Sue Story has wondered whether, if the circumstances had been different on Nov. 22, 2010, her son Jacob would still be with her.
What would have happened if Jacob’s car had run out of gas 10 miles earlier rather than when he reached the Golden Gate Bridge? Standing below bulky arms of international orange steel and a stainless steel net stretching the length of a football field on a rain-soaked Richmond construction yard on Thursday, Story again wondered what would have happened if her son had peered over the bridge railing and saw the same thing.
“Finally when they said that it was going up, I went, ‘Oh my gosh, there is going to be one time that somebody is going to look down and he’s not going to be able to jump,” Story said, her voice breaking slightly. “If my son looked down and saw that, he would have sat down and cried; never would have jumped.”
The structure on the construction yard Thursday was physical evidence that the long-awaited Golden Gate Bridge suicide barrier was taking form.
“To just be able to see this, just looking at it and touching it, it’s almost like smelling it and feeling it, just having every sense of it, it’s just beautiful,” Story said, looking at the 300-foot-long, life-size model of the barrier. “And to think of just the amount of lives this would have saved if they would have done it right from the beginning.”
The Golden Gate Bridge district began constructing the $211 million suicide barrier in August. By the end of January 2021, the district plans to have installed 3.5 miles of net encompassing a total area of about seven football fields along each side of the bridge. The barrier will be placed 20 feet below the bridge railing and stretch out 20 feet with the purpose of catching those who do decide to jump, while also serving as a deterrent for those who are considering taking their lives.
The mock-up of the barrier at the Richmond construction yard was created to allow construction crews to test the design of the barrier and to learn how to construct it. In addition to the barrier itself, construction crews are replacing the sliding maintenance platforms that run along each side of the bridge including the underside. With the bridge now carrying more equipment, construction crews also have to retrofit the bridge to stand up to strong winds that hammer it from the coast.
Sabrina Hernandez, the bridge district board president, described the barrier as another “engineering marvel” in the bridge’s history and one that may well put an end to the bridge’s darker history of suicides.
An estimated 1,700 people have died after jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge since it opened in 1937, with the first reported incident occurring just a week after its opening, according to the bridge district. Bridge district patrol Lt. Roger Elauria said an average of 31 people a year have died since 2000 by jumping from the bridge, including 27 people in 2018.
Bridge patrol officers and others were able to intervene on 187 attempts in 2018 using cameras, patrols and by monitoring social media. But Elauria says they can’t be everywhere at once.
“Everyone in our department, especially our patrol officers … cannot wait until this net is completed,” Elauria said.
Paul Muller of the Bridge Rail Foundation — a nonprofit organization dedicated to suicide prevention on the bridge — said that while the bridge’s suicide problem has garnered media attention and has been discussed for decades, real change only occurred when the families and loved ones of those lost to the bridge spoke up.
“They persisted where others could not, at every hearing, in endless media interviews, before public gatherings, speaking or silently giving witness,” Muller said.
The Gamboa family was one of the driving forces behind the suicide barrier’s construction, with Kymberlyrenee Gamboa and her husband, Manuel Gamboa Jr., attending every district board meeting since their 18-year-old son Kyle Gamboa jumped from the bridge in 2013.
“Today marks a huge milestone in our journey,” Kymberlyrenee Gamboa said Thursday, standing alongside her husband and son, Manuel Gamboa III. “The mock-up of the suicide deterrent net, after all of these years, to see and to touch a net, a net that will actually save lives on the Golden Gate Bridge, is very emotional and surreal.”
Hercules resident Dayna Whitmer’s 20-year-old son, Matthew Whitmer, is one of the individuals deemed to be a probable suicide. Since Nov. 15, 2007, Dayna Whitmer and her family haven’t had an answer about what happened to Matthew, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia at age 12. What she has is the memory of her son’s humor, his poetry, his art, his time hanging out with his friends holding LAN parties or going out to the Ocean Beach fire pits.
“He was famous for his hugs,” Whitmer said with a smile.
Seeing the mock-up barrier on Thursday, Whitmer said it’s reassuring to know that nobody else will have to feel what she and her family have felt, a feeling she said will last the rest of their lives.
But Whitmer said she and her family have found support through the Bridge Rail Foundation and speaking with others who have lost loved ones. One of the ways she and others remember are through the Names in the Sand ceremonies where she and others write the 1,300 confirmed names of those lost to the bridge onto the sands at Baker Beach during low tide.
When the tide returns, the names are washed away.
“Just how they passed away: they were there and then they were gone,” Whitmer said. “So many people have died there, and they’re forgotten. And they shouldn’t be.”
Resources: If you need help, or know someone who does, call Marin’s 24/7 suicide prevention and crisis hotline at 415-499-1100. For in-person or telephone grief counseling, call 415-499-1195.