Fighting Golden Gate suicides
Steel netting on span nearly done
SAN FRANCISCO — The Golden Gate Bridge is a rare blend of form and function, one of the world’s engineering marvels. It inspires many people. Some see endless possibilities. Some just see the end.
About 2,000 people are known to have died by jumping off the bridge, which is about 200 feet above the water. The count has never been precise, and the true tally is certainly higher since not all jumps are witnessed and not all bodies are found.
Such tragedies, officials hope, are mostly in the past. Workers are nearly finished installing 3½ miles of stainless steel nets — creating what officials call a “suicide deterrent system” — strung on both sides of the bridge, end to end.
Construction cost $217 million and the system has taken longer to build than the bridge itself did.
The nets are nearly invisible from a distance, blending into the steelwork.
But they are visible to anyone standing at the rail. They hang about 20 feet down and stretch about 20 feet out. They are stitched between 369 new struts, 50 feet apart, painted International Orange like the rest of the bridge.
These are not the soft, springy nets of a circus act. They are taut, marine-grade stainless steel nets meant to withstand the Golden Gate’s combination of rain, wind, salt, and fog.
“We want the message to be that it’s going to hurt, and also jumping off the bridge is illegal,” said Denis Mulligan, the general manager of the organization that oversees the bridge.
The nets have already shown themselves to be a deterrent, but not a perfect solution.
Several people have jumped into them. Some have been rescued from there, but “a handful” had “jumped into the net and then jumped to their death,” Mulligan said.
He declined to say how many. It will take a year or two of data to fully understand the system’s effectiveness, he said.
In the decade beginning in 2011, bridge officials said, there were 335 confirmed suicides, or an average of 33.5 per year. In 2022, as the first nets were being strung, there were 22. Through October this year, as more nets have been added, there were 13.
The first confirmed suicide from the Golden Gate Bridge happened about 10 weeks after its opening in 1937. Harold Wobber, a 47-year-old World War I veteran, reportedly said, “This is as far as I go,” and jumped.
More followed — dozens a year, hundreds a decade. The unique majesty that draws tourists from all over the world made the bridge a premier destination for death.
Among reasons that someone looking to jump might choose the bridge is a near-guarantee of death (about 1 in 50 have survived) and a belief that loved ones will be spared the horror of discovering the body.
But there was always something more practical: The railing is just 4 feet high.
Almost anyone could get over it, whether after long consideration or in a moment of impulse.
That it took so much time and heartache to seriously address the issue is a source of great debate and consternation.