Sad news from the skydiving community

Terrible. Ugh.
 
Awful that it had to happen. But I think she would have preferred that it happened while she was doing something she loved to do. RIP.
 
My very brief involvement with skydivers; they are much like us.
They continue with their activity, all the time understanding and accepting that terrible things can happen. Irrespective of age/years involvement/experience, bad things can happen. (and it is intolerable to them/us to suggest ending their activity or even making changes; they/we are very protective of this freedom)

19000+! What a ride!
 
Shepherd said:
Remarkable woman, terrible tragedy.
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She really was. I never met her, but a good friend of mine has known her for years. She pretty much took him under her wing when he showed up at the drop zone.

Needless to say, he was devastated yesterday.
 
I've never heard of this not being a jumper. Hitting the ground didn't kill her, but the 'hard opening' did while still in the air.

"(Her career included) 19,300 jumps and 324 hours of freefall time. Each skydive takes about one minute of time in freefall. She was killed when her parachute opened very hard. Several of the suspension lines snapped and the parachute spun to the ground. She was unresponsive after the opening. In past cases like this, the jumper suffered a broken neck or torn aorta from the hard opening. Parachutes are designed to open slowly, taking anywhere from 600 feet to 1,000 feet to fully inflate, gradually slowing down from the 120 mph freefall. But, if the parachute is not packed correctly, or if some other circumstances with the jumper’s body position or freefall speed come into play, the parachute can open much faster, and a large amount of force is applied to the jumper’s body."
 
BrianNC said:
I've never heard of this not being a jumper. Hitting the ground didn't kill her, but the 'hard opening' did while still in the air.
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From what my friend was telling me, the chute didn’t properly deploy, but instead of cutting it away and deploying her reserve chute, she did nothing and rode it in.

So hitting the ground probably did in fact deliver the fatal blow, but it is likely she may have been incapacitated by the initial opening.
 
Fearless Tower said:
From what my friend was telling me, the chute didn’t properly deploy, but instead of cutting it away and deploying her reserve chute, she did nothing and rode it in.

So hitting the ground probably did in fact deliver the fatal blow, but it is likely she may have been incapacitated by the initial opening.
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Yeah, she was at the least incapacitated from it because it says she was unresponsive after the opening. I didn't realize though that one can be killed before they hit the ground just from the chute opening so 'hard'. Never even heard of a hard opening. I was just watching a video yesterday of Flight Chops doing his first dive from 20,000 ft so this was interesting.
 
Modern parachutes are capable of opening so quick, the resulting deceleration will kill or at the very least, do serious damage. Even round parachutes can do damage if the opening is not staged correctly. Most of the packing process of a parachute is ensure a slow enough opening so that this damage does not occur.
 
Having had a parachute opening hard enough to crack a vertibrae, the impact with the ground probably did not kill her. As the article implied, the opening was likely hard enough to break her neck. At minimum it rendered her unconscious and then the impact with the ground killed her. Any opening hard enough to break suspension lines is a HARD opening. In my hard opening, I was also wearing a helmet camera. Sometime when filming I would look up to film my opening. Had I been looking up at the time of my opening, it would have broken my neck.

BSBD Carolyn Clay
 
This is terrible news. I met her and had the pleasure of flying her on a couple of weekends when I was working the DZ in Williamsburg. She was an awesome person.
 
While I only have 175 jumps, I have had a couple of very hard openings, one that nearly knocked me out. I was seeing stars and pretty much useless for 20 seconds or so till I came to my senses. I was a healthy, robust 20something year old at the time. The way a canopy is packed can really determine the speed it opens. Some canopies prefer certain methods, others different methods. All my hard openings were when using packers to pack for me. If they are not familiar with your canopy, or just miss a step from being in a hurry, hard openings can happen.

BrianNC said:
Yeah, she was at the least incapacitated from it because it says she was unresponsive after the opening. I didn't realize though that one can be killed before they hit the ground just from the chute opening so 'hard'. Never even heard of a hard opening. I was just watching a video yesterday of Flight Chops doing his first dive from 20,000 ft so this was interesting.
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I was surprised to see no mention of a cypres but maybe the long time jumpers don't believe in them.
Not that it would have changed a single thing on this jump.
Actually, the main was functioning fine after the defective opening, right? So the descent rate was normal. Scratch that thought.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
I was surprised to see no mention of a cypres but maybe the long time jumpers don't believe in them.
Not that it would have changed a single thing on this jump.
Actually, the main was functioning fine after the defective opening, right? So the descent rate was normal. Scratch that thought.
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The reports I saw say she had broken lines and spiraled to impact, do definitely not a ‘functioning fine’ main. That said a cypres still wouldn’t have helped because the spiral would not have produced enough speed to fire it.

Before other have to a Google it, an Airtec Cypres is a backup device that automatically cuts the closing loop on a jumper’s reserve pack, automatically firing the reserve. It requires a certain speed to activate and fires at a low altitude, like 700 ft. Pretty helpful if you’re unconscious in freefall.
 
Sad day for the skydiving community,may she RIP
 
BrianNC said:
I've never heard of this not being a jumper. Hitting the ground didn't kill her, but the 'hard opening' did while still in the air.

Parachutes are designed to open slowly, taking anywhere from 600 feet to 1,000 feet to fully inflate, gradually slowing down from the 120 mph freefall. But, if the parachute is not packed correctly, or if some other circumstances with the jumper’s body position or freefall speed come into play, the parachute can open much faster, and a large amount of force is applied to the jumper’s body."
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I only have one jump, a tandem. That "open slowly over 600-1000'" still happens with a bang. I remember saying "that was 1000' ?!?"
 
Best wishes to family and friends. Blue Skies.
 
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