Student dies in skydiving accident
Dayton Township, USA - A 22-year-old Pennsylvania woman was killed skydiving Monday. Allison Hoffman of Allentown, a college student, was found dead in remote timber off East 1951 Road in Dayton Township. She is the eighth person to die in an accident since Skydive Chicago moved to Ottawa in 1993.
For unknown reasons, Hoffman's parachute did not inflate, La Salle County Coroner Jody Bernard said Wednesday. An autopsy was scheduled for this morning, she added. The coroner's office, La Salle County Sheriff's Department and Federal Aviation Administration are investigating the death, Bernard said.
Skydive Chicago was in the news last year when a Missoula, Mont., man died after a mid-air collision with another skydiver. The business was attempting to break the world record for the number of skydivers in a free-fall formation. Three skydivers died within three weeks of each other in 1998.
Skydive Chicago Program Director Roger Nelson could not be reached for comment.
Hoffman was a culinary student at Johnson and Wales University in Miami, Fla. She was to have graduated in December, said Alicia Medina, academics administrator. When a student dies, the university often will start a collection to help the parents with funeral costs, she said. "Usually we will wait until the parents call us," Medina said. "We don't want to intrude. We usually do take a collection to help out the parents."
Parachute team drop clanger at No 10
Tony Blair was briefing ministers in the garden of No 10 when they were interrupted by an object dropping out of the skies. It was a 22ft red and yellow paper streamer attached to a large cardboard tube - dropped by Army skydivers to test the wind speed before their jump. It reportedly landed in a minister's lap, blowing paper over Mr Blair.
Today a security probe was launched into the incident, which happened yesterday. The skydivers were the Royal Artillery's Black Knights, making a spectacular descent over the Thames, landing by the London Eye. The streamer was dropped by the jumpmaster, Sergeant Tony Goodman, and a gust of wind swept it across Whitehall. Police looked on helplessly as the colourful mass descended. A source said today: "It caused one or two twitches when it appeared above Downing Street. We are looking into any possible security implications."
The Army had no idea of the consternation they had caused. Sgt Goodman said: "As far as I was concerned everything had gone fine." Once they arrived back at Woolwich Barracks "everything went mental", he said, adding: "We got phone calls from Whitehall, Land HQ and all these high-ranking people demanding to know what we'd thrown out of the plane. Later we were told the streamer had hit Tony Blair."
A Downing Street spokesman admitted: "There was some sort of streamer in the garden. We're not prepared to say whether the Prime Minister was in the garden at the time."
Tube hits Tony at No 10
Frank O’Donnell
TONY Blair demanded an immediate inquiry yesterday after government business was temporarily paralysed by the first recorded tube strike in Downing Street.
The Prime Minister was brainstorming with ministers in the garden of No10 when he was struck by a 22ft red and yellow paper streamer ... attached to a cardboard tube.
As the serious business of running the country took a back seat, ministers found the alien object stuffed with headed notepaper from the Army’s Royal Artillery Black Knights skydiving team. A high level investigation quickly discovered the object had been tossed from a plane to test wind speed and direction.
As police looked on helplessly, a gust of wind had blown it straight over Downing Street and into the lap of power.
The six-man skydiving team - who denied it was the most carefully-orchestrated publicity stunt in history - made the leap on Wednesday to publicise a forthcoming dance and music charity show.
Clad in fancy dress, the soldiers dropped over the River Thames to land within feet of the London Eye, unaware of the government windfall.
The tube was thrown by Sergeant Tony Goodman, who said: "As far as I was concerned everything had gone fine, but apparently the streamer hit Tony Blair."
He said calls started coming in from Whitehall and Land HQ demanding to know what he had thrown.
His superior, Captain Dan Lott, said:
"We do apologise for interrupting government business but it was a legal requirement to throw out the streamer before the jump, for safety reasons. We don’t want the men ending up in the North Sea."
He added: "I’m sure that the Prime Minister has a sense of humour."
2 Skydivers injured in Batavia
BATAVIA - Two skydivers were seriously injured yesterday when their parachutes malfunctioned after they had jumped in tandem from a plane at 19,000 feet. Genesee County sheriff's deputies were not releasing the names of the man and woman pending notification of relatives. One was flown to Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, the other to Erie County Medical Center in Buffalo for broken bones and other undisclosed injuries. They were conscious upon transport, Deputy County Manager Frank Ciaccia said.
Their conditions were not available last night.
The man and woman were experienced members of a skydiving group that was participating in the Batavia Boogie, an annual skydiving event that has been held at the Genesee County Airport for years, said Ciaccia. He did not know the name of the group but said he thought they were from Orleans County.
The Batavia Boogie started Friday and was to conclude Sunday. Inclement weather postponed Sunday's events, which were held yesterday.
The accident occurred about 11:40 a.m. The skydivers were using the same parachute and free-fell about 5,000 feet, as planned, before discovering their main chute wouldn't open, Ciaccia said. They pulled the emergency chute at 10,000 feet, but it either partially opened or functioned improperly because of a tear in the chute, county officials said.
The divers landed in a field half a mile north of the airport runway, between Bank Street and State Street Road.
Members of the Genesee County sheriff's office, state police, the county emergency management coordinator and Mercy Flight -- a medical helicopter transport company -- responded within minutes, Ciaccia said.
Mercy Flight flew one patient, and a state police helicopter transported the other.
No one else was injured. A crowd of perhaps 25 people witnessed the accident, Ciaccia said.
The Federal Aviation Administration was notified and conducted an investigation.
About 20 single parachute jumps had gone off without incident yesterday before the accident. The tandem jump was the second one yesterday.
New DZ in Arizona
This is just a note to let all of you know that a new DZ has opened up in upper AZ.
Dan Bachelor has opened a new DZ in Cottonwood (close to Sedona about 1.5 hour drive from Phx). They have a Cessna 206, and the view from the plane is spectacular (snow-covered San Fran Peaks to the north, the red rocks of Sedona, and the north side of Mingus Mnt.)
The DZ is right off the regional airport, and is in town, so quick trips for food and drink are quite handy.
Skydive Cottonwood has been doing mostly tandems, but Dan would love to see more experienced jumpers show up and have some fun.
The manifest/packing area is beautiful, and there is room for several people to pack in the air conditioned building.
This is the only DZ in northern AZ so if you're anywhere near the area, stop on by and help Dan get things hopping. We can always use another DZ, and it's a beautiful location to visit.
If you would like to contact Skydive Cottonwood give Dan a call at (520) 649-8899, tell him Gordon said "Hi".
Beatles fall from the sky?
It isn't every day you see John Lennon drop out of the sky. Or Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison, for that matter. Well, the skydivers at Lisle Eyes to the Skies Balloonfest Sunday weren't actually the four mopheads from Liverpool themselves, but they looked an awful lot like them.
The Flying Beatles skydiving exhibition, complete with an American flag held by one of the "band members," was the pinnacle of a "Beatle-ful" day at the Lisle festival.
In a celebration of the true millennium this year, the Eyes to the Skies committee wanted to bring in bands commemorating every decade from the 1960s on, said co-chairman Wayne Dunham, and each day of the festival would honor a different decade. But for Sunday, they wanted something a little different.
"We thought, let's get a group that encompasses the last 50 years," Dunham said.
Who better than The Beatles?
So Dunham found three popular Beatles cover bands - "1964" ... The Tribute, British Export and Revolver - to play songs from three separate phases in the band's career.
The Flying Beatles, a skydiving group out of Ohio, were the final ingredient of the day, jumping both when the festival opened and then later on in the evening, equipped with lighted jumpsuits.
But Joe Maude of Glen Ellyn said he was a bit confused.
"They had the American flag between them," he said. "Shouldn't they have had the British flag?"
He and his wife Sue brought their 8- and 10-year-old sons - both avid Beatles fans - to the festival specifically to see the tribute bands.
"We have a 15-year-old daughter who wouldn't come because the Beatles aren't hip," he said with a laugh.
But there were hundreds of people sitting on a hill listening to the bands that thought otherwise.
"We actually had several hundred people on the hillside before we opened," Dunham said.
Tim Bedore of Naperville said he was impressed with the Eyes to the Skies music selection this year.
"I think there should be more copy bands at fests, and The Beatles are the best of the bunch," he said. "I'd rather hear this than some band from the '70s that only had a few hits."
Skydiver cheats death after chute malfunctions
Years from now, when Tonguc Yaman recounts his adventure to his children, it may go something like this:
Drove the Harley to Sussex Airport. Strapped on the parachute. Jumped out of a Cessna. Went home. Slept.
Forgive him if he fails to mention the part about the chute collapsing in a freak wind, the freefall to the ground, and the helicopter ride to the trauma center. Because for Yaman, the thrill of sky diving and the memories of 99 previous leaps from airplanes far outweigh his brush with disaster Saturday.
"I want to do it again," a slightly beat-up Yaman, 34, said from his home in Tenafly on Sunday. "Whenever my leg stops aching."
It's an attitude that his trainer, Bud Mazeiko of Skydive Sussex, explained like this: "Just because you have a car accident doesn't mean you're never going to drive again."
It's hard to believe that less than a day earlier, Yaman fell the final 30 of 10,000 feet near Sussex County Airport -- and that mere hours after he was admitted as a top-priority patient to Morristown Memorial Hospital, he headed home with little to show but some heavy-duty bruises.
The bruises will fade, for sure, but the tale will last a lifetime.
A veteran jumper for four years -- since his wife, Ute, gave him lessons as a birthday gift -- Yaman, a finance specialist, wanted to mark his 100th jump in style. On Saturday morning, he hopped on his Harley and headed to Sussex with plans to meet up with his wife and two children to celebrate afterward with a barbecue feast at a friend's house.
The 100th leap was to be his second of the day, and it started like any other. In the Cessna, Yaman and three other divers reached 10,000 feet and jumped, each with a plan to join hands, then break apart and activate their chutes.
"I approached them slowly and connected with them," Yaman recalled. "It was beautiful. I was thinking, 'Yeah! This is nice -- my 100th jump!' "
At 5,000 feet, the divers broke off as planned. Yaman dropped another 2,000 feet, getting ready to ride upwind, crosswind, and downwind to a safe landing. He pulled the cord to activate the chute.
Then came what Yaman called "a crazy wind," a freak draft from the side that struck his parachute.
"It just folded and closed. I tried to open it, tried to make it full again."
One side of the parachute ballooned, but the other remained limp. Thirty feet from the landing zone, the chute waved above him like a handkerchief, and it was far too late to deploy the backup.
As he zoomed toward earth, did he think about death?
"I wasn't thinking about emotions," Yaman said. "There is no time for those things. It is a second or a split-second, and you better get a parachute over your head."
He smacked into the landing zone, a grassy target made soft by recent rains.
"I wasn't dead, but I knew I was hurt," he recalled. "The ambulance guys came. They tried to close my mouth but I told them, 'I want to have fresh air.' "
When he next saw his wife, it was in the trauma center at Morristown, after a Medevac flight. An MRI and X-rays showed no internal injuries, and Yaman insisted on going home.
For the pain, he took exactly one aspirin.
Yaman credited his survival with hours of training with Mazeiko and the staff at Skydive Sussex, who taught him to head for a grass landing zone, and who never fly over buildings, cars, or asphalt.
All of which will be on his mind for the 101st leap.
Skydiver hits power lines
A QUEENSLAND skydiver has cheated death, sustaining only minor injuries when his parachute hit power lines.
The experienced Townsville skydiver is expected to be released from hospital tomorrow after being treated for a chipped bone in his heel.
Coral Sea Skydivers chief instructor Richard Pym said the skydiver misjudged the wind while attempting to parachute into Townsville's Bicentennial Park last night.
The man missed the park, landing across the road near an industrial bin.
Mr Pym said that during the landing the man's parachute hit power lines.
The man is believed to be a Townsville builder who had completed 130 successful parachute jumps.
Man Parachutes From Eiffel Tower
PARIS –– A French parachutist was detained after he jumped from the top of the Eiffel Tower to win a bet, police said Monday.
The 38-year-old Paris man was arrested early Sunday. He had jumped from the third and uppermost floor around 1 a.m., sailing down to land smoothly near the foot of the tower. He was immediately detained by police.
The parachutist, whose identity was not revealed, entered the tower while it was open to the public and hid after closing time.
Police had not decided whether to press charges.
The third floor of the Eiffel Tower is 940 feet above the ground. The total height of Paris' best-known landmark is 1,056 feet.
Paratroopers Injured in Jump
SYDNEY (Reuters) - For some of the best paratroopers in the United States and Australia, men used to jumping into war zones, it was supposed to be a routine night mission. But 52 of them hit the ground with a thud, breaking bones and spraining ankles during a recent joint military exercise called Tandem Thrust in the Australian state of Queensland.
A total of 39 soldiers were hurt on impact -- nine with broken bones -- and another 13 have since reported injuries such as ankle sprains, an official said.
The 381 paratroopers on the night jump came from the U.S. Army's crack Geronimo 501, the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, and Australia's rapid-deployment 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment.
But with little visibility last Saturday, the crack paratroopers did what they are trained not to do -- reach for the ground with their toes.
"Night jumping is typically more dangerous because it is difficult to see the ground," U.S. Lieutenant Colonel Bobby Campbell told Reuters on Friday.
Campbell said the conditions were perfect for the jump with little breeze, except there was no moon to light up the ground.
"The soldiers reached for the ground with their toes, something they are trained not to do," said Campbell.
Campbell said injuries were to be expected in night jumps, but they were a critical training exercise for the U.S. and Australia, citing the arc of Asian-Pacific instability to Australia's north.
"It is a capacity both the United States and Australia needs to maintain for its strategic interests in the region," he said.
Fatality at Air Capital Skydiving Center, Kansas
Geoff Peggs, Age 21, died in a skydiving accident on Friday, June 15th in Wichita, Kansas. Geoff was making his 5th or 6th jump with a Birdman suit when he exited the Cessna 182 from 11,000 feet. Witnesses on the ground observed deployment at an estimated 4,000 feet AGL. The main parachute started to spin immediately after deployment and continued until impact. The Coroner stated that the injuries sustained upon impact caused immediate death.
Two USPA S&TA;'s, in cooperation with the Sedgwick County Sheriff and Coroners office conducted the investigation at the scene. The investigation showed that the right suspension lines were routed under Geoff's right arm and wrapped tightly around his right leg. The slider was wrapped around his right foot.. The canopy, a cobalt 150, was fully deployed but with this "horsehoe" malfunction the canopy started an unrecoverable spin. The cutaway handle was unaccessible because of the way the suspension lines pressed the birdman wing against his body, totally covering the cutaway handle. It is the consensus of the two S&TA;'s investigating this incident that even if Geoff could have cut away, the suspension lines were so severely wrapped around the arms, legs, and foot that it would not have made a difference in clearing the malfunction.
The reserve was not deployed, but the reserved handle was dislodged, most likely as a result of impact.
The S&TA;'s concur in their opinion that this incident was probably the result of deploying in an unstable body position. We have no way of knowing for sure if the Birdman suit was the only contributing factor, but since Geoff was a jumper with approx 300 jumps and no history of problems prior to this incident, Geoff's limited experience with the Birdman suit was most likely a factor in creating an unstable body position at deployment, resulting in a horsehoe malfunction. Unfortunately, because of the nature of this particular situation, Geoff was left with little or no options to correct the situation.
Geoff was an INCREDIBLE guy. He seemed to fit in wherever he jumped and truly had a passion for skydiving. He was a student at Kansas State University and was planning an exciting career in aviation. He will be greatly missed by all of us.
The funeral arrangments are being handled by Downing & Lahey Mortuary in Wichita, Kansas (316) 682-4553. The funeral is scheduled for Wednesday, June 20th. Please call the mortuary for the exact time. I think the best thing we can do to show our support for Geoff's family is to attend the funeral. The family knows how much skydiving meant to Geoff. We need to show them how much Geoff meant to us.
God Speed Geoff!
Phil Haase, Owner
Air Capital Skydiving Center
Wichita, Kansas
(316)776-1700