‘It felt like an explosion’: Gloria Estefan talks about her 1990 bus crash at the ‘Table’
It’s been 30 years but Gloria Estefan still gets emotional talking about breaking her back in a horrific bus crash.
The pop star, 62, brought her family together to talk about the near fatal incident, on Facebook Watch’s “Red Table Talk” Wednesday.
Niece in law Lili Estefan, daughter Emily Estefan, husband Emilio Estefan and sister Becky Fajardo all got teary eyed listening to the music icon tell the harrowing tale.
“The press was reporting we had the world in our hands… and boom. In a split second, everything changed,” said Estefan, choking up.
Fans may already know: On March 20, 1990, the Estefans, along with their then 9-year-old son Nayib were on their Miami Sound Machine tour bus to attend a party in New York and give a concert in Syracuse.
They were outside Scranton, Pennsylvania, where it was snowing. Their bus was idling in traffic when a “fully loaded 18-wheeler” slammed into the back of it, catapulting Estefan off of a couch where she was napping.
“It felt like an explosion, it was huge,” said the “On Your Feet” singer.
When she came to, Estefan was on the floor and knew right away that she had broken her back. The Havana native had to keep it together for Nayib who was elsewhere on the bus and had broken his clavicle.
Due to the heavy traffic, it took some time for emergency crews to arrive, but Estefan says a nurse (“an angel”) came on board and instructed her not to move, and even used her own legs to immobilize the star.
At a local hospital, doctors stabilized Estefan, who had a broken vertebra. Emilio, then 38, suffered bruises on his head and cuts to his hands.
Becky Fajardo was sent to retrieve their belongings in the bus and said there was blood and shattered glass everywhere.
A day later Estefan was helicoptered to New York to the surgeons at Manhattan’s Hospital for Joint Diseases Orthopedic Institute where they fused two vertebrae in a four hour operation. She still has to two eight-inch steel rods in her spine, but soon after she could walk.
Lili went to visit her and said amid tears how “stoic” Gloria was, so “small in bed.”
Emilio says he broke down in tears when he saw his wife take her first steps, but not in public. The producer stepped into a closet to bawl and Gloria’s mother walked in and saw him, he said. The two had been estranged for about two years as Gloria Sr. did not approve of their career path at first. The accident brought them all closer again.
Though there was concern that Gloria could not carry a child, Emily came along four years later, which is why they call her their “miracle baby.”
At the end of the show, mom and daughter performed the 1991 hit “Coming Out of the Dark,” written by the Estefans in the aftermath of the accident.
“When we wrote this song, your dad said, ‘I want to show you, I wrote this down the day of your accident when I was going in the helicopter,” Gloria told the 26 year old musician who chimed in and played the piano during the duet.
“In that moment, I saw a little light come into my eye and I wrote it on a piece of paper, ‘coming out of the dark,” Emilio said. “[I knew] we’ll be OK.’”
This story was originally published November 12, 2020 at 12:56 PM.
