Advocates hopeful new Golden Gate Bridge suicide barrier will save lives
San Francisco's iconic Golden Gate Bridge now has newly installed stainless-steel netting that suicide-prevention advocates hope will save lives.
Crews finally finished installing a multimillion-dollar suicide barrier along the span this week, completing a project almost 20 years in the making.
Nearly 2,000 people have plunged to their deaths since the Golden Gate Bridge opened in 1937. Kevin Hines jumped 23 years ago, but lived to tell his story.
"I ended up at the bridge ready to take my life, and I did jump off. [It's a] less than one percent chance that I survived that fall with full physical mobility intact. I shattered my T-12 lower vertebrae. I missed severing my spinal cord, but I was alive," said Hines.
He said he regretted jumping the moment his hands let go from the railing. Today, he travels around the world to share his story and the tools and techniques to survive suicidal crisis.
"Every time I'm suicidal I do two things. Number one, I find a mirror and say my thoughts don't have to become my actions. They can simply be my thoughts. They do not have to make their own rules or define what I do next," explained Hines. "And the second thing I do is turn to someone and say these four words: 'I need help now.'"
23 years after Kevin's near fatal jump, 1.7 miles of stainless-steel nets have been installed on both sides of the Golden Gate bridge. Hines and his father, along with a group of parents who lost their loved ones to suicide at the bridge, fought endlessly for some kind of prevention.
It's a bittersweet day for Dayna Whitmer, whose son jumped to his death from the Golden Gate Bridge in 2007. She believes her son would have been deterred by the nets.
"I don't think he would have tried it, because a lot of people are that focused on a method," said Whitmer. "They don't see anything else around them. And if they get to that point where they can't do it, they throw their hands up and walk away and I'm thinking that it is something he would have done."
Hines says he will continue to share his story. He says suicide is not the answer, it is the problem. And he is determined to help find more solutions.
"To people who have lost loved ones off this bridge, this means the world," said Hines. It's also bittersweet because their loved ones are never coming home, but we can save the lives of everyone who goes to that bridge going forward and that is a big deal."