To reach a suicide prevention hotline, call the new 988 three-digit hotline or visit suicidepreventionlifeline.org. Suicide prevention services can also be reached at 888-568-1112 or 800-273-TALK (8255).
Roughly a dozen people are believed to have died of suicide by jumping from the Penobscot Narrows Bridge since it was completed in 2006. Still, lawmakers have resisted the idea of installing suicide-prevention fencing on it — until now.
A bill to fund and add the fencing along both sides of the bridge received overwhelming support Tuesday in the Maine Senate. Earlier this month, it received similar support in a vote by the Maine House of Representatives.
The Maine Department of Transportation will use $1.2 million in state highway funds and another $800,000 in federal funding to purchase and install the fencing.
The decision comes after years of lobbying by mental health advocates and relatives of people who have died by suicide by jumping from the bridge deck, which is more than 100 feet above the Penobscot River.
In 2015 the state installed suicide hotline phones at either ends of the bridge, in the towns of Verona Island and Prospect, but more than once the phones were found to be not working.
In 2014 and again in 2017, legislators rejected the idea of putting up preventative fencing on the bridge, saying the cost would be expensive and that people with suicidal thoughts would simply find another way.
This year, advocates argued that fences can be effective deterrents. Some who urged lawmakers to support the bill pointed to the Memorial Bridge over the Kennebec River in Augusta as an example of how suicide-prevention fencing can save lives.
“In 1983, Augusta finally installed a suicide fence on the 100-foot Memorial Bridge after 14 known deaths in approximately 20 years, and there hasn’t been a single death since,” said Litchfield resident Devon McElroy, whose girlfriend Siri Norman jumped from the Penobscot Narrows Bridge in November 2021. “Research shows that most jumps are impulsive and had there been a barrier people would have been thwarted and likely not tried another attempt.”
McElroy was one of roughly a half dozen friends and relatives of Norman who testified this spring before the Legislature’s Transportation committee in favor of the fencing.
Norman’s mother, Linda Norman of Auburn, said she has learned that suicide attempts can be acts of impulse and often are not repeated.
“Crises are very intense periods of despair, but they are temporary,” Linda Norman said. “While in crisis it seems there is no way out but as it passes and people are able to think more clearly, solutions can be found. A barrier buys a person the time they need to be interrupted or deterred long enough to see a way out of crisis.”
Greg Marley, of Maine’s chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said that at least a dozen people had died since 2006 by jumping from the Penobscot Narrows Bridge. He said that despite the installation of crisis hotline phones eight years ago, they have not proven to be effective.
“There is little evidence to support that the phones have been used to any significant degree,” Marley told legislators. “With suicide losses continuing off the bridge, it is time that fencing to deter suicide is established on the bridge.”
Gov. Janet Mills is expected to sign the bill into law in the coming days, according to the governor’s office. It was not clear Thursday how long it might take MDOT to acquire and install the fencing.