After the bridge came down Thursday, Lourdes Humble got the call every parent dreads.
Richard Humble is lucky to be alive after the car he was riding in was crushed as a pedestrian bridge suddenly collapsed over a Florida highway Thursday afternoon.
The falling concrete did not crush his side of the car but the same could not be said for the driver’s side. Fellow student Alexa Duran, who was behind the wheel at the time, was among the six people who perished in the collapse.
"I started to hear the bridge creak so I looked up," Humble recalled to NBC News. "I saw the bridge falling on top of us and it fell on the roof of the car and caved in and it kinda caved in on my neck and kinda squished me down."
Humble got on his cellphone to his mother, Lourdes, and could be heard screaming, "Mom! The bridge fell on us!" during video of the aftermath.
Surveillance video shows the moment the bridge came crashing down. Cars underneath the bridge that were waiting for the light to change didn't stand a chance.
The pedestrian bridge was being built to offer students at Florida International University a safe passage across a busy intersection.
The bridge was constructed in prefabricated sections using the so-called “accelerated bridge construction" method. It was put in place on Saturday and cost $16.5 million to construct.
"When you install the entire span without the cables, it is more vulnerable because the primary support system is not yet in place,” Andrew Smyth professor of civil engineering at Columbia University told Inside Edition.
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