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Skyway scare sends shudders

By CURTIS KRUEGER
Published March 29, 2007

	The Antilles II, a freighter carrying phosphate, was tugged away from a sandbar near the Sunshine Skyway just after noon today. Water less troubled: Sunshine Skyway 25 years later (5/8/05) First-person: At the scene, detachment gave way to grim reality (5/8/05)
[Times photo: John Pendygraft]

ADVERTISEMENT [Times photo: Skip O'Rourke] Tugs used the high tide to help free a grounded freighter and get it back into deeper water. Readers react From Mike Garrett in Anderson, S.C.: "I absolutely remember when the freighter hit the Skyway in 1980. I was in middle school at Tarpon Springs Middle School when it happened and my mother used to work in Sarasota so we used to travel over the Skyway every day and I was fascinated with the bridge so I was captivated by the tragedy unfolding that day. " When I saw the headline on sptimes.com, I immediately thought of that and went to the wtsp.com Skyway traffic cam to get a glimpse of the freighter, and sure enough, I could see it vividly. I'm just happy that the tragedy was not repeated." From Jay Schwersenska of Valrico: "When I heard the news this morning that a ship had lost power and was in danger of hitting the Skyway bridge I immediately flashed back to 1980. I was working at Sears in the University Mall and all the patrons and employees were in the television department watching the breaking news and realizing that this disaster was in our own back yard. I'll never forget the images of the Greyhound bus and the truck and the cars as they unknowingly drove over the edge and fell to the water below, some of them bouncing off the deck of the ship on the way down. "When I came back to present day, I was hoping that we had learned our lessons from that earlier disaster. I saw that the police had stopped traffic on the skyway so we would not repeat the loss of life, and I read that the harbor pilot guided the ship into a sandbar to avoid hitting the bridge. Even though the bunkers were designed to protect the bridge supports, I'm glad we didn't have to put them to the test. Hats off to the police, the harbor pilot, the tugboat captains, and the media for all their efforts to keep the public safe and informed." Read more reactions

ST. PETERSBURG - Tobias Rose was navigating a 378-foot freighter filled with more than 10,000 metric tons of phosphate and heading toward the Sunshine Skyway bridge Wednesday when the ship's power and steering suddenly failed.

At that moment, the Antilles II was roughly 2,000 yards from the Skyway, where 35 people died in 1980 after a 608-foot ship rammed it.

So Rose decided to run the ship aground rather than let it veer toward the Skyway, said Allen Thompson, executive director of the Tampa Bay Pilots Association, who spoke to Rose after the incident early Wednesday. Harbor pilots guide about 5,000 large ships in and out of the Tampa port each year.

The Florida Highway Patrol closed the bridge to cars and trucks early Wednesday as a precaution, backing up traffic for miles. It reopened it in less than two hours.

"The key thing was that he realized some evasive action was necessary," Thompson said. "I think he felt the only action was put the vessel aground or risk a worst-case scenario."

But another worst-case Skyway tragedy seems unlikely, officials say.

After the May 1980 Skyway accident, a new bridge was built, designed to try to make sure the tragedy could not happen again.

So was the bridge in danger of collapsing again on Wednesday?

"The answer to that is that we have a system of protections in place to prevent" such a disaster, said Pepe Garcia, a structures and facilities engineer with the state Department of Transportation.

Garcia pointed to two key features:

- Giant concrete and wood disks called "dolphins" placed around bridge supports. These are supposed to act like bumpers, preventing ships from reaching the supports.

- Islands of rocks built around the biggest bridge supports in the channel. These are designed to make a ship run into the rocks before it could strike the supports.

Garcia said it's still good news the ship did not hit either of these features, because they could have damaged the ship and harmed the protective features themselves.

"I'm glad that no one got hurt as far as I understand," Garcia said. "No one in the ship or anywhere."

A Coast Guard investigation is continuing.

Something was up

Among early morning anglers on the two Skyway fishing piers, the incident went almost unnoticed.

Shaun Martinez of Tampa spent most of the night on the north pier. He said he saw a lot of police activity but had no idea what it was about.

"There were police lights along the bridge as far as I could see, and helicopters in the air with spotlights, and I knew something was going on, but I couldn't tell what it was," Martinez said.

Robert Abbenauer of Boston, who was fishing on the south Skyway pier, said he noticed lights near the shipping channel.

"I thought they might be a ship. But they weren't moving, so I couldn't be sure until daybreak, when it was pretty obvious," Abbenauer said.

It wasn't clear Wednesday how Rose was able to maneuver the ship when the steering was malfunctioning. He could not be reached.

But after the incident, the hull of the Antilles II came to rest in the sandy bottom south of Tampa Bay's shipping channel, about 400 yards east of the Skyway.

With the U.S. Coast Guard supervising and an assist from a high tide, workers on three tugs yanked the ship loose about noon, and tugged it to Port Manatee for an inspection. The Panamanian ship, which has a draft of 27 feet, was carrying 10,000 metric tons of phosphate and 78 metric tons of fuel to power the ship.

The incident stopped ship traffic in and out of the Port of Tampa and Port Manatee and delayed about 10 vessels.

Workers using a new system that tracks ship movements in Tampa Bay saw the Antilles II was heading aground early Wednesday and called the Coast Guard.

The system, called the Cooperative Vessel Traffic Service, monitors ships in much the same way that air traffic controllers monitor airplane flights.

-- Times staff writers Jean Heller and Steve Huettel contributed to this report.

Length of freighter: 378 feet

Draft: 27 feet

Cargo: 10,000 metric tons of phosphate

Fuel: 78 metric tons

Location: 400 yards east of Sunshine Skyway

Skyway auto traffic closed: 1 hour, 40 minutes

[Last modified March 29, 2007, 02:02:05]