ABC7 Chicago is now streaming 24\/7. Click here to watch<\/a><\/p>\nKovalchuk, speaking with ABC7 on Monday, says she is lucky to be alive.<\/p>\n
“I don’t see nothing. I just heard ‘boom,’ and everything get dark,” Kovalchuk said.<\/p>\n
Kovalchuk, from Justice, Illinois, is recovering on Monday night after her family says a 2-foot-long chunk of concrete fell off an overpass and hit her SUV’s windshield on I-55 at Pulaski as the grandmother was on way to work.<\/p>\n
Oksana was hospitalized with multiple lacerations to her face, neck, and hands.<\/p>\n
“The worse thing is, I could not sleep because I have stress, or something, and my head is real, like painful,” Kovalchuk said.<\/p>\n
Kovalchuk’s daughter, Victoria Petriv, says her mother is not the only one who is grateful for her survival.<\/p>\n
“We’re lucky, not just her. The family is lucky that she’s alive. It’s unbelievable,” Petriv said.<\/p>\n
They are thankful but still traumatized.<\/p>\n
“When one piece fell in the front, I guess the second one broke and went into the second seat. It bounced from the seat and hit back,” Petriv said. “Someone has to be responsible for this. This should have never happened. Never.”<\/p>\n
The Illinois Department of Transportation says it has done multiple inspections since the incident and has not seen any loose concrete.<\/p>\n
A structure summary report shows the bridge was last inspected October 2024 with no major issues found.<\/p>\n
Kovalchuk says, so far, no authorities have reached out to her to talk next steps.<\/p>\n
An IDOT says it performed “preventative measures” out of an abundance of caution and will continue to monitor the area. IDOT did not elaborate on what the preventative measures were.<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2025 WLS-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHICAGO (WLS) — Oksana Kovalchuk says she was inches from death on Chicago’s Southwest Side on Friday. The…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":435288,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[201624,960,5462,8755,201617,201618,201620,201619,201621,5386,1818,105775,201623,201622],"class_list":{"0":"post-435287","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-201624","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-chicago-news","11":"tag-chicago-traffic","12":"tag-concrete-debris","13":"tag-falling-concrete","14":"tag-i-55","15":"tag-i-55-accident","16":"tag-i-55-traffic","17":"tag-il","18":"tag-illinois","19":"tag-illinois-department-of-transportation","20":"tag-oksana-kovalchuk","21":"tag-pulaski-road"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115688933063984360","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435287\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}