Can you survive jumping off a bridge

A body floats because decay causes gases to form within its cavity. If that cavity is breached for any reason, the gas escapes and the body sinks.

The year-old man, who is not named at his family's request, had a history of suicide attempts. He had tried to jump off a cliff.

He tried to walk into the ocean and drown himself. He tried to drive a car into oncoming traffic. On March 31, around p. No one knows how he got there. Probably by bus or taxi. His driver's license had been suspended. He apparently had no car. He walked onto the pedestrian walkway. This was no cry for help. He didn't say anything to anyone, nor did he hesitate or stand in deep thought. A witness reported seeing the slightly built young man walk to the part of the sidewalk nearest the traffic lane, turn and face the bridge railing.

He ran across the walkway, leaped over the top and performed "a swan dive," according to the incident report. The California Highway Patrol responded. One of the officers looked over the railing. He saw a body floating about yards east of the bridge and dropped a flare. A Coast Guard boat raced to the scene, and sailors plucked him out of the water. The drill is the same every time, no matter what. Medics perform CPR until they return to the dock.

There, usually, the jumper is declared dead. The body is covered and guarded until the coroner arrives. This was David Foehner 's first jumper. He'd recently joined the Marin coroner's office after transferring from the same job in Alameda County.

There is no special protocol for bridge jumpers, but there is a checklist so that investigators look for certain things and perform certain functions. While suicide may be obvious, investigators still check for wounds or evidence that might suggest an accident or even homicide.

Foehner pulled on light-blue rubber gloves, snapping them against his wrist, and got to work. He pulled back the tarp and the man stared back, his eyes slightly open. In the damp chill, under a single bare lightbulb outside the Coast Guard boathouse, Foehner turned the body sideways.

The man wore a black T-shirt and olive-colored trousers. His shirt was up around his chest, and his pants were pulled up around his knees. He probably hit feet first. There were scrapes along his midsection. Holmes said later that they probably occurred when the Coast Guard pulled him from the water.

The only other sign of trauma was a purple discoloration covering most of his abdomen and midsection. He'd suffered massive internal hemorrhaging. As the minutes crept by, the sky darkened.

Coast Guard sailors stood nearby and watched the investigator work through his routine. The Coast Guard does not like to discuss this part of its mission. Despite The Chronicle's repeated pleas to interview the men and women who work out of Fort Baker, the Coast Guard consistently and firmly said no. On the dock, the Coast Guard sailors said little at first, watching as Foehner went about his work with a reporter present.

Later, the mood lightened and they opened up a bit. An interesting decorum prevails among the coroner's investigators and the CHP officers who investigate cases from the bridge. They meet on the road in front of the Coast Guard docks before every investigation. The CHP tells the coroner's investigator what is known about the jumper, whether the jump was witnessed and whether the person left a suicide note. They discuss whether a car was left in the parking lot, and when and where it would be checked for other evidence, such as suicide notes.

These people speak in hushed tones, but it is a common chore for them. So it is not uncommon for them to chat or gossip about the Giants , mutual friends, whatever. The casualness comes easily to people who see death regularly, but it never degenerates into disrespect. Foehner went through the man's pockets. There was a nearly empty pack of Black Djarum cigarettes, a lighter, a dollar bill. He pulled out a wallet.

Inside was his driver's license, which was a relief -- some people jump with no identification. Figuring out who they are can be difficult. Inside the wallet, black with a skull and the word "zero" stitched on the outside, Foehner found a Social Security card, a Bank of America Visa card and a medical marijuana card.

The entire process took about a half hour. Soon afterward, Anthony Villeggiante showed up in his Mercedes station wagon. Villeggiante pulled on gloves. He and Foehner unfolded a body bag and wrestled the man into it.

The zipper came up over his face. They picked him up and put him on a gurney. Villeggiante rolled the gurney to the back of the Mercedes and slid it into the back of the car. Russell and Gooch has a contract with the county, too. Marin has no morgue, so bodies go to Russell and Gooch for holding. A pathologist, also under contract with the county, performs autopsies there. And loved ones contact the mortuary to arrange for transportation or burial services. It's a dark and foreboding place after hours.

Villeggiante and Foehner wheeled the body through the doorway and parked the gurney in a room. Nearby was the embalming room, where another body lay. Crosses and Stars of David hung from the wall. Foehner completed the paperwork for the pathologist, who would examine the body the next morning. As an afterthought, Foehner rechecked the body for needle marks or other signs of drug use. There were none. And then they left. Villeggiante went home to await another body call.

Foehner went to dinner, and to start the notification process. The man had a San Francisco address, so Foehner called San Francisco police to ask if an officer could go to the home. An hour later, he got a call back. An officer had gone to the address and found the door open. No one was inside. Later, it was determined that he was from a town in Illinois. Police there were contacted, and they had the unpleasant task of telling his family that he had died.

Foehner is 32, single and lives in San Ramon. He started in law enforcement in Santa Barbara as a deputy sheriff. He later read that Alameda County had the highest pay for coroner's investigators and applied on a whim. You know, the worst day of these people's lives, I'm involved in it.

That's pretty heavy. Pam Carter is the senior coroner's investigator in Marin, and she works with cool efficiency. She's in her 40s and has been investigating dead bodies for the county for about five years. A day before taxes were due this year, she went to Fort Baker to investigate the death of Theodore Henry Milikin.

Milikin was a big guy, 6 feet and more than pounds. He was 53 when he slipped over the Golden Gate Bridge railing and dropped to his death. Some, however, just never wash up at all. Hines was extraordinarily lucky, because "the odds of surviving a jump from the bridge are roughly the same as surviving a gunshot wound to your head. This is good news, of course, for the rare survivors of such falls. There were no injuries in any of these cases to the reproductive system.

Although one woman was pregnant and in her second trimester, there was no injury to the uterus or fetus. So I was in the air, I threw my head back, my feet came around, and I landed at a degree angle. What I did do was shatter two vertebrae [in the middle of my back], and they shattered into tiny little pieces.

I felt the explosion in my stomach, the vertebrae shot right into my organs. Doctors think it might have acted somewhat like a parachute, slowing her down a bit as she approached the water. Research also indicates that protective clothing may have saved lives in similar cases. Your Ribs Will Break. He was able to fight his way to the surface of the water and then even attempted to swim to the bridge. He was finally rescued by a Coast Guard boat. The position of a person's body when they hit the water also plays a role in the chances of surviving a fall or a jump from such a height, although scientists disagree over the safest landing pose.

Hines told Euchner that he leapt off the bridge in a swan dive, but repositioned himself as he fell so that he landed as if he were about to sit in a chair. Doctors told Euchner that Hines would have smashed his spine or internal organs with even a slight change in his body position. The old theory that a relaxed body will sustain fewer injuries during a car accident can be applied to the leap-off-a-bridge scenario as well.

That flexibility can help cushion the impact on the spinal column, brain and internal organs. Even with all of the best advice in the world, surviving a dive from or even feet is highly unlikely.

So unless you're a highly trained cliff diver, don't even think about trying it for kicks.