Posted on 04/21/2021 1:19:12 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Yet another skydiver has died at the Skydive Lodi Parachute Center.
The skydiving school in San Joaquin County is now the site of 22 recorded deaths since opening in 1981. Nine of those deaths have occurred since 2016, according to the FAA.
The woman, identified as 57-year-old Sabrina Call of Watsonville by the San Joaquin County coroner, died on Saturday afternoon, officials said. A parachutist who jumped with her called the sheriff's office reporting that the victim's parachute became tangled.
"We're sad, but it's just like a car wreck or anything else. You have to go on," owner Bill Dause, who was ordered to pay $40 million in March in connection with a previous fatality at his center, told KCRA Monday.
The sheriff's office said that the woman was a "very experienced" skydiver.
"What was reported to us from someone who witnessed the [incident]… was that the chute failed to fully open as she was coming down and it was heavily tangled around her," the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office said.
The FAA is investigating, but said their investigations are limited to inspections of the parachute rigging.
"Federal Aviation Administration investigations of skydiving events are limited to inspecting the parachute rigging. The FAA does not investigate to determine the cause of the event,” they said in a statement.
This accident comes one month after the parachute center was ordered to pay $40 million in connection with a deadly jump there five years ago.
On Aug. 6, 2016, Tyler Turner, an 18-year-old from Los Banos who had just graduated high school with a 4.3 grade point average, went skydiving for the first time to celebrate a friend's birthday.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
I wonder if there was (helmet) video, from the victim or other parachutists.
I’d like to know how well she was packing her chute, getting casual can kill you.
And I’d like to know her position in the air when she pulled. Was she casual about that?
Once tangled in her main chute, if she could not “cut it away,” deploying the backup may not be possible.
Yes, good point.
See 20. Looks like two chutes out. Not good.
Thanks; that sucks. I want to jump, but these stories scare me off (and I’m only getting older).
Our father was amazing. He fought in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam as a pilot, and went into the jungle with the Green Berets. He never, ever jumped out of his plane as long as it still had wings and a tail.
He had many favorite sayings, and one of my favorites is ‘There are only two kinds of people that jump out of airplanes, idiots, and people in the armed forces.’
Skydiving is risky. Skydivers accept the risk so they can get their thrill. If you skydive you can die.
Don’t bother. You can get plenty of thrills on youtube.
Highly recommended, but totally safe:
El Camino del Rey [High Quality]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmDhRvvs5Xw
True, same with motorcycles etc.
But with skydiving, if repetition makes you casual about safety, the risk goes WAY WAY up.
The FAA does not investigate to determine the cause of the event...
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So what is the point of the investigation if the root cause of a fatal accident is not determined?
Per diem and travel expenses?
Per diem and travel expenses?
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Yeah, that’s probably about right for most gov. “workers”.
“So what is the point of the investigation if the root cause of a fatal accident is not determined?”
Root cause was gravity, altitude, terminal velocity, and impact.
The equipment will be checked.
I had a friend whose son was an army paratrooper and during a jump he didn’t have his harness on quite tight enough and the multi buckle slid up his chest and bashed him in the mouth. With the chute deployed he landed safely but unconscious.
I would imagine that heroic dentistry was required.
Our jump instructors used to say about a safety point, “This is something you get to forgot to do only once.” I still use that phrase.
“I’d like to know how well she was packing her chute”
The article seem to indicate a contractor was the chute rigger.
California is an open state for marijuana
.
There’s a song about that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nL4aCWD-p58 starting at about 1:25
Yeah. Like forgetting to cut away the main before pulling the backup.
Where I made a few jumps in the late 70s, they had high-school kids packing main chutes at a dollar apiece. Once I knew that, I preferred to pack my own. There was some sort of licensing requirement to pack a reserve chute.
Forgetting that little procedure, just, wow. Panic and tunnel vision. I can’t imagine the buckle didn’t release, only that the buckle wasn’t tried. One of my personal top sayings, “Panic Kills”.
We didn’t pack our chutes, but military protocol is that I could hand my chute to any packer and they had to jump it. I did once, they did. I was happy.
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