One Driver Missed Last Year's Baltimore Key Bridge Collapse By Mere Minutes

Wednesday marked exactly one year since the cargo ship Dali hit Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge, collapsing the bridge and blocking commercial shipping on the Patapsco River for nearly two months. While it easily could have been worse, the collision also claimed the lives of six members of a maintenance crew that was working on the bridge at the time. If 68-year-old baker Larry DeSantis had crossed the bridge only a few minutes later than he did, there's a good chance he would have lost his life, as well. Instead, he arrived at his job completely unaware of the disaster he'd narrowly avoided.

To observe the anniversary of the disaster, the Washington Post spoke with DeSantis, who's well aware of how close he came to plunging into the frigid water. He's also no stranger to the danger of the river, either, telling the Post that when he was a teenager, he lost a friend whose body was sucked under. And as his E-ZPass records show, DeSantis cut it terrifyingly close. He drove off the bridge at 1:24 a.m., mere minutes before the bridge collapsed at 1:29 a.m. If he'd had a slightly longer conversation before getting in his car or hit a few additional red lights, he easily could have been on the bridge when it fell.

"Once all that steel came down, you were done," DeSantis told the Post. "No, that would have been it."

After 53 years of working overnights in bakeries, often 80 or 90 hours a week, DeSantis told the Post he's learned not to think too much about how close he came to his death. "I'm the kind of person — I just keep going. That's who I am," he said. According to DeSantis, it's a lesson he learned from his mother, who was also a baker. "No matter how bad I have it, somebody has it worse. You just have to keep moving forward. That was my mother's thing," he said.

That doesn't mean it's been easy for his family and friends, though. When his wife Michele woke up to the news at about 6:00 a.m., DeSantis still hadn't checked in to confirm he was alive. "I got on my phone and called him and his cellphone rang like four times," she told the newspaper. "And my heart was just beatin' and beatin' and beatin'. I'm like — Oh my God. And I was just panicking, from there on. It just scared me to death." A year later, she said the worry still hasn't left her. "I think about it every day. I don't think I'm ready to be alone yet." His daughter Kristina also told the Post she believes the close call affected her dad more than he lets on and that it's hard not to let it worry her, too, saying, "I worry about him more now."

But while DeSantis made it home to his family safely, six other people didn't. He told the Post he frequently thinks about those "poor people, the guys that were working there. Gone. At any given time, you never know, you've just got to be grateful." It's a tragedy that's inextricably linked to his own story. "Everybody always says, 'You're lucky.' And I am. But it's just unfortunate that people died," he said. 

There's so much more to the interview than would be fair to summarize here, so head over to the Washington Post and give the whole story a read. It's a gift link, so you can still read it without a subscription.