The Paper - June 25, 2015

Page 1

Volume 45 - No. 25

By Heather Siegel The Siegel Sidebar

The next time you tell someone to jump off a bridge, you might not think of it as a joke anymore. A day does not go by in which someone does just that. Consider the cost to society. According to Lostallhope.com, a website that ranks the efficacy of suicidal methods, jumping from heights is the #7 most effective method, though the timing is long and the agony is high. If you take the Coronado Bridge to work, right here in San Diego, you are among the more than 80,000 daily crossings. You just may find yourself trapped in a horrendous traffic jam on the bridge, often lasting for hours, because when a jumper is spotted, both the CHP and the Coronado Police are called out, and it’s usually a mess. Bridges, by definition, are edifices built to get from Point A to Point B. The San Diego-Coronado bridge is a commuter bridge, no foot traffic. Considered one of the world’s most beautiful and graceful bridges, a sure-fire tourist attraction, there is a dark side, an underside, to its tale.

Rising high over the San Diego Skyline, the Coronado Bridge has earned itself the reputation as being one of the most dangerous bridges in the world, not from traffic accidents, but from suicide jumpers. Nothing can beat the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, though.

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June 25, 2015

This iconic landmark makes the number one spot on any list of Suicide Bridges. The main differences between the two bridges are the two California cities that host them. San Francisco is planning on spending big bucks on stopping suicides from its rafters. San Diego is spending zilch.

Guns, gas, pills, even hanging comes with a cost, considerations of availability, and the very likely possibility that whatever you pick won’t work. Jumping off a bridge guarantees a positive result, negatively speaking.

Thus, all the fussing and fuming over the death trap on the San Diego Bay is funneled to an agency that simply does not care. “If people want to trespass on our property, we cannot stop them,” said Ed Cartegna, a CalTrans spokesperson, who said the agency won’t spend a dime to help them, either.

Money talks and $76 million dollars is a lot of money. That is the amount that supporters of installing netting around the underside of the Golden Gate Bridge have raised in 2015. The money is committed, the plan is committed, and the people who are committed to this project have really left their hearts in San Francisco.

There are other differences between these iconic killers. The Coronado Bridge is owned and operated by CalTrans, a State Agency that monitors over 300 bridges in California. The Golden Gate Bridge is owned and operated by a quasi-public authority, which also runs a public transportation system.

So, while suicide prevention barriers remain a hot topic, are the traffic disruptions on the Coronado Bridge going to change in the near future?

“No,” said Cartegna, the CalTrans spokesperson. “There are too many layers (of bureaucracy) to make any predictions now.”

Before we look at why people want to kill themselves, it is important to recognize that they do. Choice of death or life is replaced by choice of execution.

If you live in San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge is so associated with the San Francisco Bay Area that knowing that their bridge is the Number One Suicide Bridge is taken seriously by a lot of the locals. San Diego’s populace may have a tinge of guilt about the Coronado Bridge but has a marginal way of showing it. Though this situation is slowly changing.

Suicide is, after all, a mental health issue. Psychiatrists suggest that persons who are considering offing themselves are not in their right mind and are not capable of making sound decisions. Suicide intervention is the philosophy of preventing persons with suicidal ideation from completing the act. This article addresses some of these issues.

Few studies document what causes a person to consider death by suicide and even fewer studies

The Suicide Bridge Continued on Page 2

explore the impact on the victim’s family and friends. Anecdotal comments abound, often from the less than a handful of bridge jumping survivors. For those individuals, their last thoughts were: O, shit, is there a better way, but it was usually too late to change course. The big bucks being spent today on the Golden Gate Bridge did not come from just one source. The Bridge itself put $20 million dollars of skin into the game and then starting looking around for government grants. CalTrans, the agency that does not care about the Coronado Bridge, donated $29 million to the Golden Gate Bridge. The Feds jacked up their share based on a new program to help fix the nation’s understructures. And the State of California Department of Mental Health added a fair slice, based on its incentive to encourage suicide prevention.

It took more than ten years, a lot of advocating, and a sense of direction to get to the point of where the 70+ years Golden Gate Bridge is today. This makes news. San Diego continues to ignore its problem with the Coronado Bridge. Unfortunately, that makes news, too.

The City of Coronado has suggested that maybe it should assign a staff member to look at the situation. That remains to be seen. CalTrans won’t even talk about the crisis. And, the concerned citizens of Coronado are working hard to get more global recognition.


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