The sole survivor of the team of workers who worked on the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore when it collapsed last March will have to live with the psychological scars for the rest of his life.
Cervantes Suarez, 37, was repairing potholes on the bridge with six other colleagues when the boat, Daly, hit the bridge on March 26.
“I relive it all the time, the minutes before that fall and when I fall,” Julio Cervantes Suarez told NBC's “Today” show on Thursday, nearly four months after the tragedy.
Among the six workers killed were Suarez's nephew and brother-in-law. At the time of the collision, they were all resting in their vehicles.
Fortunately, Suarez's truck had manual windows, making it easier for him to get out of the vehicle than other victims.
He did not know how to swim, yet he managed to reach part of the bridge and stay there until help arrived.
“And that's when I realized what had happened. I looked at the bridge and it wasn't there anymore.”
The survivor, like the families of the missing, intends to take legal action against the owners of the cargo ship.
“He has a torn meniscus. Suarez has other types of psychological issues that he will have to deal with forever,” explained Justin Miller, one of Suarez’s attorneys.
Remember that the boat had power outage problems 10 hours before it hit the hull.
