I went home and went to bed, I had a recurring dream that I was driving across the Skyway myself and the windshield wipers are going back and forth in the heavy rain. I got to the top of the bridge, and the windshield wipers went out.

But in the moment, there’s a job to do. You do it with compassion, certainly for the people who had gathered and had lost loved ones. ... We all felt a great degree of empathy.

You’ve said this was the biggest breaking news event in Tampa Bay history. Can you explain that?

Everybody, not just who was covering the story, but everybody in the Tampa Bay area, could have been on that bridge.

It was a bridge we all crossed.

What was the aftermath of the disaster?

There was a lot of investigation and recrimination on how the ship hit the bridge.

Those ships are guided by harbor pilots. The pilot, John Lerro, was ultimately a sort of tragic figure because he was blamed for the wreck.

I think he was exonerated for the blame but public opinion had already pronounced him negligent.

Then, there was a big controversy about what bridge to build.

Bob Graham, then the governor of the state had pushed to replace the Sunshine Skyway entirely rather than to repair the old and so we have the beautiful new bridge that was built. And it is a much safer bridge.

What was your reaction this morning when you saw the news out of Baltimore?

I was struck by how similar the circumstances sound (to the Skyway disaster).

I am surprised given the advances in technology something so similar could happen again.

But it made everything feel very fresh. For those who were around in Tampa Bay they will always remember that day. It’s like “where were you on 9/11?” for us it’s “where were you when the Skyway collapsed?”