European fatalities (2)

[guest]

As you probably know, Europe is nice to jump, nearly everywhere legal, nearly no legal problem (abstraction of building jumps).

I will deal only with France/Switzerland/Italy (the few I know).

This last years were definitely too much bloody.
Last year at least 4 helicopter rescues in France, 2 in Switzerland, 1 in Italy (the ones I heard).
This year, 2 deaths, 2 helicopter rescues in France, 1 in Switzerland, 2 in Italy.
What does it mean ? That we are not able to jump safe ?

The true is, if we follow this way, BASE Jumping will be illegal in those countries in less than two years. Local authorities are already putting in standby some spots. This will depend of us. And in fact it already depends of us.

As everybody, I know that this sport is a dangerous one, but I still think that some precaution have to be done to protect our sport, and to protect our spots :
- please never tell to somebody that BASE Jumping is not dangerous. First you are lying (and it’s bad), second you are forgetting all the friends you already lost.
- if you teach BASE Jumping, please do it carefully, and never forget that you are probably not a “BASE” teacher, but some parachuting stuntman and that your “student” will probably not realize it (and maybe is not ready to do stunts).
- if you sell some video, please sell it as Chronicles III footage and not as real TV ones.
- please don’t jump for you video…
- please don’t show any spot to daredevil jumper.

By the way I’m looking for some validated information about the Andrea’s death. If somebody have some, please send me it by E-mail.

Please think about your own way to jump,
Blue skies, long life.
See you over the edge.

[guest]

Hi François.

As far as I know, the last death in France was a young Base-Jumper who had only 100 plane jumps and started Base-Jump alone ... He was not very good at Base and jumped from a hard place (cliff with not vertical walls). He had a bad position on exit which induced a front loop, then he hit the wall and was killed in front of many tourists ...

The helicopter rescue I've seen on french "Real TV" clone was for an american women last summer. She didn't seem at ease but she decided to jump anyway. She jumped in a good position but pulled too early (after 3 sec instead of 7-9 sec on this spot), then a slow opening off-heading and she hit the wall. She didn't do anything to avoid or to resorb that. So french rescuers was called with helicopter and all the stuff ... Fortunately she had "only" a broken leg ...

I don't know anything about the other fatalities, but those ones was due to inexperienced jumpers or unknown places.