By Katy Savage, Standard Staff
HARTFORD — On Thursday morning the Hartford Fire Department went to work on a routine that’s become too familiar — one it performs about twice a year.
The department created an anchor point using part of the Quechee Gorge bridge’s guardrail, sturdy enough for two rescuers to repel 168 feet to the Ottauquechee River below. They secured the body of a 31-yearold Rutland man to a sled so a specialized pulley system could lift it horizontally to the top.
It took 14 rescuers — five at the top — to pull the two others back up and some more to hold onto a braking mechanism in case something went wrong.
“It requires a lot of man power,” Interim Fire Chief Scott Cooney said.
It’s something that the fire department trains quarterly on now that gorge suicides have become almost commonplace.
“You don’t want to be good at it, but it’s something you prepare for,” Cooney said.
Police say Ryan Abraham, 31, jumped from the bridge in an apparent suicide last Wednesday evening like so many have done before him.
Jennifer Hickey-Phelps, 48, visited the bridge multiple times in 2015. She was spotted at the bridge, admitted to the hospital and returned as soon as she was released to jump one evening last June.
Punk rock star Torr Skoog, 36, drove from Massachusetts to Vermont just to kill himself in June 2013, police said. He parked his pickup truck near the gorge, left it unlocked with letters inside, and jumped.
A veteran in his 40s was talked back from the edge on a rainy October afternoon in 2014 after authorities shut down traffic for 10 minutes and called a psychologist from the White River Junction VA Medical Center.
“It’s sort of a magnet for people who want to commit suicide,” Rep. Teo Zagar said.
While Hartford emergency officials have perfected the retrieval process, almost nothing has been done to prevent would-be suicides.
A bill Rep. Teo Zagar proposed two years ago to make the Agency of Transportation responsible for prevention measures at the Quechee Gorge bridge stalled in the House.
“The countermeasures are costly,” said AOT Deputy Secretary Richard Tetreault. “We have concerns on how well they perform as well as the hazards installing and maintaining them.”
And, “You’ve got to consider the aesthetics of that view scape as well,” Tetreault said.
The gorge is a tourist attraction and there were concerns a net or a fence could take away from the scenery.
“I don’t accept that,” Zagar said.
“I think human lives are more important than tourist dollars.”
With every suicide, families in the area who have lost someone at the gorge “feel traumatized because it reopens that wound, ” Zagar said.
Every suicide personally impacts Regina Cooper.
“It’s like somebody punches you in the gut every time,” said Cooper of Hartland.
Her son, Derek Cooper died after jumping July 4, 2011. He was 21.
Cooper advocated for Zagar’s previous bill. She sent out letters and urged people to contact their state representatives but she felt like was a “lone voice” getting no traction.
“I’m just looking at fixing this bridge so that no other families have to go through what I go through whenever there’s another event,” Cooper said.
Other states have started taking suicide prevention measures at bridges after years of resistance from their transportation agencies.
In California, a $76 million steel cable net was approved for installation at the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge, to be completed in 2018. In Massachusetts, cameras and netting have been considered for the French King Bridge.
Some suicide prevention measures haven’t been effective.
Suicide hotline telephones were installed at the Tappan Zee Bridge in New York in 2008 and a year later hadn’t been used, according to the New York Times.
Zagar is re-introducing his bill this week in light of Abraham’s suicide.
“I feel some frustration because we brought this up before but we ran into a wall with AOT,” Zagar said.
The bill would mandate that the Agency of Transportation have a plan to do something at the Quechee Gorge bridge by Jan. 15, 2017 and complete it by Oct. 1, 2017. What AOT does is up to AOT.
“We would like to see prevention measures put up,” said Hartford Police Deputy Chief Braedon Vail.
He’s seen glass walls on bridges in Maryland.
“It would be great to have glass walls so you could still see but you can’t get through,” he said.
This article first appeared in the January 21, 2016 edition of the Vermont Standard.