Survivor recounts the moment a DC bridge collapsed around her
A woman who happened to be driving beneath a pedestrian bridge right as it was brought down by a forgetful truck driver in DC last week.
Carol Mills and her daughter Michelle Leone were heading to Florida from Erie, Pennsylvania when they noticed the truck ahead of them had forgotten to lower its subframe – and that’s when the trouble started.
“You saw the front of the truck raise up, it burst through the bridge and it looked like the truck was going to flip over backwards,” Millis said. “It reminded me of one of those Transformer movies where the vehicle just turned into a robot.”
Millis said the bridge came crashing around them and when the dust settled, she found her car had been wedged between the truck and another vehicle, with a road sign sitting on her hood, just inches from her windshield.
“I pushed the brake all the way,” said Freddy Coello, who was driving the pickup that crashed into the back of Millis. “I was just thinking, I’m going to die.”
Millis then had to crawl to the other side of her car to get out, but thankfully her and her daughter were unhurt.
Despite the horrifying experience, Millis says that the community was incredibly helpful in getting her and her daughter back on their feet, mentioning that someone even offered to drive them to pick up a rental car after they were discharged from their precautionary visit to the hospital.
“The caring nature is what impressed us the most,” Mills said. “There were all different kinds of people — black, white, brown — and it made no difference. The compassion and the caring that everyone showed us is what stayed in our minds and how people went out of their way to be helpful.”
“D.C. should be proud,” Millis added to WUSA9 News.
Officials say that the bridge had already been deemed in “poor condition” after a bridge inspection prior to the incident, and that the city was already considering its eventual removal.