September 2, 2022
"Why weren’t we slowing down?... Then I saw it, the parachute. Red like a warning, it whipped before me in a tangled mess. It hadn’t opened."
"I screamed at the instructor, desperate as an indescribable wave of panic consumed me. He didn’t answer and I wondered if he was even attached to me any more. I couldn’t turn my head against the velocity of the wind, I could only watch as the Earth seemed to come forwards to meet me.... The gravity of the situation dawned on me as quickly as it was pulling me down – I was about to die.
My desire to live pounded through my veins with increasing urgency and I felt fear beyond anything I had ever experienced before.... I imagined the sandwich I’d made earlier that morning waiting for me on the ground. The clothes in the washing machine that would never get a chance to dry.... I wondered what being dead would feel like; I wondered if I would know that I had died. And then I realised that the fear coursing through my body was the last thing I would ever feel.
My death was so close I could almost touch it.
3, 2, 1.
I hit the ground and the force was strong enough to alter an entire universe.
I wasn’t dead.... How could I not be dead? I wasn’t even unconscious.... then suddenly I understood.... My body was ruined. My one body. I had to live in this body for the rest of my life and I had destroyed it...."
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35 comments:
Let this be a lesson to all future nutballs who want to go parachuting out of airplanes.
There are certain thrills to stupid to contemplate seeking out in real life beyond the imagination. This lady's story is the reason that this is so.
what the? When you have a mal-function*; THAT'S WHAT The Backup Chute is FOR!
Why no mention of the backup, or why it wasn't used?
mal-function* the sky boy's i knew, always referred to this as a "function".. Don't no why.
Back in about 1994, a guy trooped into the bar; beaming and laughing.
"What's UP?" we asked. "I had my first function!!" said the guy.
I asked what that was, and he explained**. It was his 814 jump (or such). I asked how often these "functions"s took place? And he said that they were supposed to be about one in a thousand.. So his came "early", which he thought was AWESOME. I asked how reliable the backup chutes were, and he said; "oh, they're as good as a regular chute"
I quickly did the math.. 1/1000 * 1/1000 = a MILLION TO ONE CHANCE, that Both chutes would fail.
That was The Last Moment, that i EVER had ANY desire to fall out of a perfectly good airplane
he explained** detach the bad chute, by using the quick releases, and pull the back-up
so, your odds of having a double function (both chutes fail); according to the sky boys i knew, were about 5 HUNDRED times MORE likely, that your odds of winning the powerball lottery.
Why would you jump from a fully functional aircraft??
My daughter jumped out of a plane in New Zealand.
Needless to say, we didn't tell Gramma.
The training is to cut away the faulty chute and deploy backup. Did that not happen?
I knew a family that all did a jump for some kind of togetherness exercise. They were soft,overweight, out of shape. They survived but the biggest falling body broke a leg.
They weren't stupid people but...stupid is as stupid does.
Bomber crew fall out of airplanes and a few survive, but they're only men.
It took a bit of digging around:
The instructor apparently let them free fall too long. When he pulled the main chute it was just when the emergency chute automatically deployed. They tangled, wrapped around the instructors neck, so neither chute successfully deployed.
Instructor was being strangled and passed out on the way down.
I'm guessing all that canopy fluttering may have slowed them enough to survive. Maybe that thick Swiss mountain grass also cushioned a bit.
well written.
Personally, if my parachute didn't open, I wouldn't have felt terror and screamed when the chute didn't open, I would've said.. "Well, Hello Death, guess you've come early".
But then I'm not 20 anymore.
funny that we all talk about not "Jumping out of airplanes", but how many THOUSANDS are paralyzed in auto accident or slipping in the bathtub every year? We don't get an Guardian articles about not dying in a car crash, and being paralyzed because we don't want to hear about it. Much more exciting to read about plummeting to earth and your chute not opening.
on the other other hand. About '92 or so, one of the barmaids had her boyfriend show up.
He'd Just got out of the 82nd Airborne. I asked him if They still jumped?
Hooah! he said, and told me how many jumps* he'd made (i can't possibly remember). I asked him about backup chutes, and he said something about how from 800' you don't much bother with backups
jumps* One of them, was into Panama during Operation Just beCause.. So, Yeah, he was one of the two people i've met that did Combat Jumps (my 1st Cousin in Law jumped during Operation Junction City, on one of his (i think 3) tours in 'nam)
My 14-year-old son once asked me why they don't sell packed parachutes on Amazon. I told him you never trust anyone else to pack your chute. But if you're a tandem jumper (as every novice jumper is) you sort of are trusting someone else to pack your chute. And deploy it.
@john, thanks for answering my questions before I even posted them.
"Is everybody happy?" cried the Sergeant looking up,
Our Hero feebly answered "Yes," and then they stood him up;
He jumped into the icy blast, his static line unhooked,
He ain't gonna jump no more.
(CHORUS)
Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die,
Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die,
Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die,
He ain't gonna jump no more!
He counted long, he counted loud, he waited for the shock,
He felt the wind, he felt the cold, he felt the awful drop,
The silk from his reserves spilled out, and wrapped around his legs,
He ain't gonna jump no more.
(CHORUS)
The risers swung around his neck, connectors cracked his dome,
Suspension lines were tied in knots around his skinny bones;
The canopy became his shroud; he hurtled to the ground.
He ain't gonna jump no more.
(CHORUS)
The days he'd lived and loved and laughed kept running through his mind,
He thought about the girl back home, the one he'd left behind;
He thought about the medic corps, and wondered what they'd find,
He ain't gonna jump no more.
(CHORUS)
The ambulance was on the spot, the jeeps were running wild,
The medics jumped and screamed with glee, they rolled their sleeves and smiled,
For it had been a week or more since last a 'Chute had failed,
He ain't gonna jump no more.
(CHORUS)
He hit the ground, the sound was "SPLAT", his blood went spurting high;
His comrades, then were heard to say "A hell of a way to die!"
He lay there, rolling 'round in the welter of his gore,
He ain't gonna jump no more.
(CHORUS)
There was blood upon the risers, there were brains upon the chute,
Intestines were a-dangling from his paratroopers suit,
He was a mess, they picked him up, and poured him from his boots,
He ain't gonna jump no more.
Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die,
Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die,
Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die,
He ain't gonna jump no more!"
I served two tours at Fort Bragg in 1976 and 1980. Bragg is home to the 18th Airborne Corps, which includes the 82nd Airborne Division (they actually do jump out of perfectly good airplanes) and the 1st COSCOM, which is an agglomeration of support units. I was in the latter, not airborne. Many of the senior NCOs in COSCOM were former airborne guys who had been injured during training jumps. It seems that every time there was a large exercise involving several hundred jumpers, at least a few would be seriously injured. Often for life.
Walking around COSCOM and seeing how many senior NCOs were limping was enough to keep any sane person from volunteering to go airborne.
"Why would you jump from a fully functional aircraft??"
Because it's great fun. I had a Mae West once, where a line went over the canopy. You release the main, and you basically rip open the secondary chute and you push it out in front of you, unless you get tangled up in it, it will work. The secondary is smaller so you land harder.
"The gravity of the situation..."
Do tell. This Emma Carey has a way with words that she may not appreciate.
My FAA sport parachute certificate is long expired. In my log, I have four static line jumps and four free-falls, but I lost interest when I drifted almost a half mile and landed in a pasture full of incredulous beeves mooing dumbly at the flying idiot. I return to my previous interests, some of them, oddly enough, are more deadly than skydiving (a term we parachutists despise).
@Jeff, as a Vietnam-era draftee I did BCT in Fort Bragg (over a half century ago). While there I learned that two things fall out of the sky: bird shit and fools.
@Je ff, So many times I heard "Blood on the Risers" during morning PT! And believe me, C-130s, C-141s, UH-1s, UH-60s, and CH-47s are NOT perfectly good airplanes. I was glad to get out of those things. IYKYK
@Jeff, So many times I heard "Blood on the Risers" during morning PT! And believe me, C-130s, C-141s, UH-1s, UH-60s, and CH-47s are NOT perfectly good airplanes. I was glad to get out of those things. IYKYK
Why would you jump from a fully functional aircraft??
It is sort of crazy. I jumped about 20 years ago and it was amazing. The adrenaline/endorphin rush lasted for a couple of hours.
I'm thinking... No. It's like rock/mountain climbing. You're all tied in but, again, no. Or at least not more than once. Why tempt the gods?
Her writing is compelling.
Removes my desire to jump with a parachute.
I've always wanted to para-glide... over Switzerland
I mean come on - wow.
in Other News (well, the Same old Same Old)
Canadian TikTok influencer dies in skydiving accident
Tanya Pardazi died after she opened her parachute too late during her skydiving jump, the school said
But Don't Worry! it's All SAFE!! Listen up!
Skydive Toronto in Innisfil, Ontario. The skydiving school requires students to finish a day of ground training before attempting a solo dive, CTV News Toronto reported.
A DAY!! you Do NOT get safer, than A DAY!! of ground training!!
I mean, WHAT COULD GO WRONG??
But WAIT!! there's MORE!!!
"Tanya had an interest in anything that was new and adventurous,"
Pardazi's friend Melody Ozgoli told CTV. "Life was too boring for her..
Aint Gonna Jump No MORE!!!!
It's one thing to get randomly mowed down by an out-of-control car as you're just walking down the street. But it would just be so embarrassing to die (or get seriously injured) because of an elaborate and highly dangerous form of entertainment that you set up for yourself. I get that it's fun, and if it works right you're a badass, but one of the risks you're taking when you skydive is that if anything goes wrong, a lot of people are going to think you were an idiot.
Back during college I did a tandem jump one beautiful fall Saturday. Even though it was tandem, the instructor insisted on 2 hours of safety training, including how to land. He even showed us how to pack the parachute, just for our knowledge. Jumping out of that airplane one mile above the earth was the most exciting thing I have ever done in my life.
a pasture full of incredulous beeves mooing dumbly at the flying idiot
Quaestor, thanks for me first laugh of the day - right on the heels of one of my nightmare scenarios!
I used to think I wanted to try parachuting. I got over it.
It’s a different world. Fifty years ago, our history teacher was on the US parachute team, and used to show films during class. He had a half a dozen of us 10th graders jumping by the end of the year, and packing our own chutes between jumps. And none of this tandem stuff. Before our first static line jump, training consisted of basically jumping off a hay loft, landing with knees properly flexed. I’m pretty sure the thought of death or serious injury never occurred to any of us.
Also in the news this morning:
Canadian TikTok influencer dies in skydiving accident
Tanya Pardazi died after she opened her parachute too late during her skydiving jump, the school said
I was an AF C-130 Navigator in an earlier life, and called "Green Light" for hundreds of men and a few women. The Army has wind charts to use to estimate how many casualties they can expect during a jump. If the wind was too strong, the jump would be called off, but if it was the last day they could jump before losing their jump pay, the winds were never out of limits. As a Nav, I was rated on my Circular Error Accuracy, - how close the load landed to the center of the drop zone. I'd always go to the back of the plane and see who the first two people out were at each door, and ask them to hit the Point of Impact for me. Some would agree to try, and some would tell me to F off because they were going to aim for the trucks and buses that took them back to camp.
During the Panama Invasion, I was one of two lowly Captains in the HQ, MAC Command SCIF listening to the radios while the jumps were taking place. AS soon as the last C-141 reported "load clear", some Army puke got on the net and demanded an "Alibi" report - ie, how many guys did not make the jump. I quipped, "He must be building his briefing slides." General Johnson was not amused. (Several who did not were wounded and one was killed in the last aircraft once the Panamanian Defense Force started to shoot.)
We only had crew parachutes on two or three missions - there would not be a lot of time to get them on and evacuate the aircraft in an emergency, especially when flying tactical.
We were trained to work to solve the problem and keep working the problem until you either died or got out of it. If nothing else, you were busy, and it kept your mind off of the final moment of impact.
Gravity's guardian is a well-established selfish thing. However, she was informed, it was her choice, and an indispensable burden.
So there was no mention of what happened to the instructor; I imagine therefore that he died. Curious that he landed on top of her but he died. As someone above questioned, why no back up parachute?
"Canadian TikTok influencer dies in skydiving accident
Tanya Pardazi died after she opened her parachute too late during her skydiving jump, the school said"
Its hard to believe this, why would an inexperienced person not use a static line, or a barometer release system.
I parachuted in college using surplus military equipment in the mid 70's. There was a university approved club that charged you $10 per jump. I did 5 static line and 5 freefalls out of a Cessna 206. I would never have been allowed to do a freefall as first jump. I assume she jumped without properly hooking up her line and did not open the secondary, poor kid.
I assume she jumped without properly hooking up her line and did not open the secondary, poor kid.
No, read it again. She was in a tandem jump with an instructor. Commentator john (7:50!PM) did the research. The first chute failed to open properly but the instructor was too slow cutting away and when the emergency chute did its barometric release it tangled with the main chute. The tangled shrouds wrapped around the instructor’s neck and strangled him to unconsciousness.
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