GIG HARBOR, Wash. — It is one of the Northwest’s most staggering disasters.
On November 7, 1940 one of the world's longest suspension bridges collapsed into the Tacoma Narrows.
Using a wealth of footage, a dive team willing to fight strong currents and eyewitness accounts, Carly Vetser and Peter Bortel are marking the anniversary with a documentary called "700 Feet Down".
“Right now we have two fabulous bridges that allow us to go back-and-forth from Tacoma and we don't even think about what happened 80 years ago,” Bortel says.
To get to the Kitsap Peninsula people once waited in long lines to ride privately owned ferries so anticipation was high for the new bridge. It was supposedly built to deflect high winds, but even in moderate winds the roadbed would rise and fall leading workmen to nickname the bridge "Galloping Gertie". The name stuck after opening day as builders tried to brace the bridge to little effect.
“People would drive over the bridge and their cars would go up where you couldn't see the other tower literally,” says Bortel. “So from the day it was built everybody thought it would eventually fall, and one day the wind just picked up too much and bye-bye bridge.”
“Everybody knew it was going to collapse that day,” says Vetser. “They shut the bridge down about two hours before it collapsed, didn't let anyone go across and folks heard about it and they came out to witness it.”
Finding eyewitnesses to something that happened 80 years ago was just one of the challenges the filmmakers faced.
Even greater--physically--was shooting the debris field 220 feet below the surface in strong currents.
“What I wanted to do was take down enough lighting with the right guys on rebreathers and get footage that was crystal clear,” Bortel says
The roadbed has become an artificial reef. There are ladders and other kinds of debris.
“In the footage that you see in the film you have two divers above one diver just lighting the scene because it is so dark down there,” says Vester.
There's no evidence of a mythical giant octopus, but 700 feet below the top span of the bridge, there's plenty to learn from this infamous disaster.
“If we don't learn from the mistakes of the past we're never going to improve the future,” Bortel says.
"700 Feet Down" won Best Feature Documentary - Cinematography at the West Sound Film Festival. It plays at the Gig Harbor Film Festival in September 2020. Keep an eye on their website for more information.
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