By Peter Fimrite, San Francisco Chronicle
People who threaten to jump off the San Francisco Bay Bridge may soon find themselves suddenly wrapped up in a manmade spider web if the California Highway Patrol gets its way.
CHP Commissioner Dwight “Spike” Helmick recommended Thursday that the agency contract with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to design and build a contraption that would snare would-be jumpers before they knew what hit them.
It was one of several ideas to speed up the process of dealing with threatened suicides on the bridge after a 13-hour standoff with a distraught, razor-toting man, whose actions a week ago caused an epic traffic jam that brought much of the Bay Area to a standstill.
The idea was contained in a glossy report that was prepared in response to the fiasco and passed out during a news conference at CHP headquarters in San Francisco. It was first floated by Bill Wattenburg, a physicist, inventor and talk show host, who was angry about the huge traffic delays and told Helmick that a “quick-deployment device” that shoots out and entangles people in a weblike cocoon could easily be developed at the lab.
“We have partnered with the CHP recently to devise a strategy to stop loaded tanker trucks, and we are in the business of doing things that have never been done before, often with materials that didn’t exist before we started,” said David Schwoegler, the Livermore lab spokesman. “This may be just such a project.”
Besides hiring Livermore lab scientists, the report recommends calling out the Special Weapons and Tactics team immediately when somebody climbs over the bridge rail, closing no more than one lane and minimizing the number of emergency vehicles, screening the incident from rubberneckers and improving communications with the media and motorists.
“We believe we can do a better job,” Helmick said. “If they (the SWAT team) were there earlier in the day, we could have pulled the trigger quicker. Those are the kinds of things we hope to get done in the future.”
Wattenburg, who still consults with the laboratory, is responsible for several projects that have helped the laboratory convert its expertise in wartime technology to civilian purposes.
He developed a device that can stop a hijacked truck in less than 100 feet, invented an all-terrain robot, and developed a technique for using flatbed railroad cars to quickly replace washed-out bridges. He also developed a technique for clearing mines with helicopters and came up with a giant snuffing mechanism that was used to put out Gulf War oil fires.
If anyone can develop a device that would trap bridge jumpers, Schwoegler said, Wattenburg can.
The incident that led to the CHP report began at 10:23 a.m. last Friday when Farhad Ajir, 38, of Roseville left his red BMW in the far left lane on the upper deck of the Bay Bridge, climbed over the bridge rail and threatened to jump.
Two lanes were immediately blocked and CHP negotiators tried to talk him down. Ajir began pacing on a pipe that runs outside the bridge rail and cut himself several times with a razor blade, according to the report.
Helmick said that at one point, Ajir’s sister was brought over to help talk him down. Meanwhile, traffic came to a standstill. Several furious motorists reportedly yelled for Ajir to jump.
Helmick said one of the two blocked lanes reopened at 4:17 p.m., but it was too late by then as thousands of commuters and fans of the Giants and A’s idled in what essentially was a huge parking lot.
The highway patrol’s Special Weapons and Tactics squad was called in at 5: 30 p.m.
At 11 p.m., Ajir lay down in a little indentation in the bridge, and three SWAT team members quickly rappelled down and grabbed him. Bleeding profusely, Ajir fought to jump over the side and at one point allegedly attempted to unbuckle a SWAT team member’s harness. He was subdued after being shot by a bean bag.
Ajir pleaded not guilty Wednesday to four felony counts and five misdemeanors and is being held on $110,000 bail pending a mental evaluation. Helmick estimated that the whole incident cost more than $100,000 in time and expenses.
The disruption so outraged motorists that Sunne Wright McPeak, the secretary of the California Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, ordered the report.
“It is very significant when you’ve got 13 hours of motorists who can’t get where they are going,” McPeak said. “I apologize to the motoring public and Bay Area businesses for whatever inconveniences this incident caused.”