Jumpers Fall For Sting Operation

POE, Calif. - With smiles of anticipation, dozens of people strolled onto a Union Pacific Railroad bridge in Feather River Canyon for an afternoon of defying death.

As they set up bungee-jumping equipment along main-line tracks 185 feet above the picturesque Feather River, no one paid much attention to a young man and his older "uncle" with a video camera. Although they, too, had paid at least $50 apiece for several jumps, they were investigators with the Butte County district attorney's office.

Suddenly, a helicopter roared up the river, blocking the east end of the bridge, and agents emerged from the tunnel at the west end.

"It was great," District Attorney Mike Ramsey said. "It was all on video. It was really quite fun."

This sting operation last Dec. 19 was just one skirmish in the ongoing "bungee war," a three-year battle pitting Union Pacific police and Butte County authorities against jumpers who have flocked from around the world to this remote arched concrete bridge.

In last winter's raid, the organizer, identified by police as Greg Campbell, then of Chico, Calif., was fined $5,000. His bungee-jumping company, Air Time, has gone out of business.

But Air Time was only one of dozens of companies that discovered

they can take in $5,000 or more for a single session at the bridge.

To protect their enterprises, the companies establish mountaintop lookouts. Some report by radio when they spot authorities, and others monitor railroad signal systems for signs of trains.

At first, police approached the site along the lone dirt road that twists down the canyon from the rim, but "by the time we got there, they were standing on public property," said John D. Lorraine, a Union Pacific senior special agent.

The companies also attempt to confuse police, authorities said, by planting bogus newspaper advertisements listing incorrect days for planned jumps while communicating the correct date by code.

Police said it probably is only a matter of time before someone is killed at the Feather River bridge. Even emergency braking would not stop a heavy freight train rumbling down the grade toward the span. Furthermore, such braking often causes a train to derail, raising the possibility of a major spill of hazardous material into the environmentally fragile river, they said.

One bungee jumper, asking not to be named because he does not want to jeopardize his state government job, said the bridge sometimes overflows with people. But police should not be surprised, he said, considering who is involved.

"People who are crazy enough to throw themselves off a bridge are certainly crazy enough to stand there on a bridge while a train is coming," he said.