Published: August 03, 2007 11:09 pm      

Ashland native on bridge that collapsed

Just another day turned into one Brian Sturgill will always remember

ASHLAND — Brian Sturgill thought he’d just find a hotel and go to the Minnesota Twins game.

The 25-year-old regional sales manager for a home security firm was in Minneapolis on business and was approaching the end of a long day.

But this day was destined to be much longer for the Ashland native currently living in San Diego.

Crawling in bumper-to-bumper traffic toward the Mississippi River on I-35W, he watched in horror as the bridge deck in front of him cracked and tumbled to the water some 60 feet below.

He felt something hit the back of his car and then it too was falling, tipping backward and landing with the trunk in the river and the front on a slab of concrete.

Until then, he’d mainly wondered what was happening — was it an earthquake or what?

But with the slosh of river water gurgling around the floor, Sturgill felt suddenly afraid. “That’s when I started to panic,” he said Friday at his parents’ home in South Ashland.

But at the same time, he felt — or made himself feel — the curious confidence he knew he needed to emerge in one piece from a crisis.

“I told myself, you’re not going to die; you’re going to get out of this,” he said.

He tugged on the door. It wouldn’t open. Nothing happened when he punched at the power window buttons.

The impact had crushed the windshield but not enough to make a hole he could squeeze through and the safety glass stubbornly resisted his kicks.

He looked for something he could use to break a window as the car slid toward the water.

Then Sturgill had another curious sensation. “I felt the Heavenly Father watching over me,” he said.

And he tried the door again.

Whether it was divine intercession or just because the car had shifted, the door opened and Sturgill clambered out, a prayer of gratitude on his lips.

But it wasn’t over, and Sturgill knew it right away. Amid the smoke and the concrete and the rushing river water were other cars and other dazed people. And Sturgill himself wasn’t out of trouble.

He remained enveloped in the same sense of mental clarity that had gotten him out of the car. “I realized I had to keep making decisions,” he said.

Nearby another man was still in his car. A truck was gushing fuel and Sturgill smelled smoke and fire. He helped the man — his name was Omar, Sturgill won’t ever forget that — and then two girls, both of whom had lost their shoes.

He managed to pop the trunk lid of his car and pull out a couple of pairs of sodden sneakers for them.

Rescue workers were at the scene by then and trying to get to victims.

Sturgill still had his cell phone and it worked; he called his father, Brent, who remembers Brian yelling that he’d been in an accident. It wasn’t until some time later when Brent got home and turned on the television news that he realized just how bad the accident was.

“I got really scared, because I could see the magnitude of what happened,” Brent said.

Meanwhile, the people on the bridge, including Brian, were helping each other to safety. A boat got him to the bank. In the boat his composure finally broke. He remembers shaking and sobbing uncontrollably.

No ambulances were in sight once he got to shore so a pickup driver took him to a hospital.

He was feeling the first twinges of pain in his back and was treated for it at the hospital.

His father called Brian’s mother Pam, who was at church. They watched TV in horror. Within minutes they were throwing clothes in a bag for the drive to Minneapolis.

By the time they got to Cincinnati Brian called. He was out of the hospital and okay. They made arrangements for him to fly to Columbus and met him at the airport there.

He was still wearing the scrubs they’d given him at the hospital. They’d cut off his clothes and everything else was sopping wet with Mississippi river water.

His father remembers the ensuing five-minute group hug: “We stood there hugging and crying. Nothing was said. We were glad just to be able to hold him again.”

Pam can feel how the ordeal has affected her son.

“He’s an on-the-edge kind of guy. He likes snowboarding and rock climbing. He’s not a scaredy cat,” she said. “But he was very moved by the experience.”

You can’t compare a plunging bridge with a roller coaster ride or getting big air on your snowboard, Brian knows. In sports or thrill rides there’s a plan and predetermined outcome: You’ll have fun and get to the end and get back in line for the next ride.

It wasn’t like that in Minneapolis, with the smoke and the screams and the cars, many of them crushed and abandoned, their drivers maybe hurt or dead.

“You don’t know what’s going to happen next,” he said.

Sitting on his parents’ front porch, the late afternoon sun soothing the quiet street, the green lawns and the brick houses, Brian wonders whether he could have helped more people. He recalls wondering whether he’d ever see his family again.

He remembers thanking God when he knew he was finally safe.

Brian hasn’t slept much since that day. What he saw that day reels through his mind over and over.

“I think it will take a long time to recover emotionally,” he said.

MIKE JAMES can be reached at mjames@dailyindependent.com or at (606) 326-2652.