Corsicana — With the Houston Texans opening their first season by hosting the Dallas Cowboys, the state was a buzz the morning of Sept. 8, 2002. And anyone attending a sporting event with 69,604 in attendance can expect traffic woes.

Few driving south for the Sunday night game expected what they came across just south of Corsicana, at milemarker 219, the infamous Richland curve. The State Highway 14 bridge, stretching across southbound Interstate 45, was compromised, and fell to the ground.

An Arkansas truck driver, Cleaster Broadway, 41, was traveling northbound when he lost control of his rig. It went off the interstate about 8:30 a.m., down an embankment, took out the pillars of the Hwy. 14 bridge, and it all came down, on the truck, and onto the southbound lanes.

Broadway survived, and was pulled from the wreckage some eight hours later. His son, 19-month-old Courtney Broadway, did not.

Seeing a large concrete structure laying flat on an interstate leaves an indelible mark on the mind. The rig was buried, but the familiar orange Schnieder trailer shot up into the air from behind the concrete and steel, adding to the disbelief.

Ten years later, six of the people who responded recall what they saw.

“When we got there,” said DPS Trooper Jeff Taylor, a 26-year-old trainee that day, “I got on the radio, and I said, ‘Navarro County, the bridge is not going to possibly fall. It’s already on the ground.’”



Ron Farmer

In 2002, Ron Farmer helped the Daily Sun out with extra photos from the field. But in the early ’80s, he was fire chief for the Richland Volunteer Fire Department. He knew about milemarker 219, and the Richland Curve.

He had seen the bridge collapsed partially before multiple times. Everything before paled to Sept. 8, 2002.

“For this area, it was probably as severe a devastation as you can have,” Farmer said.

Within 30 minutes of the collapse, Farmer — an avid emergency scanner hound, was there. He parked near the Richland hill, where Hwy. 14 splits northbound before it gets to I-45, and walked back down to the site, because traffic was so thick. People were everywhere, including the TV crews who had stopped on their way to Reliant Stadium in Houston to cover the Cowboys and Texans.

Farmer didn’t leave until Cleaster Broadway and his son were pulled from the wreckage, more than eight hours later.

He marveled at the work of local emergency responders and surgeons. And he took a clean-up crew that accused him of seeking “blood money” to task.

They were also getting paid to be there, he told them, and this family’s story was worth telling.

“The point I was trying to make is anybody involved in a tragedy is significant,” Farmer said.

“This was a tragedy.”



Dr. Bob Kingman

The unit might be summoned once in three years or so. A mobile surgical group called to areas where medicine has to meet patient. The bridge collapse marked one of those calls.

Dr. Bob Kingman was sent because an on-site amputation might be necessary. He needed a police escort to get to the low spot on I-45 near Richland.

Kingman, who had trained at Parkland and “seen it all,” jumped into the fray with his medical peers. He slinked below the surface of the collapsed bridge and into the cab of the 18-wheeler, close enough to converse with Cleaster Broadway.

“By the time I arrived, they had given the guy a ton of fluids,” Dr. Kingman said. “He was clearly fine. He clearly did not need his leg amputated.”

Kingman did not stick around to see Broadway freed, but he knew he had been air lifted to a Waco-area hospital. After an eight-hour event, Broadway escaped with a broken ankle.

Back on that day in 2002, Kingman told the Daily Sun the giant rolls of paper, similar to newsprint, the truck was hauling likely played a large part in breaking the fall of the bridge, keeping it from completely crushing the cab.

“Based on the magnitude of the destruction, it’s amazing he wasn’t killed,” Dr. Kingman said earlier this week.



Donald McMullan

In 1994, an E-F4 tornado decimated Lancaster. Donald McMullan saw it firsthand as the city’s fire chief, and had seen just about everything else.

It was a normal Sunday morning, and McMullan was off until he received a call. He headed south on Interstate 45 to the Richland Curve.

“As I got close, I saw a massive amount of cars,” McMullan said.

As he got closer, he saw volunteer fire department vehicles, sheriff’s department vehicles, DPS cars. This was big.

“The first thing I did was get an update from my guys,” McMullan recalled.

Two victims. One small child. One adult.

Firefighters were able to find a way into the concrete, and make contact with the driver. The child, 19-month-old Courtney Broadway, did not survive the crash.

With the media rush, McMullan often found himself doing updates in front cameras and boom mics. It was the first time the county had put its new Mobile Command Unit to use. Texas’ Task Force 1 , a state search and rescue unit, was also called in.

“I had never seen anything like a bridge collapse in that way,” McMullan said. “In the Metroplex we had an 18-wheeler hit a column and part of the bridge collapsed, but nothing like that.”



Eric Meyers Jr.

At the ripe old age of 24, Eric Meyers Jr. was two and half years into his role as Navarro County’s Emergency Management Coordinator. It would be another eight years before he’d find himself “in the tornado” and on every cable news channel this side of Liverpool.

He found himself on the day of bridge collapse managing much of the flow between agencies and media, and coordination between local and state-level relief workers. He set up a press area, scheduled press releases, dealt with a crush of media, and contacted the Government Division of Emergency Management regional liaison officer, Steve Vaughn, for a U.S. urban search and rescue team to assist in the effort.

“I experienced so many facets of an operation come together,” he said. “While some parts remain vague, some moments are still very clear.”

The devastation of a mighty concrete structure sticks with you.

“I can still remember first arriving and seeing the collapsed structure,” he said.

After the shock wore off, he went right to work. At a young age, he was ready.

“While many of the events over the years are seemingly distant memories, this is one of the few that is hard to forget,” Meyers said.



Darwin Myers

When Darwin Myers received the call as he was getting ready for church, he said, “Say that one more time?” He never made it to church. He didn’t make it home for some 24 hours.

“Coming around a corner and seeing a bridge on the ground, you can’t describe that,” said Myers, the Texas Department of Transportation’s area engineer.

The job for Myers and his crew was different from the first responders and emergency workers who were focused on the trapped.

“Our first job was to take care of southbound traffic,” he said.

Flow was already shut down. People were exiting onto Highway 14, so the TxDOT crews worked to use that as part of the detour.

W.W. Weber was working on a TxDOT-issued project nearby, and its equipment there was available for use quickly, along with TxDOT’s own. But those crews could do nothing until the crash victims were freed.

About 24 hours after the collapse, about 14 hours after clean-up crews were allowed in, the interstate was cleared off. It was opened.

“It took all night,” Myers said.

Rebuilding the bridge was just as impressive. Using original plans, the bridge was reconstructed and opened by the holidays, just a few short months.

“Doing that and getting the bridge built back that quick was a testament to our company,” Myers said. “I was really proud of our guys.”



Jeff Taylor

Veteran Trooper Pat Brice and Jeff Taylor, the rookie in his fifth of six months of training, had sat on the side of I-45, just south of the 219 milemarker, for quite a while. It had been raining the morning of Sept. 8, 2002, and they sat on the shoulder of the northbound lanes, lights on, just to try and slow traffic before it reached the Richland Curve.

“Pat said, ‘Let’s drive to the rest area and check it out,’” Taylor recently recalled.

The rest area was just a few more miles south, toward Streetman.

As the troopers pulled into the rest area, Taylor said, Navarro County dispatch radioed to them the Hwy. 14 bridge had been struck, and might fall.

“We looked at each other and kind of joked, ‘That bridge is not going to fall,’” said Taylor, who transferred to Waxahachie DPS earlier this month.

By the time they arrived, in just a few short minutes, the massive bridge sat resting on southbound I-45.

“It blew my mind,” Taylor said. “I had never seen anything like that.”

For a rookie, it was somewhat overwhelming. Brice took his gun belt off and tried to crawl in to help. Before long, there were people everywhere. Taylor said he had never seen the Salvation Army come out en force. He was surprised at how fast TxDOT and the clean-up crews removed the debris.

He said he still tells people the story all the time. And he always thinks about leaving for the rest area.

“I always think, what would have happened had we stayed there 10 minutes longer,” Taylor said.

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