A man jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge on Wednesday after the San Francisco Fire Department was alerted at 5:02 p.m. to a person on the span who appeared ready to jump.
The call came from a private ambulance company already on the bridge and watching him at about 5:05 p.m., the department said in a post
from its official account.
ABC7
reported that three surfers reached him and worked to keep him afloat before a U.S. Coast Guard rescue boat arrived.
One of them was 17-year-old Colby Ralls of San Rafael, who had been out with two other surfers. They believed the man was in his 20s. Ralls said, "He was yelling help as we were paddling towards him." He also said the man had a pulse and was breathing when they reached him.
A Coast Guard lieutenant told ABC7 the surfers "provided those vital seconds in order to be able to save the person." The Coast Guard said he was in stable condition when transferred to an ambulance.
Falls from the bridge have rarely ended that way. A March 2011 SFGate account estimated that 99 percent of more than 1,500 people who had jumped since the bridge opened in 1937 died from the fall. That report also described a 17-year-old Windsor High School student who leaped at 11:15 a.m. on March 10, 2011, from the east sidewalk near the south tower and swam to shore with a surfer who went out to him. Those figures describe 2011, not the years since.
On Wednesday, the last condition officials described was the handoff: stable, and already in an ambulance.
