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Kudos to the heroes who had 90 seconds to save lives in the Key Bridge collapse

The loss of 6 lives is tragic, but the dispatch recording shows it could have been so much worse.

Representative image by Gustavo Fring/Pexels

The workers who responded to the Dali's mayday call saved lives with their quick response.

As more details of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore emerge, it's becoming more apparent how much worse this catastrophe could have been.

Just minutes before 1:30am on March 26, shortly after leaving port in Baltimore Harbor, a cargo ship named Dali lost power and control of its steering, sending it careening into a structural pillar on Key Bridge. The crew of the Dali issued a mayday call at 1:26am to alert authorities of the power failure, giving responders crucial moments to prepare for a potential collision. Just 90 seconds later, the ship hit a pylon, triggering a total collapse of the 1.6-mile bridge into the Patapsco River.

Dispatch audio of those moments shows the calm professionalism and quick actions that limited the loss of life in an unexpected situation where every second counted.

In the recording of the conversation, we can hear authorities and responders quickly putting out a call to stop traffic onto the bridge and assessing what construction crew might be working on the bridge. No one knew that the entire bridge was going to collapse into the harbor, only that a possibility for collision was present. As one officer plans to drive onto the bridge to alert the construction workers, a voice announces, "The whole bridge just fell down. Start, start whoever, everybody ... the whole bridge just collapsed."

Listen:

It had to have been surreal to witness the bridge collapsing in its entirety. In the initial news reports it was unclear how much warning had been received, and at first it was feared that passengers traveling across the bridge may have fallen into the water. But as we gained a clearer picture of the moments before the accident, it's clear that the everyday workers in the harbor and the first responders who were nearby to receive instruction did everything they could, and their calm professionalism and quick actions saved lives.

As we go about our daily lives, it's easy to forget that there are countless workers who are chugging away behind the scenes to keep things running smoothly. Our systems of transportation, our supply chains, the safety of our roads and bridges—all of these things require people to be on the job, doing what needs to be done, establishing, maintaining and following protocols that keep all the moving parts harmonized. When it's done well, we don't even notice it—their work becomes invisible.

But when something goes wrong, when a wrench gets thrown into the system—like a massive, unsteerable cargo ship about to crash into a bridge—we see how valuable those systems are and how regulation and oversight of such systems is so important.

As Charles Fishman pointed out on X, "A system worked—a government system. All those people just ordinary frontline workers in anonymous, sometimes invisible jobs. Maritime radio operators. Police/fire dispatchers. Bridge police & state police. All working 11p to 7a o’night shift."

"All day, every day—that happens & we don’t see it," he added.

Of course, the construction crew members who lost their lives, along with the two crew who were rescued from the water, will be remembered as biggest loss as the daunting bridge rebuilding process gets underway. The Key Bridge collapse is an unfathomable tragedy, but one that could have been even more tragic had it not been for the systems and people working as they're supposed to. Kudos to those life-saving heroes.

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Losing 8 friends is hard. Fighting back is harder. Caleb Holloway did both.

A poignant reminder about the hard work skilled workers do.

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Deepwater Horizon

Caleb Holloway didn’t plan on becoming a rig operator. He just wanted a good paycheck and a steady job.

After a string of odd jobs — working at a feed store, in hospital maintenance, and installing concrete — 22-year-old Caleb and his best friend applied on a whim for a job working on small offshore oil rigs. They were hired two weeks later and stationed on a little shallow-water rig called a "jack-up." It was hard work, but it paid well and Caleb excelled at it. Within two years, he'd switched companies and started working at Transocean on its flagship offshore rig, the Deepwater Horizon.

On this massive rig, Caleb found community with his fellow workers. Stationed together for 21 days at a time, they became a second family to each other.

Offshore drilling rigs similar to the Deepwater Horizon sit in the Gulf of Mexico. Image via Sara Francis/U.S. Coast Guard/Wikimedia Commons.

During his three years on the Deepwater Horizon, Caleb worked his way up from an entry-level job as a roustabout, to a member of the drilling crew. It was tough, challenging, skilled work.

Working as anything above an entry-level steward on an oil rig usually requires a diploma in welding, basic mechanics, or heavy equipment operations, plus specialized courses in marine firefighting and emergency response. Workers must be physically strong, highly-skilled natural problem-solvers — able to do their tough, essential jobs perfectly on a moving, floating deep-sea drilling platform in all kinds of bad weather and treacherous conditions.

"It’s a very dangerous job," Caleb said. "Everything on the rig is heavy; you’ve got multiple machines running and going in different directions. It’s a long job, and it can get to you sometimes. But I always think back to our crew and how we took care of each other. There wasn't a moment where I didn't trust them with my life."

Most of the time, there are extensive safety protocols in place to keep workers out of harm's way. Coupled with strong leaders empowering workers to speak up about problems, sometimes they make a big difference. Other times, they fail horribly.

On the morning of April 20, 2010, 10 members of the Deepwater Horizon’s drilling crew went to work. By midafternoon, only two of them were still alive. Caleb was one of them.

The Deepwater Horizon burns on August 20, 2010. Image via U.S. Coast Guard/Wikimedia Commons.

That day, the Deepwater Horizon was finishing up work on the deepest oil well ever drilled on our planet. The project was behind schedule and over budget. A chain of decisions, spurred largely by off-site executives wanting to save further money and time, led to a catastrophic explosion, a massive fire, and the largest oil spill in American history. Caleb and his colleague, Dan Barron, crawled through pitch darkness and aerosolized gas and fire to reach safety. On their way, they helped many others reach safety.

126 people were on board Deepwater Horizon before it sank. 115 were rescued.  Of the 11 crew members who were not, eight were members of Caleb Holloway's drilling crew. It was only after he was safely back on shore that he began to understand that many of his close friends and coworkers weren't with him.

For six months afterward, Caleb could barely function.  

Medications and counseling helped, but only bit by bit. Unable to eat or sleep, he lost 40 pounds off his already slim frame. He couldn't stop replaying the day over and over again in his head, imagining what he could have done differently and the additional lives he might have saved.

Until one day, he just couldn’t do that anymore.

Through the support of his family, his friends, and his bible study group, Caleb found the motivation to begin living again. Just over a year after the disaster, he signed up for firefighter training.

"Losing my friends on Deepwater Horizon felt like someone tore out my heart and ripped it into 11 pieces," he says, his voice catching. "There’s not a day that goes by where I don’t think of them. I wanted to go back to a rig because I loved that work, but I knew that mentally and emotionally I couldn’t do it."

For the last four years, Caleb's worked as a firefighter on the crew in Nacogdoches, Texas — just 20 minutes from where he grew up and minutes from his parent's house.

His shifts, like the ones he worked on the Deepwater Horizon, are long and tough: 24 hours on with 48 hours off. Caleb couldn't imagine being anywhere else.

He spends a full third of his life now in this fire hall, surrounded by men and women who, like his crew members back on the Deepwater Horizon, have become another second family. "We do something different every day, we impact lives every day," he says. "It’s something I’m proud of."

The Holloway family at home. Image via Participant/Deepwater Horizon.

For Caleb, being a firefighter bridges the gap with the work he did on the rigs, in a way, and the close relationships he had with his fellow workers, while allowing him to stay close to his growing family. That's something his wife Kristin and sons, Chase, age 4, and Hayden, 20 months, really appreciate. "They're the best thing that’s ever happened to me," Caleb says proudly. "They’re my heartbeats; they keep me going every day."

Caleb's experience is unique, heartbreaking, and life-affirming. But people like him put their lives on the line for their job every single day.

Image via Participant/Deepwater Horizon.

Mundane moments in our lives that we take for granted — that light comes on when we flick switches, that roads are safe to drive on, that toilets flush away dirty water and taps supply clean — occur because of skilled workers, some of whom risk their lives in potentially deadly situations just to make it happen. They're working quietly, doing the essential work that keeps our country running every day. While their work is often taken for granted, it's actually pretty incredible, too.

Watch a video of Caleb's story here:

This is Caleb Holloway. He survived the Deepwater Horizon and is now a firefighter in Texas. #workhard Participant Media

Posted by Mark Wahlberg on Friday, October 7, 2016
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Music helped them survive the Holocaust. 70 years later, they started a band.

You have to live.

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Participant Media Denial

Quick! Picture a band in your head. What do you see?

This, right?

Image via Maarten/Wikimedia Commons.

Or this?

Image via Stuart Wood/Wikimedia Commons.

Maybe ... this?

(Dear God, not this, I hope.) Image via Dimitris Siskopoulos/Flickr.

Probably not this.

Image via The New York Times/YouTube.

But these guys? Oh. They're a band, all right.

Saul and Ruby are both in their 80s. They live in Florida. And they're both Holocaust survivors.

Their love of music got them through the darkest years of their lives.

And now, 70 years later, it's helping them reconnect with the childhood that was cruelly taken away from them.

Saul plays the drums. Ruby plays accordion.

They've been to hell and back. But when they play music together? Pure, unadulterated joy.

All GIFs via The New York Times/YouTube.

They didn't just survive. They thrived. And they continue to, day after day after day.

Saul and Ruby completed a remarkable exodus, and not just from darkness into freedom. They managed to take the extra step into rich, happy, joyful lives.

Take a moment to think of the people all over the world who lack the necessities of life, who struggle for their basic human rights, who are trying to make new lives in foreign lands where they may be greeted with less than kindness, or who are trying to move beyond unspeakable tragedy of any kind.

Surviving isn't easy. It takes guts and determination. Living after surviving is even harder. But it's so, so important.

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We spoke to a Haiti hospital after Hurricane Matthew. This is what they want you to know.

On Oct. 4, 2016, Hurricane Matthew hit Haiti's southern peninsula.

Photo by Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty Images.

And as you may or may not have seen in the news, it was pretty bad.

The death toll has risen to over 800 people and might grow as officials continue to reach the worst affected areas, according to The Weather Channel. Tens of thousands of houses have been damaged, and the Haitian president has called the situation "catastrophic."

Halfway down that peninsula is St. Boniface Hospital, which provides affordable medical care to local Haitians.

St. Boniface is a pretty important part of the local Haitian community, and it paints an important picture of what happens to poorer countries when large weather patterns hit.

St. Boniface, before the storm. Photo from St. Boniface Haiti Foundation, used with permission.

St. Boniface Hospital is located in the community of Fond-des-Blancs, and it has been a local fixture since 1983. It's where people can go if they need surgery or are having a baby. Fond-des-Blancs is pretty small, with a population of about 500 people, mostly farmers, so St. Boniface is often the only place to get medical care.

Fortunately, the eye of Hurricane Matthew missed Fond-des-Blancs and the hospital itself.

According to Liz Schwartz, the media and communications manager for the St. Boniface Haiti Foundation, which runs the hospital, the eye of the storm crossed further west instead, out to the very tip of the peninsula.

That direct area suffered severe storm damage, and people are still having trouble getting there to find out what's going on and provide aid. Many parts of the west are currently only accessible by helicopter.

Sous Roche, one of the areas further west that got hit by the hurricane. Photo by Nicolas Garcia/AFP/Getty Images

But while Fond-des-Blancs was spared the most severe damage, it doesn't mean the people there emerged unscathed.

The community was still hit with severe rain and wind and there's been a lot of local damage to houses, roads, and bridges. The hospital itself is still up and running though, thanks to electrical generators.

The wind blew the roof off this school. Part of a church collapsed nearby and a lot of houses have been damaged too. Photo from St. Boniface Haiti Foundation, used with permission.

St. Boniface normally sees about 300-500 patients a day, says Schwartz, and they have seen some injuries, such as cuts, though there haven't actually been that many patients coming in.

While that might sound like great news, it actually illustrates one of the hospital's biggest worries.

The storm's left a lot of people pretty much stranded.

The rain and wind were so intense that Schwartz said staff saw floodwaters reach a 20-foot-tall bridge. Further away, the La Digue Bridge was overtaken, and it actually collapsed, cutting off the peninsula's only major thoroughfare to the mainland.

People at the site of La Digue. Photo by Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty Images.

The road conditions aren't much better than the bridges. Most of the local roads aren't paved; they're dirt or gravel. The rain's washed a lot of them out or littered them with debris.

"Pretty much what they're seeing is that they can't get anywhere," said Schwartz.

Photo from St. Boniface Haiti Foundation, used with permission.

When people are cut off, they can't get the medical attention they might need.

"There are communities that are completely cut off," said Schwartz. "We can't even get to them to see what condition they're in."

Both locals and hospital workers have been working to restore drivability, and they're expecting to see a lot more people once travel is restored. In the meantime, people have been sent out into the communities to learn more and provide help.

Workers repairing a washed-out road. Photo from St. Boniface Haiti Foundation, used with permission.

They're also trying to get in contact with their partner clinics in the severely-damaged west end of the peninsula.

Beyond the storm's immediate effect, storms can cause bigger problems in poor countries, like hunger and disease.

Most of the surrounding areas are pretty poor. "The majority of people live on less than $2 a day," said Schwartz.

And because many people in Fond-des-Blancs are subsistence farmers, they may have trouble getting food if their crops were damaged or washed away by the storm.

Hunger could turn into a major humanitarian crisis too, according to Schwartz. Diseases like cholera can also erupt after a natural disaster when people struggle to get access to clean water.

Getting an ambulance unstuck. Photo from St. Boniface Haiti Foundation, used with permission.

And with the peninsula cut off from the mainland, it's going to be really hard to get supplies in. That bridge — the La Digue — was really important. Trucks can't go over the washed-out dirt roads.

Extreme weather patterns can have a lasting impact on poor countries — and we might start seeing more of them.

While this specific incident is a new story, it's also one we might be hearing more and more in the future. But without adequate infrastructure, it's going to take Haiti a while to recover. It won't be easy, and it won't be quick. Everyone in Haiti, and around the world, will need to help.

There are lots of ways to help from America too. Primarily, you can help fund local, well-established charities and institutions like St. Boniface. Material donations are going to run into the same shipping problem as everything else, but funds can help local relief efforts buy food and supplies.

The United States has also deployed an aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. George Washington, as well as an amphibious transport dock, a hospital ship, and nine helicopters to Haiti to help.

When a natural disaster hits, it's often hard for communities to get back on their feet.

But if we could be more aware of how natural disasters affect developing nations — if we can help stories like about this local hospital get attention — we can actually save lives and help a country recover.

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