November 7, 1977 – From the “Being in the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time
Department” – Ms. Raphan Boonying drives her car across the Wells Street
bridge, heading north, and encounters a warning gate dropping down in front of
her, prompting her to stop with the front wheels of the vehicle on the street and
the rear wheels on the bridge. The
bridge then begins to rise. “Suddenly I
felt the rear of the car going down,” Boonying says. “I thought, ‘I am going to die’ and I
screamed.” Officials describe what
happens next. The car begins to slide
back toward the river as the bridge opens, but before the car falls into the
brink the upper section of the bridge’s double-deck truss system catches it and
crushes its rear section, pinching it between the bridge and the street. The bridge-tender swears that he did not see
any vehicle on the bridge when he began to raise it. Trains of the Ravenswood and Howard lines,
which run atop the structure, are delayed for two hours as the wrecked car and
its shaken owner are removed. The Tribune graphic, shown above, shows how close Ms. Boonying came to ending up in the river.
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