St. Louis skydiving accident
I just read an incredibly moving article about the skydiving accident in St. Louis last year, where a plane carrying 7 people hit a power pole and crashed, killing all but one girl–Kimberley Dear of the suburbs of Melbourne. Tears were welling up by the time I reached the end of the fourth page of the article, which is the third in a series of five called the “Girl who fell to Earth.” I cannot imagine what it would be like to be in that situation, but Rob Cook, the instructor she was diving with, was truly heroic–he kept calm and saved another’s life, knowing it would cost him his own.
On a lighter note, this is old news, but I appreciated it anyway. A guy that was taping skydivers at Taupo Tandem Skydive, one of the three companies that operate at Lake Taupo in NZ, where I went skydiving, plunged to the ground after his parachute didn’t open. He thought he was going to die, but hit a blackberry bush…and lived! He suffered a broken ankle and a punctured lung, but at least he’s alive. This made me feel a lot better about the safety of the area I went skydiving–at least if your chute doesn’t open, the ground is padded (or so I’d like to think).
Tags: New Zealand, skydiving, St. Louis, Taupo, Tag Index