Ed McVee, a trucker who was driving a Chevron freight truck on the Cypress Viaduct at just about 5:00, spoke to National Geographic about what it was like to barely escape from the viaduct’s collapse: his truck stopped beneath the only top deck section that didn’t crumble in the earthquake. In Nature’s Fury!, a video put out in 1994, he said:
There was no traffic, I was doing about 55, and all of a sudden it felt like I had a blowout. I had no control over the truck. Luckily there was nobody beside me because I was just all over the place. I hit the brakes. In the rearview mirror I could see what looked like the freeway falling, and that didn’t make any sense. I saw cars and trucks disappearing underneath the rubble. And I just knew I was dead. I had no way of getting out of it; there was nothing I could do.
I don’t deal with it as well as people think I do. I can be driving along anywhere, and all of a sudden I’ve got freeway falling down on top of me.
