EDITOR’S NOTE — This is the first article in a two-part series. The second article will appear Monday.
PORT ANGELES — The Valley Creek and Tumwater Creek bridges on Eighth Street opened to traffic barely three months ago, but the spans straddling two 100-foot gorges in a heavily populated area of the city have already racked up a tragic history.
Over 22 days this spring, between April 26 and May 18, Port Angeles police foiled three separate attempted or threatened suicides and witnessed one man who leaped to his death within “about arm’s length” of an officer trying to save him.
In addition, a fifth person threatened to commit suicide on one of the bridges in December 2008, when the spans were under construction.
That compares with 14 such incidents between December 1999 and August 2007 on the spans they replaced — including seven in 2000, when the only two fatalities in that nearly eight-year period occurred, according to Port Angeles Police Department records.
That’s a small percentage of the 798 total calls that Deputy Police Chief Brian Smith said the Police Department received between December 1999 and Friday in which someone threatened, attempted or committed suicide in Port Angeles.
(Numbers on how many actually committed suicide citywide were unavailable, though Smith said he understood about 30 did so in 2000.)
But the difference is noteworthy because of the difference in the old bridges, which were built in 1936, and the new $24.6 million concrete spans.
The old bridges had 7-foot, 8-inch safety fences in central areas of the abutments over the deepest parts of the gorges they straddled, and 4-foot, 2-inch fences atop the rest of the railing.
Lack safety barriers
The new 47-foot-wide bridges lack safety barriers.
Instead, the new spans have 4-foot, 6-inch combination concrete wall-railings along their entire length.
Two months after opening — at about 3:30 a.m. on April 26 — Port Angeles resident Joshua Reynolds, 19, jumped to his death from the Valley Creek Bridge.
“When I was about arm’s length from the male, he jumped over the edge,” Officer David Arand said in his report.
Officer Andrew Heuett also fired a Taser at Reynolds that missed its mark.
Maureen and Jerry Reynolds, Joshua Reynolds’ parents, said they believe a higher fence might have saved their son’s life.
“I think it would have turned out differently if there would have been a fence,” Maureen Reynolds said in an interview.
“I knew from what they told me, they weren’t very far behind him.
“Had he had time to climb the fence, I think they would have caught up with him,” she said.
Added Jerry Reynolds:
“As far as the idea about a fence at the top, certainly it would have slowed him down.”
“It’s just common sense,” Maureen Reynolds said.
Not considered
The Public Works Department did not consider duplicating the taller safety fence that existed on the old bridges for the new spans or consider building a suicide prevention barrier of any kind, Public Works Director Glenn Cutler said.
He said he was unable to say why.
Neither City Council members nor public works considered building a suicide barrier like that erected on the old bridges.
State funding paid for the railing but would not pay for a suicide barrier, Department of Transportation spokesman Greg Phipps said.
The City Council approved the construction contract to build the bridges on April 4, 2007.
At that meeting, they considered building a higher barrier than the one there now.
It was presented to the council as “architectural railing,” according to the minutes.
But the 5-foot, 7-inch, $378,000 wrought-iron railing did have vertical bars 6 inches apart, said then-Deputy Director of Engineering Services Gary Kenworthy in an interview.
The slat design is common among suicide barriers because they are difficult to climb, Phipps said.
The iron bars were topped by sharp points.
Then-Mayor Karen Rogers did not return repeated calls for comment about the council’s 2007 decision.
Then-City Councilman Grant Munro spoke against the expenditure at that time.
“We were just trying to get the bridge done to DOT standards,” Munro said in an interview.
“It was just more architecturally pleasing. I don’t think it had anything to do with a safety perspective.”
The discussion of the railing “was largely about aesthetics,” echoed City Council member Betsy Wharton, now deputy mayor.
Council members focused on “should we spend extra money on the more stylized railing system as planned, despite the higher than estimated cost?” Wharton recalled in an e-mail to Peninsula Daily News.
“We decided to stay within budget and build a basic bridge. . . . I do not believe that we can or should try to fence out danger. We could spend the rest of our lives building fences, only to find someone climbing over them.”
City Manager Kent Myers defended the design of the Tumwater and Valley Creek bridges in his May 22 “Weekly Update Report” to city employees.
The report is on the city’s Web site, www.cityofpa.us.
“The implication that the city has somehow created new opportunities for suicide attempts with the reconstruction of the new bridges is simply not accurate,” he said, telling the Web’s readers he had been interviewed by Peninsula Daily News for this story.
“This article will likely generate a lot of interest in the community,” Myers said.
In the interview, Myers said it’s unlikely the city will ever build a suicide barrier at the Eighth Street bridges.
“At this point, the bridge project is completed,” he said.
“There is not any current effort to put a fence at that location. We looked at the numbers prior to construction of the bridge and the fact that there has been a history of suicide attempts at the old bridges that included a high fence.”
He said he’s received one e-mail and “maybe one phone call” from citizens concerned about the lack of suicide barriers on the new spans.
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ON MONDAY — Suicide prevention barriers on bridges work, say and suicide experts and the state Department of Transportation, but they can be expensive, and the state does not pay for them.
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Staff writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
