24 YEARS AGO, THE RGV HAD ITS OWN 9/11 WITH COLLAPSED CAUSEWAY

 

(Ed.'s Note: Truth in Advertising. J.P. Montoya, the "hero" of this post, is the brother of this blog's publisher. The following account of the collapse of the South Padre Island Causeway was gathered from first-hand experience from him and his firefighter brother David Lopez, who recommended Montoya for recognition, but none for himself. Despite claims on social media by former Port Isabel firefighter Ernie Estrada that they didn't deserve the recognition and were stealing valor, the fact remains that they risked their lives to help the victims of that tragedy. Stolen valor – as we shall see – was the order of the day, apparently.)  

El Rrun-Rrun Files

After the collapse of the Queen Isabella causeway, when plaudits rained down upon the firefighters and EMS personnel who rescued victims and pulled out the bodies from the drink below, then-acting Brownsville Fire Department Chief Lenny Perez proudly received the public recognition from then-U.S. Congressman Solomon Ortiz for his firefighters and those from other entities for the gallant rescue of the victims.

Perez accepted the congressional resolution for the firefighters and EMS personnel but failed to mention to the assembled crowd at city hall that the firefighters who were actually there hadn't been notified of the impending ceremony and that he had decided he would accept it in public on their behalf. One of them was put on duty to keep him from publicly accepting the recognition.

Partly as a result of the media coverage, Perez was elevated from interim chief and selected from among four others to head the BFD. He then went on to be fire chief with Pharr Fire Department.

"He justified it by claiming that if they recognized just one or two the rest of the firefighters would be resentful so he decided to receive the recognition himself," said retired BFD firefighter David Lopez, "He claimed that he couldn't locate them, when in fact he had assigned some of them to ambulance duty at the time."

On that September 15 24 years ago, the firefighters and paramedics arrived to find that a 240-foot section of the causeway had been knocked down by a runaway barge and that several cars were already sunk in the waters below some 80 to 90 feet into the dark waters of the Laguna Madre.

When the BFD firefighters arrived, there were Port Isabel and Los Fresnos units at the scene. The two EMS personnel from Los Fresnos, a former Marine and a former Navy veteran, were peering into the dark.

"You could see that some of the headlights were still on in the cars underwater," said one. "We could tell that there was nothing we could do for the people in those cars because the cars were piled on top of each other."

Although some of the drivers and passengers in the cars were able to be saved, some by swimming away on their own, firefighters were unable to see whether the driver of a two-door gray sedan that was teetering on a concrete abutment below was still alive.
"We couldn't tell," said one. "He looked like he was dead."
The firefighters were only able to tie several ropes to the car, an unacceptable method to stabilize the car in case of a rescue attempt.

"When we were talking about the man being probably dead, he made a movement to let us know he was still alive," recalls Lopez. "At that point, neither the ex-Marine nor the Navy veteran volunteered to take the risk of going after the man on the unstable car."

A Brownsville firefighter recalls that one of his company was just getting on the scene when they noticed that J.P. Montoya, then working part-time as a Port Isabel EMS paramedic looked in the car and started making his way to the trapped motorist.
"He didn't think twice about it," the firefighter recalled. "The car wasn't stable with just those ropes but he went in after him anyway."

Montoya reached the sedan and spoke to the man, who was badly injured as a result of the of the impact with the remnants of the bridge above and the plunge to the bottom. The impact had been so great that the motor had become detached from the car and was lying on the side on the concrete separated from the car.
He punched out the windshield and climbed in without a life vest or ropes to reach the injured man.

"He was pleading with me not to leave him there to die," Montoya recalled. "He was a big guy and when I went in the car and tried to pull him out his foot was wedged in the wreckage. Try as I might I couldn't get him loose because his foot was smashed and stuck."

With the man pleading with him not to leave him, Montoya opted to take drastic measures.
"I could see his foot was useless and that he was already bleeding profusely and he was going into shock," he said. "So I pulled and pulled and broke his leg until I could pull him free."

Then, using all his strength to pull the dying man out of the car, the firefighter pulled the large victim out and hauled him across his back and then out to a waiting Coast Guard boat which took him to shore and into an ambulance to get him to the hospital. That was Gaspar H. Hinojosa, they later found out.

"Nobody else wanted to go in there and he did," they all agreed.
Hinojosa died on the way to the hospital, but the man's relatives were grateful that the firefighters had rescued him from the murky waters of the Laguna. A few hours later, the concrete base of the causeway where the car had teetered and Montoya had climbed in to retrieve the victim collapsed into the currents below.

At the time Perez was interim chief after Raul Salazar was suspended on suspicions of wrongdoing. Salazar later went to work as an administrative assistant to Cameron County Precinct 2 Commissioner Ernie Hernandez and got in trouble there, too.

When the time finally came around and entities began issuing proclamations in recognition of the first responders' bravery, Montoya – working for the BFD as a firefighter and with Port Isabel as an EMS paramedic – was unceremoniously handed his congressional resolution by his supervisor in a hallway at the firehouse.

Even though the certificate of congressional recognition singled out Montoya and Lopez for their bravery, they were never told of the award. 

"We had just finished with a cardiac case and were getting back to the fire house when my supervisor Robert Perez came into the dormitory and handed me the congressional award," Montoya recalled. "He told me that they had had a big ceremony at City Hall but that the chief had told them that they couldn't find us. All that time the presentations were made we were kept away on duty."

(P.S. Ever since then, when Montoya participates in the annual Queen Isabela Causeway Run, he touches the railing where he stood now 24 years ago and mutters a prayer for Hinojosa, whose surviving family members send him a message of thanks every year.)