Graham Keehn was keeping a sharp eye on the Johnson Street crossing because, well, the patio on which he was perched knocks $3 off a particularly delicious drink whenever the bridge goes up.
Sure enough, the span lifted just before 8 p.m. Friday to let a barge pass through. Hold on, said Keehn, is there a guy on the part of the bridge that was now pointing skyward?
Yes, yes there was. The guy was maybe a fifth of the way up the pedestrian-and-bike part, clinging to a railing while standing on a narrow vertical support that had become horizontal as the deck rose. “He was super-casual, drinking a beer,” Keehn said.
When the bridge dropped and the barriers reopened — the same barriers the man had squeezed past in the first place — the fellow did “a little walk of shame” into the waiting arms of a couple of cops.
Happily, the man wasn’t injured. Nor was he charged. But he was drunk and he was lucky. It wouldn’t have taken much to slip from his narrow ledge after working his way past the bridge’s safety barriers.
All of which goes to prove A) alcohol doesn’t improve judgment, and B) you can’t build barriers high enough to stop bad judgment.
“It was determined that the man bypassed the bridge safety systems and went onto the bridge after the lift sequence began,” is the way VicPD described the situation Tuesday, while simultaneously urging users to obey the bridge’s warning signals.
Apparently, this latter bit has become a problem, with some pedestrians and cyclists choosing to ignore/race the bridge’s lift alarms the same way cars in a movie chase try to beat a train to a level crossing. When others see these people flout the warnings with impunity, they follow suit. What they don’t understand is it’s no easy matter to interrupt the bridge-raising sequence once it has begun. Ships approaching the opening can’t slam on the brakes the way a driver can when someone walks into the car’s path.
Lifting the bridge is a fairly complicated process that begins with calling the fire department to let it know an emergency route will be cut, and continues with a whole array of warnings and barriers — flashing lights, clanging bells, Checkpoint Charlie-style descending arms, gates and a recorded voice repeatedly admonishing riders and walkers to go somewhere safe.
The bridge operator manually controls the arms on the pedestrian and bike baths, can use a public-address system to shoo people off those parts of the bridge and has cameras pointing in both directions (though in Friday’s case, it seems the man was invisible to one of them and far away on the other).
Fraser Work, Victoria’s director of engineering and public works, said the city takes Friday’s incident seriously and is looking for lessons to be learned. But the fact is that the drunk man made his way onto the bridge once the lift had begun.
“That could have resulted in serious injury or death,” Work said. “Anybody who chooses to bypass all these safety systems is taking a lot of risk.”
The old Blue Bridge had its hair-raising span-raising stories, too. Last year, Saanich’s Peter Reitsma told the story of being trapped aloft in 1953 when the bridge rose as he was high in its metalwork, preparing it for repainting. In those days, there were no harnesses, no scissors lifts, no cranes. He just clambered up with a blowtorch, the noise of which drowned out the alarms.
When the bridge went up, Reitsma found himself suspended in the air, held up by nothing but a steel brace across his lower back. He dropped the still-burning torch and pressed his hands against the metal plates for an eternity — 15 minutes? 20? Half an hour? — until the bridge was finally lowered. Sixty-five years later, he still didn’t like heights.
At least Reitsma’s ordeal was accidental. Others knowingly put themselves at risk and have no one else to blame. Legendary Victoria street cop Doug Bond had a story about spotting a couple engaged in a low-budget version of the Mile High Club way up in the Blue Bridge’s superstructure. Bond called up: “Haven’t you ever heard of safe sex? Get down here.” They did.
It’s a funny story because nobody got hurt. It’s not so funny when they do.
