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发帖数: 7881 | 1 The decades-long effort to build a suicide barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge
succeeded Friday as the transportation district's Board of Birectors OKd
funding for nets that will be installed about three years from now.
"We did it," shouted a woman in the midst of a giant group hug, moments
after the board of the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation
District voted unanimously to approve a $76 million funding plan for
installation of steel-cable nets 20 feet beneath the east and west edges of
the bridge that are intended to deter people from leaping to their deaths or
catch them if they do.
Supporters of the suicide net - most of them family members of people who
have jumped to their deaths from the bridge - knew that the board was
expected to finally approve the barrier after decades of death and debate.
Still, more than a dozen, some clutching photographs of their deceased sons,
daughters, partners and friends, spoke of the unending pain of losing loved
ones to suicide and urged directors to approve the plan.
"The time of healing can only begin when the steady drip-drip-drip of bodies
into the raging waters has stopped," said Dana Barks of Napa, whose son,
Donovan, jumped to his death in 2008.
According to the Bridge Rail Foundation, which has worked for a barrier, at
least 1,600 people have jumped to their deaths from the Golden Gate Bridge,
including 46 last year. Many of their family members have joined the
campaign for some kind of suicide barrier on the bridge. Some barrier
supporters have become familiar faces as they've returned to speak to the
bridge board time and again over the years.
After reading a series of Chronicle stories about bridge suicides in the
1970s, Roger Grimes started campaigning for a barrier, walking regularly on
the bridge with a sign reading, "Please care: support a suicide barrier," as
well as attending numerous meetings.
'It had to happen'
While he was often discouraged by the lack of support, he said after the
vote, "I knew someday it would happen. It was so wrong. It had to happen."
Although the funding is lined up and the net is mostly designed, it will
take about three years before it is built and installed, said Denis Mulligan
, bridge district general manager.
Injured but alive
The net design was chosen out of five potential suicide barriers - the rest
were all 10- to 12-foot fences or walls - in 2008. Two nets, made of thick
steel cables, will be stretched the 1.7-mile length of the bridge two
stories beneath its public sidewalks. The presence of the net, bridge
officials hope, will deter anyone from jumping.
But if they do, Mulligan said, they'll probably be injured but alive. The
net, suspended from posts, will have a slightly upward slope, and will
collapse a bit if someone lands in it, making it difficult for the jumper to
climb out. The bridge district will deploy a retrieval device to pluck
jumpers from the net.
Nobody voiced any objections to the plan at Friday's meeting, but in the
past critics have complained that a barrier would mar the scenic bridge's
appearance and that it would simply drive suicidal people elsewhere.
Deter jumpers
Dr. Mel Blaustein, the medical director of psychiatry at St. Francis
Hospital, said research shows that people deterred by barriers from jumping
to their deaths do not go to other, nearby sites.
"We have scientific evidence of that," he said.
Suicide barriers on other bridges have proved to be successful in deterring
jumpers, according to a study released by barrier backers. At the Ellington
Street Bridge in Washington, D.C., suicides dropped from 25 in seven years
to one in the five years after a barrier was erected. A span in Switzerland
with a net saw suicides drop from 2.5 per year to none.
In approving the spending plan, the directors committed to spend $20 million
in bridge tolls to the plan, something they had previously opposed. The
rest of the money will come from $49 million in federal funds steered toward
the barrier by Caltrans and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, and
$7 million in state mental health funds.
'Right thing to do'
Mulligan, in a report to the board, said building the barrier "simply is the
right thing to do at this time."
Just before the vote, Director Janet Reilly, who helped campaign for barrier
funds, voiced her agreement.
"It's not every day you have an opportunity to save a life, and hardly ever
that you have an opportunity to save many lives," she said. "Today is that
day." | b**********5
发帖数: 7881 | 2 where is a service net for guns? |
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