\nThey had just had lunch and were on their way to a travel agency to pick up their tickets for their annual trip to Cuba.
\nOsvaldo Gonz\u00e1lez and Alberto Arias, friends and partners, on Thursday last week ended up beneath a Miami crosswalk, just like so many other persons who were carrying out in a carefree way their daily tasks.
\nAn adolescent girl was on her way to the doctor\u2019s to pick up a medicine. A man, the father of three children, was heading home from work. A woman who was going for a manicure stopped at a red light. In seconds, or centimeters, those who would live or die would be decided.
\nSweetwater detective Juan Llera was in his office a few blocks away when he heard what seemed like a bomb going off.
\nIt wasn\u2019t a bomb: it was a crosswalk, a structure so alike others, underneath which millions of persons drove every day. That structure under construction, weighing 950 tons, collapsed at the Florida International University, without giving time to the persons who were there to be able to escape. The vehicles that were beneath at that precise moment were crushed. Six persons died.
\n\u201cJust imagine,\u201d said Amauri Naranjo, who knew Gonz\u00e1lez since he came from Cuba in the 1980s. \u201cAn old friendship that even survived when we had the sea between us and that is gone with something like this.\u201d
\nGonz\u00e1lez and Arias, owners of a business that rented out everything needed for parties as well as decorating them, were among the deceased. Their bodies were found on Saturday under the white Chevy truck. The rescuers worked for days taking away the debris in search of the passersby who could be buried. Hopes for a miracle started dissipating as the names of the dead were made known. Those who survived were trying to wrestle with the absurd of all this, the unexpected.
\nMany were saved by a question of seconds
\nDania Garlobo was heading in her car to the beauty parlor where she works when a green light changed to yellow. A man driving a white Mercedes accelerated, but braked precisely when the crosswalk was collapsing in front of him.
\n\u201cHe almost ended up beneath it. I couldn\u2019t believe it,\u201d said Garlobo, who saw how the crosswalk collapsed in what seemed a second.
\n\u201cHow can it be that such a solid crosswalk collapses like a plank?\u201d she asked herself.
\nLlera arrived at the site in a few minutes. Chaos reigned and he found an unconscious man on the street, and he started to give him first aid. He almost couldn\u2019t feel his pulse, but someone from the university\u2019s medical department came over and told him, \u201cYou\u2019re keeping him alive. Keep doing it.\u201d He continued until they took him away. The man was alive.
\nLlera unsuccessfully called the hospital to see if he could get some news. He thought the man had survived and expected to be able to shake his hand someday.
\nBut on Sunday morning he saw a photo on the news of a young man with a red shirt.
\nHe had been identified as Navarro Brown, 37, an employee in Structural Technologies VSL. And he was listed among the dead.
\nHe had died in the hospital.
\n\u201cI felt like this time the bad guys had won,\u201d said the detective.
\nThe family of the dead and wounded asked for their privacy to be respected while they tried to cope with their losses, as irreparable as inexplicable.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s something magical when you find your soul mate in this world,\u201d said the wife of Brandon Brownfield, Chelsea, on Facebook. \u201cIt\u2019s like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. We fit just right as no one else.\u201d
\nThe Brownfields had three children. The family had moved to Florida several years ago because he had found a job with Maxim Crane Works, according to a collection for the family that a friend initiated on the Internet and that in a few days collected more than 50,000 dollars. He was going home from work when the crosswalk collapsed.
\n\u201cNow I have to find the words and answers to explain to my daughters that their dad will not come back,\u201d the woman wrote on her Facebook page.
\nThe investigators are still working to determine what caused the collapse. Days before some cracks had been detected in the concrete and safety controls were being carried out when the structure fell over a busy highway.
\nAn adolescent who was traveling in a car passed away and another suffered minor lesions. Both of their lucks depended on where they were seated.
\nRichie Humble, a 19-year-old student, hadn\u2019t been feeling well that week. On Thursday an 18-year-old friend, Alex Duran, the best person he had met, took him to see the doctor to pick up some medicines. They stopped at a red light, precisely beneath the crosswalk.
\n\u201cI heard a creaking, a prolonged creak,\u201d said Humble to Associated Press in an interview on the phone. \u201cI looked up and in an instant the crosswalk came down on us. There was no time for anything.\u201d
\nWhen he realized he was alive, he also understood that he couldn\u2019t find his friend. He called his name and there was no answer. A group of persons started to shout at him to try to crawl out of the car. They were able to pry open the door so he could get out.
\nHe sat on a sidewalk while the medical personnel treated some cuts on his legs and a slight vertebra fracture. He recalls that he asked himself \u201cwhat am I going to do now?\u201d
\n\u201cWe all have to recover. Life goes on,\u201d one man in the rescue team told him.
\nAn uncle of Duran, Joe Smitha, was getting ready for a colonoscopy that evening when he heard that a crosswalk close to the school had collapsed. She didn\u2019t answer the phone, but he said he didn\u2019t worry. His children at times didn\u2019t answer immediately.
\n\u201cI told myself, \u2018what are the probabilities that out of the thousands of persons who live in Miami she could be one of the six or eight who were trapped under the crosswalk, at a red light?\u2019\u201d
\nWhen he came out of the anesthesia after the intervention, he found out that she would be one of the six persons who were crushed by the crosswalk at a red light.
\nAP \/ OnCuba
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