Bay Bridge Jumper

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TinEar

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Anne Arundel and Queen Anne's County units responded to a jumper from the east bound span of the Bay Bridge around 1:30 a.m. Apparently, the guy drove to the center of the span, jumped from his car which was still moving, ran to the edge and over he went. He was spotted by a trucker behind him. The Transportation police notified DNR (for some reason) who then notified AA County to respond. Queen Anne's County also responded, first using their Talkgroup 1136 TAC channel. AA launched a boat (Fire Boat 61) to search but found nothing. The joint AA/QA comms were on AA County TG144 (1E).They launched from Sandy Point Park. (And gave the gate combination over the air - not a good thing.)

The Coast Guard came up on FMARS 154.28 to talk to AA County about communications at the start of the operation. I had never heard them on that freq before this.

Lots of sad events this holiday season like always. Last night we had that murder/suicide worked by AA County Eastern and a very similar event a couple of days before that in Glen Burnie. Seasonal Affective Disorder is a very powerful emotional disturbance in many people at this time of year.
 

Llwellyn

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TinEar said:
The Transportation police notified DNR (for some reason) who then notified AA County to respond.

The Coast Guard came up on FMARS 154.28 to talk to AA County about communications at the start of the operation. I had never heard them on that freq before this.

DNR has more boats, and faster boats. Chances were higher they would get someone O/L faster, so I'm sure that's the protocol for responses. When there are boat distress or boat fire calls, DNR always gets called first because they have several small and fast craft that can get into the creeks and inlets for searches if the location given by the caller is less than sparkling, as it usually is.

As far as the USCG on FMARS, they are called out on the radio net every morning and never respond, but they are listed as a primary member. USNA as well, and they also never respond. They do a daily response/equipment check around 0730 IIRC.
 

TinEar

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Llwellyn, thanks for the explanation of why DNR was called. They passed the buck right over to Anne Arundel.

Dave, no, nothing I could find. When the USCG came up on 154.28, he told AA County to have the boat/s contact him on 16 but I never heard anything there. During the operation, Queen Anne's Chief 6 asked AA's boat where the Coast Guard was monitoring and was told 22A. I scanned the whole marine band and never heard a peep out of them.

[Edit] Dave, looking back at the notes I made last night, USCG did come up on 16 right at the start of the op to announce what was happening but there were no other comms from the scene after the rescue operation got started.
 

doctordave

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I see....given the location, I'm surprised that at least one of the CG Aux boats didn't respond to assist. Interesting how limited the CG presence in many MD waterways....even further reduced w/ the closing of the Still Pond station 2-3 years ago.
 

cohenner5377

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DNR

I would assume that there is a jurisdictional issue... I wonder if DNR responded, but since AA Co is the responding jurisdiction, DNR informed them of the call and AA responded?
 

TinEar

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Perhaps DNR responded but, if so, there was no communication from them that I ran across nor did I hear the AA boat contacting a DNR boat or unit during the operation. It doesn't mean they weren't taking part, just that I didn't catch them anywhere. It was a tad difficult at first to catch it all because they came up on so many freqs at the start of the operation. We had Queen Anne's on their analog TAC freq (TG1136) where they put out the call and then on their normal fire TGs as the response took place. And, basically, the same for AA County upon their dispatch...the 1A to 1E routine. Then we had the Coast Guard early on trying to establish a communication regimen - that no one paid any attention to as they first announced the event on their Marine 16 and then F-MARS with AA. We also had minimal communications from the Bay Bridge detachment of the Transportation folks. I was limited by the number of radios I had available and the fact that there is only so much info you can process as it's hitting you from speakers in all directions.

There was one part I found a bit strange as did the Boat 61 operators. By the time the boat was in the water and starting his search for the body, the folks atop the bridge had already hauled away the jumper's car and cleared out the emergency equipment. So, Boat 61 had no reference point to start searching from. I guess the bridge detachment is so efficient at clearing out whatever is causing traffic snarls that they got ahead of the operation. They kept telling the boat that the jumper was right at mile marker 34 when he went over the side but that doesn't do a whole lot of good for the boat down below. I haven't heard or seen a word of followup in the newspaper (Baltimore Sun) about whether they ever did find the body. I don't know if the Gazette carried anything.
 

MCMD5

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<<There was one part I found a bit strange as did the Boat 61 operators. By the time the boat was in the water and starting his search for the body, the folks atop the bridge had already hauled away the jumper's car and cleared out the emergency equipment.>>

They have had so much bad publicity about lane closer's and all of the double work being done redoing the concrete work they got the lanes open as soon as they could to avoid more bad publicity.




<<I haven't heard or seen a word of followup in the newspaper (Baltimore Sun) about whether they ever did find the body. I don't know if the Gazette carried anything.>>

Seems to me I read some time ago that they were going to stop reporting jumpers to avoid more suicidal people from jumping from the bridge.
 

cohenner5377

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I agree

I agree with TinEar. Bad publicity or not, a jumper is a crime scene. You don't touch crime a crime scene until CSI is done with it... I can't imagine they were able to complete their invesitgation in such a short amount of time...
 
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