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Aug 28, 2023

Here’s when the Golden Gate Bridge suicide barrier may finally be completed, as people keep jumping every month

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Dayna Whitmer walks beneath a suicide deterrent system net at the Richmond Yard in Richmond, Calif., on Thursday, May 16, 2019. Her son, Mattie, who at the age of 20, jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge on November 15, 2017. Advocates have long called for a suicide net beneath the bridge. After years of delays, the project appears back on track.

A worker installs large struts for stainless steel netting to flank the Golden Gate Bridge and catch people who jump.

A press conference was held by the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District introducing a suicide deterrent system net at Richmond Yard in Richmond, Calif., on Thursday, May 16, 2019. The net will be placed 20 feet below the sidewalk, extending 20 feet out from the Golden Gate Bridge. It will prevent anyone from easily jumping into the water below.

The Golden Gate Bridge just before sunrise is seen from Marine Drive on Monday, March 9, 2020 in San Francisco, California.

The first section of a suicide net under construction beneath the northwestern edge of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Beneath the stately towers and suspension cables of the Golden Gate Bridge, engineers are building a steel net along the span's northwest corner — the product of a tireless, decades-long campaign that hit significant delays as it inched toward completion.

By the end of next year bridge staff expect to finish the $206.7 million barrier, intended to catch any disconsolate person who leaps from the rail. Comprising enough marine-grade stainless steel to cover seven football fields, the net will flank the 1.7 mile suspension bridge on both sides, its webbing gray to match the fog and the choppy water, its supports painted the same ripe-orange hue as the bridge.

Despite its life-saving potential, the project met a string of obstacles, including political opposition, design challenges in a wind-lashed marine environment, labor turnover at the lead construction contractor, and at least one lawsuit. Now, it finally appears to be on track, a hard-fought victory for those who have pressed bridge authorities for years to install a suicide barrier.

"We’re beginning to see that it's going to be completed, and we’re hoping that it will get deaths down to zero," Paul Muller, president of the nonprofit Bridge Rail Foundation said. Muller has worked for 19 years with the group that rallies for suicide deterrents, primarily focusing on the Golden Gate Bridge.

Its members are warily monitoring the construction process. Some advocates wait with apprehension even after signs of progress: As of this week, construction workers have affixed 264 of 369 orange net supports, along with 20,000 square feet of woven steel.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: Call 800-273-8255 to reach a counselor at a locally operated crisis center 24 hours a day for free.

Crisis Text Line: Text "Connect" to 741741 to reach a crisis counselor anytime, for free.

To date, more than 1,800 people have plunged to their deaths from the Golden Gate Bridge, with 21 confirmed suicides last year alone, and four suspected, though no bodies were found, according to bridge officials. Two or three people jump each month as workers scramble to finish what they hope is a permanent solution.

"In the meantime, the deaths continue," Muller said. "Honestly, the story is really outrageous. The California Highway Patrol asked (the bridge district) to resolve this in 1939," he continued, citing a campaign prompted by the first recorded deaths at the bridge, weeks after it opened.

"Since then," Muller said, "it's been back and forth, back and forth, back and forth."

Others find their frustration melting away when they glimpse the barrier, now eye-level to anyone standing at the landing below the Vista Point parking lot. Squinting at it on a recent, sparkling afternoon, some passersby smiled approvingly, while others shrugged, and one man muttered about wasted money.

"Well, it's probably a good idea," Gerard Curran of Ireland said, trudging off the bridge toward the grassy Marin hillside.

One mother of a suicide victim described feeling almost giddy when she drove to the bridge last week to see the first section of net underway.

"They can't jump — or everywhere they can jump, they just won't die," mother Kymberlyrenee Gamboa said, her voice fluttering in an interview with The Chronicle.

Gamboa's son Kyle jumped to his death in September 2013, three weeks into his senior year of high school. Two months later, she and her husband began attending board meetings of the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District, the governing body that oversees the bridge, ferries and buses linking Marin to San Francisco. At every meeting they pushed for a net, holding a picture of Kyle to convey the urgency.

Although calls for some form of suicide barrier date back to the 1950s, many plans foundered. Some were too crude, such as the idea to string barbed wire over the bridge's rails, or the concept of a fence with horizontal wires that become slack and harder to climb the higher a person goes. Critics howled from all sides, among them preservationists, neighborhood groups and others worried about marring the bridge's romantic image.

In 2014 the district's board of directors put the project out to bid, then confronted other problems: namely, the complexity of design and engineering, the challenge of hauling equipment in a briny environment 250 feet above the water, and ultimately, timelines blown by the lead contractor, Shimmick Construction Co., which shed personnel after it was acquired by global engineering firm AECOM in 2017. AECOM sold Shimmick to another company, Oroco, in late 2020.

In December, a steel supplier in Oregon sued Shimmick in San Francisco Superior Court, claiming the construction company owed at least $15 million for contract changes that required extra work and "substantially" increased the cost.

"Construction on the suicide barrier has continued throughout the pandemic, but the contractor has not been working as quickly as we would like," Golden Gate Bridge district spokesperson Paolo Cosulich-Schwartz said. "We are working with the contractor to resolve the issue and speed up construction."

Representatives from Shimmick declined to comment.

As the project stumbled along, bridge officials ramped up other interventions, adding security patrols, surveillance cameras and call boxes for people in distress. Emergency responders successfully thwarted 198 suicide attempts in 2021 and 20 this year, Cosulich-Schwartz said. Even construction workers have helped persuade people not to jump.

Through all that time, the Gamboas kept showing up to board meetings, speaking at the beginning of each one and pulling the bridge staff and policymakers through their grieving process. They have only missed two meetings since November 2013, Kymberlyrenee Gamboa said.

Watching the net grow day by day, she views its hard steel threading as a safe embrace for lost souls. Gamboa refers to the struts that hold up the net as "arms."

After Kyle died, his devastated parents and brother found a new sense of purpose by persistently calling for a barrier.

"When I could look down ... and see an arm," Gamboa said, "I was so excited."

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @rachelswan