The Life-Saving Lab turns the history of Wood Island's surfmen and today's open safety data — bridges, rescues, storms — into a living research and action network anyone can read, question, and join.
The Lab starts from documented fact: a 118-year-old rescue tradition on one side of the harbor, and a currently unresolved safety gap on the bridges that cross it.
Built for the US Life-Saving Service at the mouth of the Piscataqua River. Its surfmen carried out nearly 70 major rescues, saving hundreds of mariners over 40 years of active service.
Source: EPA Brownfields, Wood Island success storyThree deaths by suicide in under two weeks on the bridges linking Portsmouth, NH and Kittery, ME led to new 988 crisis-line signage and growing calls for physical barriers.
Source: NHPR, May 16, 2025Engineering consultant Stantec recommended wire-net and rod fencing options for the I-95 Piscataqua River Bridge. As of this study, Maine and New Hampshire had not committed to a design or funding.
Source: NHPR, April 9, 20266,705 search-and-rescue cases, 2,242 lives saved nationwide in fiscal year 2025 — the baseline scale of the problem the Coast Guard's mission still addresses today.
Source: USCG Office of Search and Rescue, FY2025Wood Island's station was rescued from demolition by the nonprofit WILSSA and the Town of Kittery, and now stands as a working maritime museum — a physical home for exactly the kind of public-interest safety work the Lab is built to support.
Source: EPA Brownfields, Wood Island success storyUS Life-Saving Service builds the Wood Island station at the mouth of the Piscataqua.
Station serves through WWII harbor defense, then is decommissioned as the Coast Guard consolidates across the harbor.
Town of Kittery and WILSSA restore the station from near-demolition into a maritime museum.
Bridge deaths prompt a feasibility study for safety barriers — still undecided as of April 2026.
The Life-Saving Lab forms to connect this history, this data, and this open question into one place anyone can work on.
This is the Lab's working model — an early, labeled prototype, not a finished product. Each cycle should make the next one's recommendations sharper and more verifiable.
Public records, local reports, firsthand observation — harbor, bridges, weather, incidents.
Every number traced to a cited source; illustrative estimates are labeled, never presented as fact.
Decision trees and report cards that make tradeoffs legible to officials, funders, and neighbors.
A cohort of contributors proposes, funds, or builds a concrete next step — then measures it.
This is an early-stage initiative. Nothing above describes a finished system — it describes the shape the Lab is building toward, starting with its first cohort.
The Lab is being built in the open, starting now. There's no polished intake system yet — email is the real, working front door.
Local knowledge, incident records, photos, survey responses, or domain expertise about the harbor, the bridges, or maritime safety. If you've seen something worth tracking, it belongs here.
A small group works the first real case — starting with the bridge-safety question — from data to a decision packet a real official could act on.
Questions, pushback, funding interest, or a connection worth making — Laura, Sam, and John all started this way.
Leads the museum and restoration that makes this history a living, visitable place rather than an archive.
Backed the station's restoration and recovery — the reason there's a building to point to at all.
Raised the idea that a fence on the Piscataqua Bridge could save several lives a year — the open question this Lab exists to help answer with evidence.
There's no automated intake yet — this opens an email to hello@thelifesavinglab.org with your note pre-filled. We read every message ourselves.