Woman survives close call on bridge

STURGEON BAY - Every hour, on the hour, the Maple-Oregon Street Bridge in downtown Sturgeon Bay is raised for boats to pass through. On Thursday at 6 p.m., however, the routine maneuver nearly turned disastrous.

Sturgeon Bay Police said the bridge tender raised the bridge with a car still stuck between the gates.  Witnesses said a young woman in the car was trapped on the bridge at a very steep angle for nearly two minutes.

"It was almost, I don't know if surreal is the word but it was kind of like a nightmare. You feel really helpless, don't know what to do and you hope you don't witness a terrible accident and when it started going back down it was a relief,"  said Dustin Fritsch.

Fritsch works at a store near the bridge. He's also a semi-professional photographer who keeps his camera with him at work.

"I ran, grabbed it, came back out. It was actually starting to come down at that point and I snapped the photo that you guys have. If you can imagine it at a steeper angle, it was. I don't know how (the car) held on," said Fritsch.

"She had to have her foot on that break as hard as she could," said Arleigh Porter, a Captain with the Sturgeon Bay Police Department.

Porter said the picture may look like a hoax but the incident did really happen. Porter said after the bridge went down, the girl who had been stranded apparently just drove away.

Now police want to find her to ask her some questions about the incident to make sure it never happens again.

"The technology should tell us what angle that bridge was on when it was up but I'm thinking a 30 to 40 degree angle," said Capt. Porter. "It could have been a very, very bad tragedy," he added.

State authorities will likely investigate the incident.

FOX 11 did try, unsuccessful, to reach the bridge tender. The bridge is property of the state transportation department, so we could learn more next week from DOT officials about what went wrong.