Woman Falls to Death off Point Fermin
4AM this morning - a 19 year old woman accompanied by her friends fell 50 feet to her death. Both the Times and the Breeze have the coverage.
Labels: development, planning, Point Fermin
life on the edge
daily musings about the oddities of san pedro, california.
7 Comments:
It was 4AM not PM. I know because the helicopter woke me up about 4:20 this morning.
Oops. My bad. Correcting post now. Thanks for noticing that.
It is impossible for me to understand the utter stupidity of not only the girl who fell, but her friends for ignoring the clear, extremely FAMOUS danger. Her so called friends helped her kill herself. Not even one brain in the whole bunch.
What an absolute waste of life.
ditto what anonymous 8:54 a.m. said.
Annie:
People fall. It happens. It doesn't make the faller stupid, or foolhardy, or anything else except really, really unlucky to have fallen while on a cliff instead of inside a combination mattress / marshmallow / fluffy-down-filled-pillow showroom.
It also does not mean that every cliff must now immediately be sealed off from all human access lest anybody ever be victimized by the evil laws of physics or probability ever again. However, it looks like the predictable calls for just sort of thing have already started: near the impromptu shrine at the park this afternoon I saw a professionally made sign with a picture of the girl who died, a reference to similar deaths in the area, and the rhetorical question "HOW MANY MORE?"
The answer to that question, of course, is "Nobody knows--just like nobody knows how many more people will drown while swimming, or have heart attacks while running, or collide with trees while skiing, or be hit by cars while walking the dog--and there's only so much you can do to make life risk-free without also making it joy-free."
I live right across the street from Sunken City. We moved there about 10 years ago. At first we were horrified by people jumping, falling, being pushed, etc., off the cliffs. We still are, but it's become a part of living there. We hear the choppers and know. Uh-oh, another one.
As a mother, my heart goes out to the family and friends of that young girl. I understand the City and County wanting to limit their liability. But I love being able to walk along the cliffs. They are a magical wild place in the middle of the city, a place to stare out across the sea and be renewed. Do we need more sign-age pointing out the obvious - that the cliffs are high? Should we blow up and level the cliffs because people could fall off? There's a lot of coast line to level if that's the case. Sadly, the sealing off of this area is already happening. Leaving it to the skunks, raccoons, parrots and enterprising teen-agers who won't be kept out.
Sealing off Sunken City won't work. There's no fence in the world that can't be cut or climbed. People just need to exercise good sense, and we as the public just have to understand that the world is not 100% safe.
Post a Comment
<< Home