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CNN Live At Daybreak

Amidst Death and Destruction of Bridge Collapse Some Amazing Stories of Survival

Aired May 28, 2002 - 05:08   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: The death toll in that Interstate 40 bridge collapse now stands at seven, and that number is expected to rise when the recovery operation resumes this morning. But amidst the death and destruction are some amazing stories of survival.

Here's CNN's Jeff Flock in Webbers Falls, Oklahoma.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are there people in the water down there?

JEFF FLOCK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The first pictures taken moments after the bridge collapse, shaky home video showing one of the semi trucks still visible in the water and the last vehicle that stopped short of plunging off the bridge after a barge hit it on Sunday.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Goodness gracious.

FLOCK: The investigation focusing on the tow boat captain and how he got so far off course.

GEORGE BLACK, NTSB: They were clearly a considerable distance out of the channel and that's the first place to start.

FLOCK: And the National Transportation Safety Board's George Black tells CNN recovery of the vehicles and victims now at the bottom of the Arkansas River is a mess.

BLACK: They were trying to get a tractor trailer, the semi trailer from a tractor trailer truck out of the area to work on the passenger vehicles and it came apart, as they expected it to, and part of the cargo floated. So there was, there were floating garden hoses, hundreds of them, in the river.

FLOCK: They were Rodney Tidwell's hoses. He was hauling them in his semi to Reno, Nevada, headed west across the bridge when all of a sudden...

RODNEY TIDWELL, SURVIVOR: There wasn't nothing under me.

FLOCK: Some fishermen on the river for a bass tournament pulled him out. TIDWELL: And the last thing I remember was going off the bridge. Everything else is a blur and just bits and pieces is coming back to me.

FLOCK: Traffic is being rerouted around an interstate bridge that carries as many as 20,000 vehicles a day to two lane county roads. It is slow going. The same is true in the water.

LT. CHRIS WEST, OKLAHOMA HIGHWAY PATROL: There's two concrete slabs underneath the water. It's two portions of the roadway that fell and they're kind of overlapping. The divers are explaining to us that they believe that there's additional vehicles as well as victims that are beneath that rubble.

FLOCK: Rodney Tidwell, fresh out of the hospital, knows he could have been one of them.

TIDWELL: I'm going home. And I've got three small kids. I'm going to be with them a while.

FLOCK (on camera): They think maybe six or eight more vehicles left down there. They don't know how many more people.

I'm Jeff Flock, CNN, Webbers Falls, Oklahoma.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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