Jason Yasuda = heroism

[JoeyRamone 0]

VERY GOOD HEADS UP MOVE....

[oldbastard 0]

what if the student/instructor were unconscious? what if they were bleeding profusely? i would surely want someone to land out with me if that were the case!

Huh... just readn' this for the first time... but wow... a tandem instructor gets a drogue chute caught around his arm/hand and waits until 3' to pull a main!!! What about the reserve... with a drouge caught around your hand/arm and most likely out of the way of a reserve... maybe you'd want to pull a reserve after fighting with it for ten thousand feet!!!! Hell... I think after two or maybe three thousand feet enough is enough....
Which makes me only assume that this Tandem I had a Cypress fire if he infact went for the main at three which would definetly explain the dual canopies out.... I hope USPA and the tandem manufacter (what was he jumping... Strong/Vector) takes a look at this... this instructor should have reacted a lot sooner... sure it is easy to say that it is no big deal now.... but the Tandem instructor is lucky he and his tandem student didn't die that day... had he reacted correctly to the situation... his student might have landed safely at the airport waving and smiling at the videoman...
You said you would provide the e-mail address of the S&TA but I didn't see it... not that anyone should go attacking this instructor... like you said what's done is done... but this is a great example of what happens when you try to fix a problem too long... instructors and jumpers alike need to train themselves to try and fix something only twice... if you can't fix it in two tries... pull your reserve... no reason to spend the rest of your life trying to fix something....
As far as the other tandem instructor goes... I don't think landing off was necessarily dangerous... so long the field wasn't a cornfield and was open and flat... but it definetely in no means was heroic... you said what if the tandem pair had been unconscious or bleeding...
well what if they had been... what would a tandem instructor with no supplies do... try to wake them... maybe wrap a jumpsuit around the wound... no better to take a bearing at where they landed and safely land your student in the landing area. I think what both instructors did shows us how necessary recurrentcy training is ...
not so much in the jumping part... but in training ourselves to not allow our emotions to cloud our judgement... I'm sure the first instructor panicked and thought he could shake the drouge free... the second probably let his concern for a fellow jumper cloud his judgement as well.... I think this serves as a good lesson... and your dropzone and the entire skydivng community alike should think about continuing training... I think a Safety day a month would be a smart thing for dropzones to provide... especially for their instructors....

Enough ranting on my part... I hope everyone involved learned from it and will never make that mistake again... now let's drink some beers!

[kelpdiver 2]

Quote

I'm fairly well trained on First Aid and I used to have some first responder certs.. but I'm next to useless with out supplies. I can do CPR and offer advice, but with out a back board and C spine I would never touch someone that could possibly have back injuries. How will manifest know what supplies are needed if they don't know the situation?

You'd instead sit and let a victim die for fear of worsening a possible back injury? If he fails the ABC check, he has only a few minutes left. Unless you expect someone else to come dashing up with that backboard, you are useless.

Has this ever been a topic for Safety Day? One of the local motorcyclist training groups has been doing a few first responder events a year with the focus on biker accidents. I've not made it, but I'm sure a big topic is when to remove or leave on the helmet. If the guy isn't breathing, it needs to come off.