Latino worker reveals in exclusive interview how he survived Baltimore bridge collapse despite not knowing how to swim

By Tom Llamas, NBC News, and Albison Linares, Noticias Telemundo

Julio Cervantes Suárez’s voice trembles when he remembers the morning of March 26 and how, on a day off from road maintenance work on the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore (Maryland), a cargo ship of more than 100,000 tons crashed into the infrastructure, sending him and his companions into the dark waters of the Patapsco River. Six of them, all Hispanic, his friend and among them, his nephew and brother-in-law, lost their lives that night. He, who knew nothing, appeared. He survived.

“When I reacted, the water was already up to my neck,” he said in an exclusive interview with Noticias Telemundo. “When I tried to open my truck door, I couldn’t,” he added, but “the driver’s side window was manual and I was able to lower it by hand.” “Everything was completely flooded and that’s when I started drinking water,” Cervantes Suarez, 37, said in an interview with NBC News Network journalist Tom Llamas.

Cervantes Suarez, a native of Mexico, was part of a crew of eight workers from the Brower Builders Company that night, repairing potholes in the bridge’s concrete. At 1:28 a.m. he was taking a break: He remembers he was eating dessert in his truck when he felt a strong jolt.

I didn’t know it then, but the Dali freighter had collided with a support column of the bridge. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined in a preliminary report published in May that the 947-foot-long, Singapore-flagged ship was transiting the bay after leaving port when it lost control of power and propulsion. According to NBC News, the FBI is investigating whether the crew was aware of potential technical problems that made navigation dangerous.

L. Chris Stewart, one of Cervantes Suarez’s lawyers, who was also interviewed, said: “We are conducting our own investigation because that ship was not seaworthy. “So everyone associated with this ship is responsible for destroying the lives of these families.”

After the strong impact, Cervantes Suárez remembers that he took two or three steps outside the truck in which he was resting, so as not to lose his balance. “It came to my mind that since I don’t know how to swim: if I fall, where will I end up. Then I went to the back of the truck and stopped. Then I realized what happened because I looked and the bridge was no longer there.”, said the Hispanic activist in his first interview and especially after the tragedy.

Cervantes Suárez says that, as he was falling into the river, the only thing he could think of was to be grateful for the life he had until that moment: “What I did was to thank God for the family he gave me. “I asked him to take care of my wife and my family.”

“When we were falling,” he says, “I looked at my comrades and how the water covered them. And I started calling them by name. They were the only ones rescued alive that night. “I had a lamp on my helmet because I was going to start filling out some papers. When we fell I never got it out of my mind. I turned it off because I wanted to save the battery, I didn’t know how long it would take (for rescuers), if anyone would be able to get there quickly. When I saw the authorities coming, I started turning on my lights,” he says.

Cervantes Suárez climbed onto a piece of concrete that had stuck out of the water after the collapse and waited there to be rescued. He was taken to hospital with a chest wound and was discharged the same day. Another worker who also survived, who was rescued at the scene, did not suffer serious injuries and refused treatment at the hospital.

Asked why he thinks he managed to survive the accident in which the bridge collapsed and his companions lost their lives, Cervantes Suarez was silent for a moment. Then he replied in a broken voice: “I don’t know. I think there is still a goal for me.”

In the days following the collapse, the ship’s owner, Grace Ocean Private, and its operator, Synergy Marine Pte, both based in Singapore, asked a Maryland court to limit their financial liability for the collapse to $43.7 million.

The city of Baltimore said in a lawsuit filed against the two in late April that “their negligence caused them to destroy the bridge and single-handedly shut down the Port of Baltimore, which is not a loss of jobs, municipal revenue, or pride for Baltimore and its residents.”

“Nothing like this should have happened,” local officials said, adding that reports indicate that even before leaving the port, an alarm was sounded showing inconsistent power supply on the ship. “Despite the apparently navigable condition, it left the port,” they added.

Cervantes Suarez’s lawyer said he plans to file a lawsuit in the next two weeks. He said, “This will be one of the largest lawsuits ever filed, because this is one of the greatest tragedies the United States has ever suffered.”

Regarding the consequences the Hispanic worker will suffer, another of his lawyers, Justin D. Miller, specified: “His knees and chest are bad. Also, he drank all the bad water and his meniscus is torn. He has all sorts of other psychological problems that he will always have to deal with. It’s never going to end. And he still has a family to take care of,” he said, referring to his wife and two daughters.

During the interview, the Mexican activist repeatedly mentioned the guilt she felt for the death of her nephew, Daniel Hernández, who was working that night with her and her sister-in-law’s husband, Alejandro Hernández Fuentes.

He recalled that at 6 a.m. on March 26, at the hospital, when he was finally able to see his wife, the first thing he did was apologize because he told Hernández to rest in his vehicle. “If I had said ‘come with me,’ the situation could have been a little different. He was the first to fall, and I’m always to blame for that,” he claims bitterly.

He also mentioned the legal processes to be initiated by his lawyers and his aspirations: “I want all those responsible to compensate for the damage they have caused. Because I know that money cannot make a father hug his son. “Money is material.”

When asked how he wanted the United States to remember its dead allies, he indicated: “Hispanics come to this country to work, to raise their families, it’s not like many people think they come to do evil. I’ve met all of them and I know they are good families, hardworking people with good principles.”