Who cares. It's mostly Democrats up that way anyhow. I'm only interested
if this sudden surge in suicides help to make Washington a Red State.




"Harry Krause" wrote in message
...
Posted on Sun, Jan. 28, 2007

Suicide jumpers alarm Seattle office workers


The Associated Press

SEATTLE - A bridge over Seattle is becoming hazardous to the mental health
of the dot-com employees and other office workers below, who keep seeing
people jump to their deaths from the span.

Thirty-nine people over the past decade have committed suicide off the
155-foot-high Aurora Bridge - eight in 2006 alone - and counselors are
regularly brought in to help office workers deal with the shock of seeing
the leap or the bloody aftermath.

At least one woman, Sarah Edwards, drives on the left side of the street
near her office ever since a body landed on the hood of a co-worker's car.

City and state officials, meanwhile, are adding suicide-prevention signs
and telephones in hopes of reducing the death toll.

The "suicide bridge," as the half-mile span has been occasionally called
since it was built in 1931, carries as many as 45,000 vehicles a day on
one of the main north-south highways through Seattle, passing over a
narrow channel connecting Lake Washington and Lake Union.

Some jumpers hit the water; others land on the pavement or other solid
ground. Either way, they almost always die. (One person is said to have
survived after landing in the water.)

The neighborhood beneath the bridge used to be docks and warehouses, and
the suicides went largely unnoticed. But during the technology boom of the
past two decades, it morphed into a trendy area full of office buildings,
shops and restaurants, and the bodies began to fall where people could see
them.

"They end up in our parking lot," said Katie Scharer, one of Edwards'
co-workers at Cutter & Buck, a sportswear company based in the Adobe
complex. "Nobody's ever totally used to it."

- - -

Maybe a day of sunshine up there might help raise the spirits of the
jumpers?