The man who died was from Toledo. Mark Reighard, then 29, grew up in Toledo and had moved to Columbus. He was one of dozens of people enjoying the day at the winery when the terrace gave way. Emergency crews arrived to find 75 people injured and one man dead.
Reighard graduated from Whitmer high school and Bowling Green State University. He worked as a computer consultant in Columbus and was spending the weekend on Middle Bass with friends.
Toledoan George Penchef was just about to leave the winery when the floor fell. "All I remember is I was standing there ready to walk away, then everything turned dark and you heard a bunch of noise. And then I remember thinking, 'How long am I gonna fall?'"
On the mainland, ambulances waited on ferries to bring the victims. Some were flown to hospitals in Toledo and Cleveland. Julie Goins is program manager of Life Flight at Mercy St. Vincent. She was a flight nurse on Life Flight that day. "We had aircraft from cleveland, we had the coast guard from Detroit and everyone was doing their own thing working together, but also independently."
Julie was seven months pregnant and wound up staying at the accident site, loading patients for transport. "Everybody kind of had a blank look on their face. And it was kind of hard to fathom the damage. It was places where we had been before-- very surreal, seeing this terrace where you had sat or visited and just see the big pieces of concrete."
We spoke with Reighard's mother by phone today. She did not want to do an interview on camera with us. But she told us Mark was very responsible, had a great work ethic and was a scholar athlete at Whitmer. She says he was in the prime of his life and was taken away.
