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10,000-pound tractor tumbles off SkywayBy JAMES HARPER © St. Petersburg Times, published May 24, 1998 Instead, the 10,000-pound tractor they were carrying toppled into Tampa Bay from near the 170-foot-high center of the bridge. Their truck and the trailer they were pulling came to rest facing oncoming traffic on the downhill slope. Father and son were shaken but unhurt. "I didn't save us," Randy Sharp told his 9-year-old son, Matthew, as they recounted the accident at a nearby rest stop. "The Lord saved us." With tears in their eyes, the two stood a moment and prayed by the mangled rear bumper of their pickup truck. The accident happened as the Sharps were heading south on the Skyway at about 8 p.m. Sharp had borrowed the Ford front-end loader from a friend, Bill Heaberlin of Clearwater, in order to do some land clearing and grading at his property in Manatee County. The tractor was chained to a flat-bed trailer behind Sharp's medium-duty truck. Just as they were crossing the top of the bridge, a semitrailer sped past them, Randy Sharp said. The turbulent wind caused Sharp's rig to fishtail. "We hit the right side of the bridge, and that caused us to swerve," said Matthew. After they bounced from one rail to the other and spun around, "We looked behind us, and the tractor was gone." Randy Sharp said he didn't see the tractor fall or even which side of the bridge it flew off of. But the force of the accident was enough to break the heavy chains he had secured it with. Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Paul Kopriva, who investigated the accident, said he's never seen an accident in which the wind from a passing semitrailer blew a vehicle off the Skyway. But Sharp's load was unusually top-heavy, Kopriva said. Not unsafe or improperly loaded, he added, but it was unwieldy enough to make it harder for Sharp to maintain control in a sudden mishap. Oddly, Kopriva had stopped Sharp just north of the main bridge and cited him for an improper tag and lighting on the trailer. But it was still daylight when the accident occurred. The semitrailer that Sharp said caused the accident did not remain at the scene. Kopriva said no charges will be filed. But he did have to tell Sharp that the Coast Guard will hold him responsible for retrieving the tractor and for cleaning up the oil and diesel fuel that were in it.
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T. PETERSBURG -- A passing semitrailer truck and a top-heavy load nearly pulled a Parrish man and his son over the edge of the Sunshine Skyway early Saturday evening.
