The only construction worker to survive March’s deadly bridge collapse in Baltimore has said he is haunted by the fact that he told his nephew to go rest in his car – shortly before the relative fell, along with the vehicle, to his death and became one of six men killed in the disaster.
“If I had told him to come with me, maybe it would have been different,” Julio Cervantes Suarez told NBC News in an interview that the network exclusively aired late on Wednesday. “Maybe he would be here with us.
“I relive it all the time – the minutes before the fall and when I’m falling.”
As he recounted to NBC during his first remarks about the ordeal he endured, Cervantes was among seven Latino construction crew members who were repairing potholes on the Francis Scott Key Bridge when the cargo ship Dali struck it in the early morning of 26.
The six other men included Cervantes’s nephew, Carlos Daniel Hernández, and brother-in-law, Alejandro Hernández Fuentes. The crew’s members were all taking a break either inside their personal cars or in work vehicles when the ship knocked the bridge down.
Cervantes told NBC that he was in his truck when it slammed into the Patapsco River, and the water quickly rose to his neck, preventing him from opening the doors to escape. He got out by manually rolling one of his windows down as his truck sank, swallowing water in the process.
Once above the surf, Cervantes – who can’t swim – found a piece of floating wreckage, grabbed it and waited until emergency responders rescued him. He said he had only realized what had happened when he looked “at the bridge and it was no longer there.
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