By Jesus Chavez
In 2005, design engineer Ryan Thurston moved with his high-tech employer Impinj to their new site in Fremont along the Lake Union shore. Over the last half-decade other high-tech companies, like satellites of Google and Adobe, have funneled into the two-city-block area of tidy brick office buildings, dropping onto the scenic stretch as if out of the sky.
It took about a month for Thurston to see his first suicide.
“It was a routine day, and I looked out the window and saw a guy face down with blood coming from his head,” Thurston said. “It was traumatic. Any time you see death, a body, it’s something you remember; but when it’s someone taking their own life, and you know it could have been prevented, that’s totally different.”
The new business community thriving under the shadow of the Aurora Bridge, officially the George Washington Memorial Bridge, had discovered its legacy of suicide jumpers — jarring indications of Seattle’s troubling public health issue.
“We knew nothing of the problem when we moved in there, but we found out it’d been going on for a long time,” said Thurston. “It was definitely traumatic. We had people that had to go home that day; we had grief counselors come out.”
Thurston, now studying business administration at MIT, led a local charge for suicide prevention and awareness not long after his first experience with suicide. He founded the nonprofit organization Seattle FRIENDS (Fremont Individuals and Employees Nonprofit to Decrease Suicides) that aggressively pushed for a government response to the issue of the Aurora Bridge. After months of research and speaking with representatives of the Washington State Department of Transportation and experts in the mental health field, the idea for a suicide-prevention barrier was formed.
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“Suicide prevention efforts had been done in the past, but the efforts seemed to be failing … so a new approach needed to be tried — a more effective one,” said state Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson in an interview. “I don’t think there is a perfect solution, but given all the parameters they had to work with, I think they came up with a pretty good solution that will end up saving lives.” Beginning Nov. 14, steel frames could be seen jutting from the bridge’s sides, and each week it was encased further and further. The construction of the fencing is scheduled to be completed early 2011, and the total cost of the 8-foot-9-inch fence will run $4.6 million out of the WSDOT budget. It took years of investigating, attending committees and hearings and maneuvering through the contentious legislative process for Seattle FRIENDS to get that amount of funding. In the end, they successfully lobbied legislators like state Sens. Ed Murray and Jeanne Kohl-Welles. Dickerson was on the House Transportation Committee and took the lead to put the fence proposal in the transportation budget that Gov. Chris Gregoire signed in May 2009. “The state transportation department funds billions of dollars worth of infrastructure changes for the state, so a $5 million dollar project is not on their radar, even though it was very controversial at the time,” said Thurston. And there was controversy. Ellen Monrad, president of the Queen Anne Community Council, remembers well when the idea for the fence was first proposed. The QACC was asked for its opinion on putting up a suicide-prevention barrier, but a past incident with WSDOT precluded a cooperative attitude. Before the council was approached for its support of the fence proposal, it had had a proposal of its own. A council member’s teenage son was killed on the Aurora Bridge in a head-on collision, and the council passionately appealed to the state for the construction of a median barrier between the north- and southbound traffic on the bridge. “They said it couldn’t be done because you can’t put a single ounce more on that bridge, that engineering-wise it’s maxed out,” said Monrad. “We didn’t exactly buy that; we thought it was just an excuse.” And these suspicions were given credence not long after when WSDOT began making plans to build a very heavy fence on that same bridge. The difference, according to WSDOT, is the placement of the weight, which can be tolerated on the sides but not the center. “They never explained that to my satisfaction,” Monrad said. “But I’m not an engineer, and the member whose son was killed will never accept that explanation.” Concerns over the use of state funds, the fence’s efficacy in abating and addressing suicide, and landmark preservation also peppered the fence debate. But, according to Monrad and members of Seattle FRIENDS, the most vocal opposition came from those preoccupied with the aesthetics. Traveling on State Route 99 between Fremont and Queen Anne the view opens up, revealing picturesque downtown Seattle and Lake Union. “It’s a beautiful view, and that fence is going to cut it off,” Monrad said at the time Massana Construction began installing the steel girders. “The spacing of the steel stakes makes it become a solid wall when you drive down the Aurora Bridge. When it becomes more like a tunnel, more people will start complaining.” Many will tell you it wasn’t until Fremont was developed in the area underneath the bridge, and businesses like Adobe and Impinj had moved in, that the city and state took notice of the issue. The phenomenon of suicide deaths around the Aurora Bridge is long-standing — the first suicide from the Aurora Bridge occurred in January 1932, a month before it was finished being built. And long before the development of business offices along that stretch of Fremont’s shipping canal, the Queen Anne boat community suffered from suicide deaths at its doorsteps. “It really was not until the development of Adobe and the land under the bridge when people who were working in those buildings saw when people went over and landed in their parking lots,” said Kathleen Southwick, executive director of Crisis Clinic. “So that was really the impetus that pushed this into being a much more political issue.” But the issue of suicide is anything but political. It is, according to Southwick, a serious public health issue. Just from Jan. 1 to Nov. 30 of 2010, jumping from the Aurora Bridge resulted in three deaths, the last one in September by a 23-year-old Renton woman, according to the Seattle Police Department. It is, in fact, second only to the Golden Gate Bridge in the total number of recorded suicide attempts in the United States. Although Washington’s reputation for high suicide rates isn’t entirely accurate (In 2007, Washington had the 23rd highest suicide rate in the nation at 13.4, compared to the national average of 11.5. Alaska was No. 1 at 21.8), in King County between 1998 and 2007 there were more deaths by suicide than homicide and car accidents combined, according to the King County Medical Examiner’s Office. The Crisis Clinic’s crisis-intervention phone line handles between 80,000 and 90,000 calls a year, and of those approximately 6,000 are suicide calls. In December of 2006, about the time Seattle FRIENDS started searching for their own solution, six phones were installed on the Aurora Bridge that call 911 or the Crisis Clinic. This was the measured response of the Seattle Department of Transportation to the disturbingly high count of suicides in the preceding years, which peaked in 2005. One of these suicides was by 15-year-old Maren DeVries in May 2006, the youngest recorded suicide from the bridge, according to friend Rachel Izzo. Izzo, a cheerful, athletic Seattle University junior, played soccer with DeVries when she was a sophomore in high school. It was a year later at a memorial for DeVries near the spot of her death that she was approached by Seattle FRIENDS to join the suicide-prevention cause. Eager to help, she quickly joined. “Suicide in general is awful; it’s hard to deal with … but when it’s public, like off a bridge, it’s different because it deeply affects more than just the family and friends,” Izzo said. “Even if it’s just five lives that are lost here every year, those five lives affect everyone in this community.” Wallingford resident and teacher Scobie Puchtler lives in walking distance of the bridge, and he’s intimately familiar with suicide. His father shot himself two and a half years ago, and he is currently a member of Crisis Clinic’s Survivors of Suicide support group. “[The fence] makes a ton of sense to me — it’s important for so many reasons,” Puchtler said. “But it’s important to me as a last step because when you think about suicide prevention, that is the last minute in a process that could have started years and years before.” |
 Heath Rainwater, a firefighter, pastor, and organizer of the Take Back the Bridge Project, stands at the spot where he watched a man jump to his death. “I’m underneath the bridge as a firefighter, even though I’m a pastor, and I’m looking at a young man who is on top of the bridge. I couldn’t hear him but you could see that he was extremely distraught. He was going back and forth, and when the police negotiators were talking to him, whatever they were saying to him wasn’t getting through to him. I felt grossly out of position that day and just really wished that I could be up there and have an opportunity to speak some words of love, hope and truth to get him to reconsider and know that there is some hope.” (Photo: Jesus Chavez)  Ryan Thurston, founder of Seattle FRIENDS, sits underneath the Aurora Bridge near his former employer Impinj. He talked about witnessing suicides from his work. “First one I saw, it was a routine day, I looked out the window and saw a guy face down with blood coming from his head. I thought, ‘What happened here, this doesn’t make sense.’ I thought he might have slipped and fell, but when I looked up on the bridge I saw his truck with the door open and people up on the bridge pointing down. It was pretty traumatic.” (Photo: Yuzheng Zhuang)  Scobie Putchler, a Wallingford resident and member of Crisis Clinic’s Survivors of Suicide support group, stands by a photograph of his father and remembers him learning to snowboard at the age of 60. He spoke earlier about his father’s suicide. “It’s unbelievably traumatic; it was incredibly violent; it was devastating … It starts with shock. I spent hours there waiting for the police to do their job and the coroner to come and collect his body. We were forced to stay outside. It was rainy and cold and somehow that actually felt good. It felt right somehow to be out in the cold rain. Anything else would have seemed really weird. From there everything falls apart for awhile. The effects keep coming in waves, and you don’t know what they’re going to be.” (Photo: Yuzheng Zhuang)  Rachel Izzo, a Seattle University junior and member of Seattle FRIENDS, sits below the Aurora Bridge, where her friend killed herself as a high school sophomore. She recalled how she was told before a soccer game about her friend’s suicide. “There was about three of us there — the coach, his daughter, and someone else — and he looked kind of upset about something … He sat us all down and started pacing back and forth and didn’t know how to tell us. He said that a girl had jumped off the bridge yesterday morning. I was thinking why is he telling us this, and then he said it was our teammate. We canceled our soccer game; we were all really upset. We were all crying.” (Photo: Yuzheng Zhuang)  Gavin Turner is a volunteer coordinator at Crisis Line, which answers more than 80,000 crisis calls a year. “By definition a crisis situation is one where people are feeling escalated. They are in an emotionally heightened situation; they feel that they’re alone; they feel this kind of tunnel vision; they feel like they’re out of options. They need help, and a more objective, empathetic ear to help them sort of move them through that really muddy, cloudy situation they are currently in.” (Photo: Yuzheng Zhuang) |
Michael Reading, director of crisis services at Crisis Clinic, likewise cautions against too much satisfaction with the fence. The fence will reduce, if not eliminate, suicide jumpers from one Seattle area, but the larger issue of suicide will persist, and the personal and social issues that contribute to suicidal acts will continue to fester.
“It’s that intervention in that immediate moment that’s going to save their life for that moment, but that’s not to say they won’t go complete suicide the next day, the next week, or the next year,” Reading said. “Suicide is a problem we need to address seriously in our mental health system … People are in pain in this world and our community, and they need help.”
Fenced In: The journey to prevent Aurora Bridge suicides from Sam Han on Vimeo.
This story was produced by students in the University of Washington’s Entrepreneurial Journalism course.
Read previous stories from the Student Projects:
Crime Prevention Officers Face Budget Axe, The Homeless Neighbor, Buckaroo Tavern Pours Last Drink, Recession Sparks Entrepreneurialism in Ballard, The Missing Link and Lights Out, Computer On
Learn more about the nonprofit Common Language Project
25 responses so far ↓
1 J // Feb 1, 2011 at 8:30 pm
This is such a great article. Keep up the good work!
2 Drew // Feb 1, 2011 at 9:22 pm
The new fence is about twice the size of the original fence already there. How many suicides is it preventing by requiring people to stand on the old fence (still there) and hop the same distance to get over the new fence? People that commit suicide will do it and this fence is not going to stop them. It is going to put our state further into debt to the tune of $5 million and that I am sure was before the numerous delays and cost overruns of the past year.
3 Anon // Feb 2, 2011 at 9:26 am
@Drew: I’m more worried about people who hop on the old concrete pillars, then injure themselves trying to get over the new fence. Then they sue the city for a nice chunk of change.
4 BK // Feb 2, 2011 at 9:32 am
The fence is not tall enough.
5 LDS // Feb 2, 2011 at 9:52 am
The fence is not tall enough is an understatement, what a waste of taxpayers money.
6 Heather // Feb 2, 2011 at 10:23 am
I drive by there daily and while I could certainly hop the original fence, I’d struggle to get over the addition, particularly without snagging my clothes on the top. It won’t keep everyone from doing it, but you’re going to have to be extra determined. It’ll keep those “pacers” from making a quick leap.
7 roboatse // Feb 2, 2011 at 10:26 am
a big net that funnels into a tube slide that deposits jumpers at the front door of a mental health clinic.
i should be in politics
8 Jamie // Feb 2, 2011 at 10:27 am
This is a well written and thorough article. Thank you for the different perspectives and history.
9 contraryjim // Feb 2, 2011 at 10:43 am
Laws that prohibit personal choice are an assault. One must have the right and responsibility for his/her own body/life. Bridge jumpers have been given little choice by do gooder’s getting the law to enforce their views on others.
10 Shannon // Feb 2, 2011 at 11:59 am
Really people. Who cares about the “story” behind the fence. And/or dollars spent or “views” destroyed. People’s lives will be saved. It’s been proven, most suicides by “jumping” are “spur-of-the-moment” attempts. That fence will take that “temptation” away. All that truly matters is that it will be there. Too little too late, BUT, better late than never.
In loving memory of Victor Allen Mitchell, November 5th, 2004 and Axel Denton, February 21, 2008. Boys, I love you both, miss you terribly and not a day goes by when I don’t think of you. I believe that when I am finally called home, we will meet again. You definately now have one heckuva headstone.
11 Michael JK // Feb 2, 2011 at 12:36 pm
I lost one of my friends many years ago to the bridge. He lived in Seattle and I was living in Olympia at the time of his jump. We were never quite sure why he jumped which is even more tragic. Thank you for the wonderful article on this issue.
12 Anon // Feb 2, 2011 at 12:41 pm
Really what they need to do is leave an opening over the water way. If people want to jump, they will. Let’s make it so that if they do, they land in the water and not on land…
13 Anon // Feb 2, 2011 at 1:22 pm
Now I get it. The $9 million fence which blocks the otherwise beautiful views from the bridge isn’t to physically stop suicides - which is futile even without easy access to handguns. It’s just to keep them away from the Adobe/Google campus so those guys can stare out their windows in peace.
Just like the Downtown Tunnel : public expense, public inconvenience, private profit.
14 MAXIMA // Feb 2, 2011 at 1:43 pm
We are WASTING $4+million so some workers below who are squeamish wimps will FEEL better?
That is insane.
15 Captntastic // Feb 2, 2011 at 2:33 pm
For those of you that comment about the costs associated with the addition to the bridge, you’ll change your tune when it’s your life or those of your loved ones. No, none of my loved ones have taken their lives but it takes only a minor exercise in empathy to see what it might be like if I was on the other side.
16 MAXIMA // Feb 2, 2011 at 2:37 pm
“you’ll change your tune when it’s your life or those of your loved ones”
Not a chance. Actually a “friend” of a friend did jump off that bridge to his death. Suicide is sad, yes, but trying to prevent people from doing it by spending millions is beyond stupid.
17 Drew // Feb 2, 2011 at 9:13 pm
@Captntastic If you promise me a refund after the first jumper then I will consider the cost worth it. As @Heather explains they may have to worry about clothes snags but I don’t think that will stop them
18 john // Feb 2, 2011 at 11:00 pm
I bike across that bridge quite often and the sidewalk is too narrow. Why not spend money to expand the sidewalk and encourage its use. Make it a place people WANT to go (and to enjoy the beautiful view, which is now obstructed).
19 Tim // Feb 3, 2011 at 8:27 am
“People’s lives will be saved”
Nobody’s life will be saved, you can bet Seattle will have the same number of suicides this year as next…what will happen is the rest of us won’t have to witness any jumpers. Think of it as a good way to protect our property values.
John: cycle on the Fremont bridge and Dexter ave, get off 99.
20 Melissa // Feb 3, 2011 at 2:36 pm
I drive that bridge almost every day. I’ve not found that the fence obstructs my views. It certainly doesn’t create a “tunnel”, as one comment-writer mentioned. I can’t help but point out that drivers should be watching the road anyhow.
Some feel that the fences aren’t high enough to prevent a jumper. Perhaps they’re right, but in making an atempt more difficult, it may slow someone down enough to allow for help to arrive or even make a jumper think a little more before going for it.
I’m saddened to see so many people talking about the project costs. What should it cost to save a life? Or, in the case of this bridge, one life every two and a half months? How does that cost compare to those involved when a suicide/attempt occurs? What does suicide cost the community; the cost of the emergency response, the clean up, the counseling for witnesses?
Tim may be right, the number of suicides in the city may not change, but the resulting trauma inflicted on witnesses may decrease. I, for one, don’t think that’s a bad thing.
21 fremontmimi // Feb 3, 2011 at 7:58 pm
“Nobody’s life will be saved, you can bet Seattle will have the same number of suicides this year as next.”
Um, that’s probably incorrect. In other cities that have had popular suicide bridges, the number of suicides have in fact dropped by the number of bridge suicides the year after fences were put in. The temptation presented by these suicide bridges creates certain types of suicides that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. Do the research.
22 hsofia // Feb 16, 2011 at 4:22 pm
This is a well-written article. Thank you so much! I am a recent transplant to Seattle (Fremont), and this is excellent background.
23 Andrea // Feb 17, 2011 at 1:34 pm
This month will mark the 28th anniversary of my brother’s death. He jumped from the bridge as a teenager in 1983. My heart goes out to all the people who suffer from depression and thoughts of suicide. I pray that this new fence will give people a second chance…perhaps a moment to rethink their actions.
24 Tom // Feb 28, 2011 at 4:05 pm
What an inspiring video and story (and an uninspiring series of comments below). In the grand scheme of things, do you really think on your deathbed you will think, “Ah, if only I could have had a better view driving over the bridge?” or “If only my state hadn’t spent money on a fence?” People are what matter. And we all can get sick in thought as well as body. I applaud those that put time and money into the public making a statement that their lives matter.
25 Jamie // Apr 30, 2011 at 11:03 am
With such cynical and cruel people in the world, it’s no wonder that our community struggles with suicide. A fence is not a solution, but neither are harsh words. Be kind to each other, and look for ways to show the goodness in humanity. Those who are contemplating suicide deserve all the support in the world.
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