DATE: Sunday, August 31, 1997               TAG: 9708310087

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:   34 lines

CRASH SENDS CAR INTO BAY; DIVERS SEARCHING

A car went over a railing and off the northern span of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel on Saturday night, carrying an unknown number of occupants into the water below.

Virginia Beach Police Department divers, taken to the scene by a Coast Guard boat, were searching for the car late Saturday, but there was no word on whether they had found anything.

The two-car accident happened shortly after 9 p.m. on the Cape Charles side of the tunnel, police said.

One of the cars, which had been heading south toward Virginia Beach, apparently went airborne and into the Bay.

It was not immediately clear whether the accident was a head-on crash or whether the two cars had been going in the same direction.

The Coast Guard sent a helicopter from its Elizabeth City, N.C., air station to help a Virginia Beach police helicopter search the water.

Two 41-foot Coast Guard boats, one from Little Creek and the other from Cape Charles, also went to search. Virginia Beach police divers were aboard the boat from Little Creek.

Just before 11 p.m., Brandon Brewer, a Coast Guard spokesman, said ``debris has been found in the area'' by the boat crews, but it was unclear whether any sign of people had been found.

The area is about halfway along the 7-mile bridge span between the Eastern Shore and the north tunnel.

Traffic was halted for an hour and then resumed with a single lane open to alternating flows of traffic from north and south. KEYWORDS: ACCIDENT TRAFFIC FATALITIES

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