To reach a suicide prevention hotline, call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org.
There have been no more known deaths from the 135-foot-tall bridge connecting Hancock and Waldo counties in the year since suicide barrier fencing was installed there.
It took 19 years, several state legislative proposals and about a dozen deaths to get the curved chain-link fencing added to the sides of the Penobscot Narrows Bridge. The structure opened over the Penobscot River in 2006 to replace the aging Waldo-Hancock bridge, which was also a site of suicides and close calls.
A year after barriers went up, the two law enforcement agencies that cover the bridge said they are confident the fencing is effective; responses to people in distress there have dropped dramatically. At least one person told police they would likely have jumped if not for the fencing.
Those comments and response data obtained by the Bangor Daily News suggest the long-awaited installation is working. It comes as officials in Maine and New Hampshire are considering installing similar barriers or nets on a bridge connecting the two states over the Piscataqua River.
“It doesn’t come to mind for people anymore,” said Sen. Chip Curry, D-Waldo, of risks on the Penobscot Narrows Bridge. He introduced the 2023 bill that funded barriers there. “It’s just a much better-designed piece of infrastructure [now].”
Law enforcement coverage of the 2,120-foot span is shared between the Waldo County Sheriff’s Office and the Maine State Police. Lt. Jason Madore, who oversees the state police’s regional field troop, is confident that the barriers are working, as is Waldo County’s Chief Deputy Matthew Curtis, according to spokespeople.
The sheriff’s office responded to one call for a suicidal or suspicious person on the bridge on July 11, the only call of that type they responded to between mid-April of this year and May 1, 2025, when the barriers were going up.
That’s 11 fewer calls than the office responded to from May 2023 to the end of April 2024, and three fewer than in the year before fencing was installed, according to data obtained through a Freedom of Access Act request.
On the night of July 11, the person did not try to jump but referenced to officers that they likely would have without the fencing, Lt. Cody Laite said.
Maine State Police responded to the bridge for a possible suicidal person only once in the last year, according to spokesperson Shannon Moss. No one was there when officers arrived.
The state police responded to the bridge a handful of other times in the previous two years, some for traffic, motorist or property check issues and others to assist the sheriff’s office.
Adding barriers to the low guardrails along the bridge had been discussed since the initial design process to replace the old Waldo-Hancock Bridge began, but they weren’t included and repeated proposals to add them failed.
Fencing advocates pointed to Augusta’s Memorial Bridge, where at least 14 people jumped before fencing went up in 1983 and suicides appeared to stop completely.
“Barriers give time. They give time for someone to think, time for someone to change their mind,” said Greg Marley, a former director of the Maine chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness who advocated for prevention methods on the Penobscot Narrows Bridge.
It’s important to openly discuss concerns that someone may try to commit suicide and to not hesitate to try to get them help, according to Marley.
People can focus on a particular method in a moment of crisis, he said, but a barrier interrupts that, and studies have shown they often don’t choose another way.
Officials were initially overwhelmed by the thought of installing barriers on bridges statewide, Marley recalled, but the idea is to focus on ones that are or could be hotspots.
Over the years, skeptics of Narrows bridge barriers questioned the cost and effectiveness. They suggested changes to the view could hurt tourism, and argued barriers wouldn’t address the root of the problem.
In the meantime, four crisis hotline phones and signage were installed approaching both ends of the bridge in 2015.
But the phones were out of order at the time of at least one death, leading to replacements in 2021. Mental health advocates said the phones were not proving effective even when they did work.
The Maine Department of Transportation removed the hotline phones in mid-July, according to a spokesperson. Two signs advertising the crisis line phone number remain.
The line is coordinated by the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, which did not respond to a request for call data; it’s unclear if call records were kept.
Meanwhile, after its completion, the bridge attracted more people in crisis until political will toward adding barriers began to shift.
Curry’s 2023 bill passed for a $2 million fencing project, using $1.2 million in state funds and a federal contribution.
He said he introduced it after a call about a “harrowing” night members of the Prospect Fire Department spent trying to keep someone from jumping. They were previously called to the bridge once or twice a year, and the experiences could be traumatic, he said.
Other residents shared the effects of the bridge becoming a hotspot; they knew what it meant when they heard helicopters overhead again, likely searching the river. Families who had lost loved ones also supported the proposal.
Curry hasn’t heard from constituents about the bridge in the last year, he said, and in his view the fencing seems to blend in with the rest of the structure.
Last spring, officials called for similar barriers on the Piscataqua River Bridge carrying I-95 traffic between Kittery and Portsmouth, NH after two suicides happened there, according to the Portsmouth Herald. Maine and New Hampshire recently completed a feasibility study for options.
People have also jumped from two other bridges over the Piscataqua River: the Sarah Mildred Long Bridge and the Memorial Bridge.
The last known suicide on the Penobscot Narrows Bridge happened in late 2024, when the planned barrier installation was delayed for design testing.
People who lost loved ones there were relieved to see fencing finally in place last year. Every further death was painful for surviving family members, Stephanie Cossette, a barrier advocate, previously told the BDN. Her 25-year-old son, Brandon, jumped from the bridge in 2013.
“I don’t want him forgotten, and that’s another thing with the barrier,” she said last year. “I think it means he’s not forgotten. Because of him, and others, there is this barrier.”
