Driving along ... and the roadway vanishes beneath you. What's it like to survive a bridge collapse?

You're driving along, and without warning, the roadway drops from beneath you.

There are a few seconds of falling, with thoughts possibly racing about family or loved ones, followed by a jarring impact, and most likely injury.

Tuesday's collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore following a ship strike brought back jarring memories of their own ordeals to people who survived previous bridge collapses.

Linda Paul, 72, survived a bridge collapse in Minneapolis on Aug. 1, 2007. The Interstate 35W bridge collapsed without warning into the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis during the evening rush hour.

Paul was 55 then, working as a shop-at-home designer for a local company and driving home in a minivan that doubled as a “store on wheels,” loaded with fabrics and sample books. Traffic was at a total standstill, leaving her stuck on the bridge around 6 p.m.

“I remember looking around and thinking that there was definitely something wrong,” Paul said. “I looked ahead and realized that the center section of the bridge was going down, and knew at that point that there was a good chance I would go down with it. And that is exactly what happened.”

Police later told her that she plunged down a 50-foot (15-meter) slope as the concrete deck of the bridge collapsed. She was still inside the minivan as it fell onto wreckage on the riverbank.

Chunks of concrete hit her, fracturing five of her vertebrae and crushing her left cheekbone, as the collapse killed 13 people and injured 145.

Jessie Shelton, now a 35-year-old Broadway actor and voiceover artist in New York, was 18 when she survived the Minnesota bridge collapse. She had been driving from work to a production she was part of at Children’s Theater in Minneapolis.

“I started to slide backwards. And it was kind of, like, jolty,” she said. "I felt like I was on some sort of amusement park ride. And I remember thinking at 18 years of age, ‘Well, we’ll see what happens.’”

Then she was knocked unconscious, suffering a concussion and injuries that broke her back in four spots.

“I just remember that sort of final moment before I got a concussion,” Shelton said. “I don’t recall what came after. I woke up at North Memorial Hospital with either my mom or my best friend standing over me.”

“I had a big cement block in the backseat of my car," she recalled. "It narrowly missed me. It came off of one of the signs, I think, up above. So it really was pretty miraculous that I made it because I couldn’t have navigated out of that situation, because I was out cold.”

Gustavo Morales Jr. was driving a truck over the Queen Isabella Causeway in Port Isabel, Texas and fell into an abyss after a tugboat struck a pillar, sending part of the bridge into the water on Sept. 15, 2001.

Morales was on his way home from a late night managing a restaurant on South Padre Island at the time. He remembers it feeling like a rumble or explosion — and then his pickup truck flew over the collapsed roadway for a few seconds before crashing into the water. Thoughts of his wife, who was expecting their third child, flooded his mind.

“Everything comes into your mind a thousand miles an hour," he said. “It was my wife, my girls, my son who was on his way.”

Morales believes wearing his seatbelt and being able to manually roll down the window helped him stay conscious and escape the truck. He spent about ten minutes in the water before some young men nearby who witnessed the tugboat hit the pier helped him and others safely out. Eight people died that day. Morales was among three survivors.

Garrett Ebling, another survivor of the 2007 Minnesota bridge collapse, was numb when he learned that six people who were on the bridge in Baltimore remained missing and were presumed dead.

“As Minneapolis bridge collapse survivors, one of the things we hold onto is that we went through this in the hopes that people wouldn’t have to go through something like this in the future,” Ebling said.

Ebling, 49, of New Ulm, Minnesota, endured multiple surgeries, including facial reconstruction, as well as emotional trauma.

“We don’t know what happened in Baltimore,” Ebling said. “But I don’t want to see somebody have to go through that, especially unnecessarily. If it ends up being a preventable accident then I really feel bad. In my estimation, what happened in Minneapolis was a preventable bridge collapse. And if that also happened in Baltimore, then I think that makes it even more disappointing.”

Ahmed reported from Minneapolis and Gonzalez in McAllen, Texas. Associated Press writers Ben Finley in Norfolk, Virginia, and Wayne Parry in Atlantic City, New Jersey, also contributed to this story.

A gold pin in the shape of Minnesota – with the words "Interstate 35W 'Bridge' Remembering August 1, 2007" – is photographed on Linda Paul in St. Paul, Minn., on March 27, 2024. She survived the Interstate 35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis on Aug. 1, 2007, and was reminded of it after the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore collapsed on March 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Mark Vancleave)

Jessie Shelton is photographed at her parent's home in Minneapolis on Wednesday, March 27, 2024. She survived the Interstate 35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis on Aug. 1, 2007, and was reminded of it after the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore collapsed on March 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Mark Vancleave)

Linda Paul is photographed inside the Minnesota State Capitol building on Wednesday, March 27, 2024, in St. Paul, Minn., where she works part-time as a tour guide. She survived the Interstate 35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis on Aug. 1, 2007, and was reminded of it after the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore collapsed on March 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Trisha Ahmed)

FILE - In this Wednesday, Aug. 1, 2007 picture, vehicles are scattered along the broken remains of the Interstate 35W bridge, which stretches between Minneapolis and St. Paul, after it collapsed into the Mississippi River during evening rush hour. The collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore following a ship strike on March 26, 2024 brought back jarring memories of their own ordeals to people who survived previous bridge collapses. (Stacy Bengs/The Minnesota Daily via AP)

FILE - Recovery workers pull a car from the bay at the site where the Queen Isabella Causeway collapsed, in Port Isabel, Texas, Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2001. The collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore following a ship strike on March 26, 2024 brought back jarring memories of their own ordeals to people who survived previous bridge collapses. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Suspected U.S. airstrikes over the weekend targeting Yemen's Houthi rebels killed at least six people, the group said Sunday, while a bombing video posted by U.S. President Donald Trump suggested casualties in the overall campaign may be higher than the rebels acknowledge.

A strike Sunday night in Sanaa, the rebel-held capital of Yemen, hit a house, killing at least four people and wounding 16 others, the Houthis said. Their al-Masirah satellite news channel showed images of the damaged home and people receiving care in a hospital.

The strike on the house in Sanaa's Shu’ub district allegedly targeted a Houthi leader, part of a wider decapitation campaign launched by the Trump administration to kill rebel leaders. The intense campaign of U.S. airstrikes targeting the rebels over their attacks on shipping in Mideast waters — related to the Israel-Hamas war — has killed at least 73 people, according to casualty figures released by the Houthis.

Earlier Sunday, the Iranian-backed Houthis said other suspected U.S. airstrikes killed at least two people in the rebel stronghold of Saada and wounded nine others. Footage aired by al-Masirah showed a strike collapsing what appeared to be a two-story building. The rebels aired no footage from inside the building, which they described as a solar power shop.

The Houthis have not acknowledged any casualties among their security and military leadership — something challenged after an online video posted by Trump.

Early on Saturday, Trump posted what appeared to be black-and-white video from a drone showing over 70 people gathered in a circle. An explosion detonates during the 25-second video. A massive crater is left in its wake.

“These Houthis gathered for instructions on an attack,” Trump claimed, without offering a location or any other details about the strike. “Oops, there will be no attack by these Houthis! They will never sink our ships again!”

The U.S. military's Central Command, which oversees Mideast military operations, has not published the video nor offered specific details about the strikes it has conducted since March 15. The White House has said over 200 strikes have targeted the Houthis.

The rebel-controlled SABA news agency in Yemen, citing an anonymous source, described the bombing as targeting “a social Eid visit in Hodeida governorate.” Muslims around the world just celebrated Eid al-Fitr at the end of the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. SABA had published images of other commanders meeting fighters during the holiday, though not any high-level Houthi officials.

“Those present at that gathering had no connection to the operations carried out by the (Houthis), which are implementing the decision to ban navigation on ships linked to the American and Israeli enemy,” the SABA report said, adding that the attack killed and wounded “dozens.”

The Houthis previously have not acknowledged any strike on Hodeida during that time with such a high casualty count. The SABA report also did not describe those killed as civilians, suggesting they did have ties to the rebels' security or military forces. Hodeida has been a site of Houthi attacks into the Red Sea.

Moammar al-Eryani, the information minister for Yemen's exiled government opposing the Houthis, claimed the strike killed some 70 Houthi fighters and leaders, as well as “experts” from Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. He offered no evidence for the claim, though Iran has backed the Houthis. Neither the Iranian government nor the Guard has acknowledged the attack.

Mohammed al-Basha, a Yemen expert of the Basha Report risk advisory firm, cited social media condolence notices suggesting a colonel overseeing police stations for the Houthis in Hodeida had been killed in the strike Trump highlighted, alongside his two brothers.

“The strikes have expanded significantly, hitting multiple governorates simultaneously, alongside telecommunications infrastructure, command nodes, properties tied to senior Houthi leadership and previously untouched tunnel networks in mountainous areas,” al-Basha told The Associated Press.

“We’ve also seen direct targeting of Houthi force gatherings, indicating a more aggressive and evolving shift in the targeting strategy,” al-Basha said.

An AP review has found the new U.S. operation against the Houthis under Trump appears more extensive than those under former President Joe Biden, as Washington moves from solely targeting launch sites to firing at ranking personnel and dropping bombs on cities.

The new campaign of airstrikes started after the rebels threatened to begin targeting “Israeli” ships again over Israel blocking aid entering the Gaza Strip. The rebels have loosely defined what constitutes an Israeli ship, meaning many vessels could be targeted.

The Houthis targeted more than 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones, sinking two of them and killing four sailors from November 2023 until January of this year. They also launched attacks targeting American warships without success.

The attacks greatly raised the profile of the Houthis, who faced economic problems and launched a crackdown targeting dissent and aid workers in Yemen amid a decadelong stalemated war that has torn apart the Arab world’s poorest nation.

The U.S. campaign shows no signs of stopping, as the Trump administration has linked its airstrikes on the Houthis to an effort to pressure Iran over its rapidly advancing nuclear program.

Associated Press writer Samy Magdy in Cairo contributed to this report.

A Yemeni girl visits the graves of Houthis during Eid al-Fitr marking the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan in Sanaa, Yemen, Sunday, March 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Osamah Abdulrahman)