AS Deb Moroney’s car crashed through a rail of the Swansea Bridge on Wednesday and into the dark water below, there was no dangling, or teetering, no “movie moment”.
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Even at the point of no return, as the blue Ford Falcon bucked sideways in the rain to the edge of the bridge, there had been hope.
The rail, Ms Moroney reasoned, was there to prevent the unthinkable. It was a comfort as the sense of traction came and went; brakes hadn’t stopped the Falcon, but the rail would.
And then it didn’t. The car ran out of road.
“The car pushed towards the left rail from the left lane,” Ms Moroney, 40, said.
“I wasn’t going very fast at all. I thought, I’m just going to hit the bridge and it’ll stop me. But there was no resistance or stopping once I hit that bridge.”
She braced for the smack of the Swansea channel and ran through a checklist for staying alive.
The car was a 1999 AU Falcon with power windows, so she had to open one before the water wrecked the electronics.
Her seatbelt jerked taut as she hit the water. She clicked it open. Cracks spread across the windscreen and cold seawater gushed in.
“I was getting sucked under the steering wheel. Then I’ve made it to the ledge of the window, and I’m getting sucked down with the car,” Ms Moroney said.
“I came up into the current screaming for help. I guess you don’t know what you’re capable of. All I remember thinking is ‘I have to survive this’, and screaming out my husband’s phone number.”
Ms Moroney’s husband, Rodney Armstrong, had been driving not far behind with the couple’s son Ethan, 12.
It was a wet night with heavy traffic, and neither had seen what happened.
Rain had whipped through Swansea around 5pm as Ms Moroney and Mr Armstrong began their run home to Salt Ash after driving down to Swansea for Ethan’s team soccer practice.
At about 5.20pm, with the rain set in, Ms Moroney pulled her son from practice early to start the hour-long drive home.
But knowing she was collecting her teenage daughter Cassandra from her boyfriend’s house on the way, Ms Moroney told Ethan, “how about you go with your dad, mate”.
She thinks those words spared their lives.
“It would’ve been two fatals. Ethan can’t swim, and if he had been involved...”
As she screamed in the channel, alone, Ms Moroney was spotted by teenagers Caleb Gilbert and Lockie Rose.
The mates were about to go fishing in the channel at about 5.30pm when they saw what seemed like a boat between the pylons of the bridge.
“I was getting our rods out of the ute and my mate was looking out at the channel. He said, ‘is that a car?’,” Mr Gilbert, 17, said.
“We could hear a lady yelling for help. The car started to sink pretty quick. She got out through the window, but she was getting dragged out [by the current].”
Mr Gilbert and Mr Rose, 18, ran onto the bridge and rang triple-zero.
They yelled out to Ms Moroney to swim towards rocks near the Swansea RSL Club.
Once she stopped yelling her husband’s phone number – worry about him later, urged the voices from the bridge – Ms Moroney reached the south bank of the channel and grabbed onto a rock. Then another.
A resident with a house near the water fetched Ms Moroney a blanket, before police and paramedics arrived to take her to hospital.
She surprised everyone by being in good spirits, cracking jokes about going back for her phone and wallet. Her husband and Ethan were almost at Belmont before they got the call to turn around.
“Eth is shell shocked; he kept saying how grateful he is that mum is OK,” Mr Armstrong said.
“He’s now going over all his belongings – some brand new – that are still in the car. He was also pretty impressed with his ambulance ride.”
Police said the car had broken through guard rails on the bridge’s outer northbound lane and pitched into the channel.
They advised boat owners to steer clear of the area.
One northbound lane was closed from Wednesday night as Roads and Maritime Services assessed the damage.
Police divers at Swansea found the sunken Falcon on Thursday afternoon, and a recovery team will attempt to retrieve it on Friday.
Police investigations into the crash continue.
