SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Confusion and delays at Orlando airport after TSA agent falls to his death
An off-duty Transportation Security Administration officer fell to his death Saturday from a hotel balcony inside Florida's Orlando International Airport, officials said, sending confused travelers scattering past security checkpoints unscreened and causing flight delays.
There were varying descriptions about what happened. Orlando police said a man in his 40s jumped, in an apparent suicide, from the Hyatt Regency Hotel onto an atrium floor in the main terminal at about 9:30 a.m. ET.
TSA spokeswoman Jenny Burke identified the man as an off-duty TSA officer, and said he fell from one of the multilevel hotel's balconies, which overlooks an area where people line up for one of the airport's security checkpoints.
[...] Trista Eaden told Spectrum News 13, a CNN affiliate, that she was waiting in line for screening when she heard a loud bang. "Then I saw the TSA agents standing up, and all of a sudden they just told us to run, to just go through the screening," Eaden said. The TSA said that several passengers scattered past the security areas without screening. All passengers at gates 70 to 129 had to be rescreened, the airport said.
Also at the Orlando Sentinel.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Sunday February 03 2019, @06:57AM (10 children)
Something else about this. I have never liked this edge-of-a-cliff, sheer vertical wall building style that's everywhere. It's too attractive to those feeling suicidal. You're feeling very down about something, maybe an important test you just failed, a romantic relationship that ended with you getting dumped, your secret store of cash found and stolen, a job you were just fired from in what could well be a career ender, and here's this handy 5 story drop guarded by nothing but a low rail. Too low. Don't even have to climb over, just topple over will do it. I've seen way too many stairwells with an open center. And yeah, I've seen that kind of hotel design with the 6 story or more atrium. And how about the meme of the finance guy who just lost his fortune on Wall Street, climbing out of the window of his office high up a high rise building? If our buildings were stepped pyramids, it's be a whole lot harder to fall to your death from them.
The problems go beyond making it too easy to act on an impulse to commit suicide. In college, I lived in a 12 story dormitory, and learned to keep an eye open for falling objects. People would just drop beer bottles and other trash out their windows. It was so bad, I quit using the walkway along the side of the building, and always entered at the end.
My roommate, nicknamed Rico because he was in the ROTC, was one of the guilty parties. The day I arrived for the start of the fall semester, he was already there and eating a pizza. While I unpacked, he casually opened the window, which was hinged at the bottom, put the empty pizza box on it like it was a package going into a mailbox, and closed the window. I protested, and he told me not to worry about it. Too lazy to walk just one room over to the trash chute. What happened next was hilarious. 10 minutes later, someone hammered on our door. It was one of the RAs, the one RA in the building who happened to be a higher ranking member in the ROTC. He barked, "Rico, is this your pizza box?!?" Rico tried to deny it. Then the RA said, "it has your name and address on it", pointing to the label my roommate had obviously not considered. Ah, college stupidities, LOL. For a week he complained about all the pushups he had to do as punishment.
Some years ago, someone was killed by a beer bottle, and schools across the nation clamped down on the problem. They sealed all the windows. A stepped pyramid design could have helped greatly with that problem too.
A while ago I read an article about high bridges being so attractive to the suicidal that authorities have had to take steps. Too many people have jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge. I have heard it has netting now, to foil suicidal jumpers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by cubancigar11 on Sunday February 03 2019, @08:59AM
Blame this ideology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_follows_function [wikipedia.org] . Before it got famous, people were building beautiful buildings, adding character into their living space. Now everything is a cube, probably with a mirror instead of a wall.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 03 2019, @10:20AM (1 child)
pyramids are not good to live in, because you can't ventilate and light most of the volume properly, unless you have technology later than 1950 (and even then it's expensive).
for most of our history we couldn't do anything but build 4-5 levels straight up.
otherwise: stop fucking up people's lives, and they won't kill themselves.
vertical building solves a lot of problems with average well-being, for instance the surface footprint of cities: every decrease in height of the buildings leads to increasing distances travelled by people every day, so more cars, more pollution, more wasted time, etc.
(Score: 3, Informative) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday February 03 2019, @11:09AM
The depression that results from having a fucked up life is called Reactive Depression. That kind responds well to Psychotherapy.
The depression that results from my own Bipolar-Type Schizoaffective Disorder is called Endogenous Depression. That kind occurs for no apparent reason; simply leading The Good Life won't prevent it, nor will continuing to live The Good Life stop that depression once one experiences.
Such depression is MY NUMBER ONE SYMPTOM. I've spent quite a lot of times dwelling over how to take my own life.
For Endogenous Depression, one requires medicine.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday February 03 2019, @11:05AM (3 children)
And I came very very close to jumping on July 2008.
When I realized my ex would soon follow, instead I hospitalized myself.
It happens that the bridge authority strenuously resisted the suicide barrier for decades, as it was concerned that might discourage tourism. Then one day a young many jumped; on his way down he realized _all_ of his many problems had solutions. All but one:
He had just jumped.
One of the very few to ever survive, he want one to advocate relentlessly for the suicide barrier that really _did_ get installed.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday February 03 2019, @05:08PM (2 children)
What, was there an "exit" interview mid-flight?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 03 2019, @05:37PM
.....
Rtfp
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 03 2019, @10:09PM
Kinda.
Sorta.
It's extrapolated from the scream of "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" halfway down
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Sunday February 03 2019, @11:24AM (2 children)
Replacing skyscrapers with pyramids is a flat-out bizarre plan to reduce the frequency of suicide (and somehow this was marked insightful). Do you, by chance, have a severe fear of heights? Or maybe you're an ambulance-chasing lawyer thinking about how sweet it would be to sue anyone who built a tall building? Or maybe you just grew up in a cave/igloo and are used to non-vertical walls?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday February 03 2019, @05:13PM (1 child)
But North Korea is doing it!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryugyong_Hotel [wikipedia.org]
I was also going to complain about pyramids but I gave the comment an extreme benefit of the doubt. Maybe you could have a stepped pyramid with a fairly steep slope and it might accomplish the goal while not being totally space inefficient. Or it might just give you a bumpy death.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 04 2019, @06:20PM
Or we could mandate fall-speed-reducing awnings every third floor or so.
I mean they'll act like sails and bend the building sideways in a storm (or a normal day on a tall enough sky scraper? I think wind speeds get pretty high up there.) But an occasional sky scraper blowing over is a small price to pay to reduce suicides ...