PORT ANGELES — Construction cameras that were removed in 2009 from the two Eighth Street bridges could have revealed the circumstances surrounding the death last week of 76-year-old Daisy Ann Shortess, Deputy Police Chief Brian Smith said Monday.
There are no plans to install cameras on the bridges.
A city worker found the west Port Angeles resident’s body under the south viewpoint of the 100-foot-tall Tumwater truck route span at about 8:15 a.m. March 3.
Shortess fell to her death in what police said was an apparent suicide about five blocks from where she lived.
“Obviously, any opportunity we have to get information in real time or after the fact helps us in all sorts of ways,” Smith said Monday.
“It goes without saying that if we could film something happening in real time versus having to reconstruct events through people remembering and circumstantial information, that we would have to pick having the most accurate telling of the story.”
Police later found a suicide note on Shortess’ kitchen table.
The original spans were built in 1936 and replaced in a $24.6 million project that saw them reopened in February 2009.
Temporary construction cameras that chronicled the project’s progress remained on the bridge and its companion span over the Valley Creek gorge for several months after the spans were reopened, Public Works Director Craig Fulton said.
But the cameras were not compliant with regulations concerning mountings and power that are required of permanent camera systems, Smith said.
They were installed by Lacey-based Exeltech Consulting Inc., the project manager.
“They are becoming more and more common just to keep track of projects,” Fulton said.
Before their removal, one of the cameras recorded the first of four suicides that have occurred there since the bridge replacement project was completed six years ago.
The video showed a man talking to police before he vaulted to his death over the Valley Creek bridge’s 4-foot, 6-inch sidewalk barrier.
Installing a permanent camera system on the Eighth Street bridges would have required expenditures for a server, software and maintenance that the city was not prepared to incur, Smith said.
He compared the effort it would take to installation of the city’s $237,000 waterfront security system, which is comprised of more than two dozen cameras.
Seventy-five percent of that project was funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The city had considered mounting a single camera at the top of the zig-zag walkway up the bluff at the southern end of Laurel Street, Smith said.
But that would have cost between $8,000 and $10,000, Smith said.
“It’s way more than just the cost of the camera,” he said.
“I remember a lot of conversations about railings on that bridge but I don’t remember any public advocacy about cameras being there.”
The City Council decided in 2014 not to install taller railings or fences on the bridges in an attempt to prevent suicides.
Council members instead decided in February to install suicide prevention signs containing a crisis hotline phone number.
They will be posted on the Eighth Street bridges by March 20, Fulton said Monday.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
