Practice pays off for emergency crews

Published 5:00 pm Thursday, January 15, 2009

Summer drill helped local agencies respond to bridge jumper last week.

Emergency responders rarely have the luxury of a dress rehearsal.

But when a 911 call last Friday reported a man preparing to jump from the Agate Pass bridge, local first responders found themselves in a familiar situation.

Last June, Bainbridge fire and police departments and seven other agencies from the region spent a morningpracticing marine response scenarios on Agate Pass and in Kingston. The first drill conducted that day was a search and recovery mission that simulated three people jumping from the Agate Pass bridge. Mannequins made of fire hose were dropped below the bridge and allowed to drift in the tide before rescue boats waiting near Suquamish were called in to scoop them up.

The drill helped the agencies work through kinks in communication and practice recoveries in the narrow pass.

When the real call came last week, the training was put to the test, BIFD Operations Chief Luke Carpenter said.

“Everything we did (Friday) was either something we had practiced in that drill, or something that came out of our discussions afterward,” Carpenter said.

The incident began at 11 a.m. last Friday with a 911 call from a witness reporting a man climbing onto the trusses atop Agate Pass Bridge.

Police, fire and medical units took the call on the Bainbridge side while Suquamish Police and the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office responded from the peninsula.

Personnel arrived at the bridge to find the man, a 35-year-old Suquamish resident, standing on the trusses. They sealed both sides of the bridge from traffic and police officers trained in crisis negotiation made contact with the man. When negotiating with a person considering suicide, officers look for ways to connect, BIPD Deputy Chief Jon Fehlman said.

“You try to build a rapport with him, and find something that strikes a chord, and let him know that he is looking at a permanent solution to a temporary problem,” Fehlman said.

As fire, police and aid units responded to the bridge, a BIFD marine unit was launched after being trailered from the fire station on Madison Avenue to Port Madison. BIPD’s 750-horsepower SAFE Boat thundered out of Eagle Harbor and planed up the island’s coast.

North Kitsap Fire and Rescue, Suquamish Police and U.S. Coast Guard boat s were also dispatched to the pass.

On the bridge deck, negotiators spoke with the man for several minutes, but at 11:28 a.m. he jumped into the water.

Both Bainbridge emergency boats were turning the corner into Agate Pass when the man fell from the bridge, dropping roughly 100 feet before splashing into Agate Pass.

Firefighters Mike Spray and Sequoia Jones aboard Marine 21 saw the fall, but the flooding tide had tugged the man 100 yards south toward Rich Passage by the time the boat reached him. Still, Spray and Jones had no problem locating the man and hauling him on board.

It was an easy search on a bright day with little chop on the water. At night or during stormy conditions, the mission would have been far more challenging.

“Under any other circumstances you’re really searching for a needle in a haystack,” Carpenter said.

Responders had another advantage in their effort last week.

A newly-completed dock extending off the Suquamish waterfront had still been under construction in June. The drill teams had practiced taking the mannequins to the Kiana Lodge dock just south of the bridge. But organizers realized the new dock with broad walkway and easy access to Suquamish Elementary School for helicopter landings would be an ideal option for off-loading victims.

“We learned during our drill over the summer that it was going to be the place to land,” Carpenter said. “It was easy for them just to make a beeline to Suquamish.”

Within minutes, the BIFD boat delivered the man to a Bainbridge aid crew which rolled him up the ramp on a gurney and into a waiting ambulance. From there it was less than a half-mile trip to Suquamish Elementary School where an Airlift Northwest helicopter was already waiting to evacuate the victim to Harborview Medical Center.

The man was conscious during portions of the rescue and the airlift was considered precautionary. He has since been released from the hospital.

Thanks, at least in part, to lessons learned in a fortuitous day of summer training, a tragedy was averted.

“It was the classic example of a drill paying off,” Carpenter said.