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CONCORD — Susan and Bryon “Heath” Baker were holding hands in the crowd on the bridge when they heard a cracking sound.
Before they knew what was going on, the pavement beneath their feet was gone, Susan Baker recalled this morning from her hospital room at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte.
But the Bakers were lucky. They landed next to the fencing, with no one on top of them. They scrambled away quickly from the mountain of others who landed on top of each other in the middle of the crumpled walkway at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.
“There was so much chaos after the bridge fell,” said Susan Baker. “We were trying to stay together as much as we could.”
But they ended up at two different hospitals, Susan at Carolinas and Bryon at University Hospital, also in Charlotte.
The Bakers, both 33, live in Rockwell with their three children, ages 3, 7 and 10.
Susan Baker suffered a broken elbow, a compressed fracture in her back, a cut to her head which required stitches and several abrasions.
Heath Baker underwent surgery Sunday on his leg, which was broken in two places.
Eight local residents remained hospitalized today, victims of the bridge collapse. Besides the Bakers, they were Sandra and Robert Melton, of Salisbury; Roger Dunham, of Concord; Michael Neal, of Southmont; Torena Neal, of Lexington; and Kenny Payne, of Cleveland.
At least 101 people were taken to Rowan Regional Medical Center, NorthEast Medical Center in Concord and three Charlotte hospitals. Fifty-three remained hospitalized Sunday — just one of them in critical condition, said Humpy Wheeler, president of the track’s parent company, Speedway Motorsports.
Susan Baker said many off-duty emergency workers who were attending the race stopped to provide assistance.
“Everyone was so helpful and so nice,” she said. “They were trying to keep us together.”
The Bakers hope to return home today to their three children, pending doctor’s orders.
Salisbury Fire Department Capt. Kenny Payne was one of the victims flown by helicopter to Carolinas Medical Center, where he was treated for a broken pelvis and back and wrist injuries.
Reached at the hospital this morning, Payne said he didn’t feel like talking.
During the fall, Payne grabbed fencing over the top of the bridge as it collapsed, a relative said.
“He says he feels like he’s been run into by a football team,” said Tom Lowman, a battalion chief for the Salisbury Fire Department.
“Our prayers, our thoughts, our sympathies go out to the injured and their families,” Wheeler told a crowd of reporters gathered in the middle of the closed U.S. 29 Sunday afternoon. “ ... This is the worst thing you can go through, when spectators are hurt.”
The bridges allow spectators — there were 180,000 Saturday night — to cross the busy highway from parking lots to the race track.
Sunday afternoon, Steve Crawford of Easley, S.C., agreed to talk to a crowd of reporters in his room at NorthEast Medical Center.
He remembers walking in the the middle of the bridge.
“It made a loud pop, and somebody said, ‘What was that?’ and it went again and then it fell,” Crawford said.
There were scrapes and bruises on his arms, but he said his shoulder was the most severely injured.
“I am sore all over, but my shoulder is messed up real bad… and there are two compressed fractures in my lower back,” Crawford said.
He and his son-in-law, Michael Propst, were walking together across the bridge after the Winston night race.
“The ones right in front of me were hurt worse,” Crawford said.
After the accident, “it was a lot of chaos,” and “people from different states were saying they were nurses and doctors helping out,” said, Crawford, 42.
He described the fall as happening fast but feeling slow.
“I was laying on him (Michael) and he said ‘Are you OK?’ and I found out that he was hurt worse than me,” he said.
Doctors have said his son-in-law may not be able to walk for three months, Crawford said.
Though the accident has changed the lives of his family, Crawford said he enjoyed the race this year as he has every year for the past 10 to 15.
And he’ll probably return.
“I like Bill Elliott, and I love Dale Jr., and this time we had about one of the best times we had,” Crawford said. Bill Elliott got the pole position for the race, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. won.
“It was close to a perfect day as you could get, besides the heat,” Crawford said.
At the end of their first NASCAR race Sunday, Doris and Charles Budd, of Deerfield, Ohio, began to leave, but something stopped them. About five minutes later, when they did leave, they found their path blocked. The walkway overpass had collapsed.
“If we had left when John had wanted to...” Charles said to his wife Sunday afternoon as they sat outside their recreational vehicle across from the track. “About five more minutes and we would have been on that bridge.”
As officials directed race fans around the scene, the Budds could see the victims trapped in the fence.
“It’s scary to know the night before we were on that bridge,” she said.
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Staff writer Rose Post contributed to this article.
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