Basejumper.com - archive

My opinion is, we should keep the incident forum for hard facts about incidents, brain storming, and just keep the memorial feelings out. Memorial post should be part of the base forum, not the incident forum. I know it is hard to get the friends to be open about what happen before and after a accident, and so many jumpers do not want to hurt those who was involved feelings, and also their trauma due to the accidents.

I want to really get to the issue about what happend, why, and how we can avoid this happen again. We are getting more jumpers coming in to the sport from other extreme sports, and these jumpers are not willing to walk the long walk, or talk the talk. What do you guys want, and how do you see the future of legal base jumping. Romsdalen and Lauterbrunnen is two places where every accident have a huge impact on the locals.

Just tink about it!

I met STEPHEN RICHARD ANDERTON parents in Romsdalen during the WBR event, and they have been travelling the walleys, looking for answers, why Stephen choosed to make that route that day. They really wanted me to continue my work for more safety, and we will keep in touch, and they want to try to help out as much as possible. Lovely parents who lost their son to early.

 
434 wrote:My opinion is, we should keep the incident forum for hard facts about incidents, brain storming, and just keep the memorial feelings out


+1

  Do you think that maybe having only cold hard facts in the incident forum makes us appear cold, hard, and un-caring towards our fellow jumpers to the media and non-jumpers that inevitably surf this site after an incident? That seems like it might only reinforce the public opinion of us as people who couldn't care less about dieing?

just a thought...

Why? When you see the tobacco warnings, the seat belt warning, drunk driving warnings, do you feel that is to harsh?

Every incident reports leaves out the feelings in any activity. We can have a memorial page for that, and the incident forum you need to be a member of the forum right?

I think it is worth it if we only can save one life. It is not possible to measure the impact the information have on each jumper, or if it at all can avoid new accidents, but I believe it can do! It can be your friend it is about, or your family greaving over you. Im sure they would apreciate this work be done by the base community. Especially I would like to see more active jumpers involved. I am still a retired jumper. Active jumpers do have more impact on the new generation than I will ever have. I am just a name on a base forum for those jumpers, nagging about safety.

The year 2002 changed me for life. Trust me, I do still have feelings, but I am maybe a bit viser, and a bit harder after knowing 33 people who have died in the sport. I know jumpers who do known more than me, and seen more than me, but we as locals is those who live here if you understand what I say.

Just the facts, and only the substantiated truth. That is what will maximize learning from accidents, which in turn educates jumpers to a higher level of knowledge. This then helps those jumpers look like they have half a clue regarding what they're doing when the public scrutinizes the sport.

this forum is far from being to busy. incident forum can and should stay for any comment. the huge mistake was made when the ''dead list'' was removed and stop to be updated.
jumpers can fool themselves about how this activity is safe by ignoring the incidents, but this will not change the fact that BASE taking away about 15 souls per year.
Knowing why they went to another space to play is good to know for sure and at the end there is solution...
One who does not like to read ''heavy'' stuff can avoid reading by not opening incident forum.

one fact for sure is correct..
There is no smart way to be killed in BASE!
It is always mistake, and source of mistakes we can do is endless!!

I agree.
Nobody should feel bad, or insensitive for wanting to discuss specific details resulting in an incident, as long as that discussion is based on factual information.

Alot of fatality reports here tend to be derailed by pure speculation , that upsets those who knew the deceased....and that brings emotions into the thread.
I don't think the incident forum should involve this speculation or these emotions....they should be somewhere else.
but
you can ,of course ,understand those who were close to the deceased or seriously injured, getting upset reading a 'strangers' guesses and speculation in lieu of fact and detail.

Ive not met a jumper yet who wouldnt want the community as a whole to benefit from any lessons learned of mistakes they make.

And thats kinda what it comes down to. Pretty much all incidents ( not all...but most) can be related to some sort of mistake...
Something , somewhere done differently from what is recommended or what current thinking suggests is 'right' to do.
No one is perfect , and most of us far from it....we all make these mistakes...all of us.
so lets discuss those 'mistakes' openly....and leave the emotional attachment to the person involved for a different thread somewhere else....whether you are supporting them , or criticising them.

Lets just discuss the cirucmstances of the incident...what happened before, what happened during, what happened after and use that as a learning experience for all our benefit.

I'd also suggest this forum should get more traffic from less 'serious' incidents.
Not all 'scary ones'that we learn valuable lessons from ,result in serious injuries or fatalities.
Sure...no one thinks it 'kewl' to share their errors, close calls....but why ?
Because someone else will ridicule...criticise us etc ?.
Again....if we choose to leave the emotion aside and comment on the facts and the technical....I'm sure we all will benefit.

Who will actually really know what happen? There can be termals, wave winds, shadows, gear fail, rock drops, etc etc. As long we do brain storm actual accidents, we will be aware of more mistakes, fails that can led up to an accident.

Lets stop being nice, and careful about feelings, we are talking about life or/and dead!

There is families who care out there, and I know some of them dont mind at all being a bit on the target, since they will continue to ask themselves what happen to their loved ones!

Fair enough...
But
We will have less emotion involved in the thread , if we do actually look/wait for the details , the facts.....rather than posting speculation/opinions 3 hours after an incident occured....its easy to see why those close get upset in this circumstance....which derails the value of the thread.

If the circumstances of the event dictate little or no facts available...fair enough....qualified speculation is fine by me....as long as it sticks to details and is about the vent, not the 'person'

I'm sorry if this is no place for me (no-jumper) to give my opinion but I will do it anyway.
As someone who is very serious in getting in to BASE in the future I have to say that incident forum and BASE fatality list were very useful to me. Learning from other peoples mistakes should be taken very seriously. Things that interest me the most are jumpers experience level, not just number of jumps but also type of jumps, how current the jumper was and other peoples opinions on his mind set before the jump (was the jumper feeling nervouse, to confident or not confident enough?) and so on...then there are valuable lessons to be learned from accidents about gear.
People should disscuss accidents as much as possible to help improve their own safety.
Maybe a separate forum should be created where people can share their stories about a lost friend, maybe post some pictures, write what's on their hearth. That forum should be open for public, some families could find that comforting aswell...
Incident forum on other hand should be only for registered users like it is now. If someone doesnt like the "technical" approach of describing accidents he can simply ignore that forum.
Paul (if that's your name 434), I have nothing else than respect for sharing some really useful knowledge and discussing topics that most of the people are to afraid to discuss. I always find something in your posts that I try to keep in mind and remember for the future. I hope to meet you one day, I would have so many questions I think I have to start writing them down Beer is on me

I have read several threads where those involved virtually refused to provide information. they did not want people slamming their deceased friend.

it is hard for the grieving. they are thinking of the person they are missing and all the great things about them. then they must turn and post details say this great person screwed up by...

people that were at the scene might even be feeling guilty, wondering what they could do to have prevented the tragedy.

-----

on the other hand, what many view as "rumors and speculation" must be viewed as "consensus building." with NO governing body, we can't just kick the dirty work to a few individuals, trained to do the ugly work, who we trust to release the info.

those people exist in USPA, the FAA, and I bet in the Canadian and European equivalents. they don't exist in BASE (that I'm aware).

there are many fatalities where the ones with the most facts, STILL have not posted them, let alone an accident report.

then some, like JT, DID take the time to write up a report that had to be nothing but painful. still, different people will find different things to fault. I'm still NOT convinced there IS a consensus. (I have my opinion.)

others seem afraid of bad publicity. they do not want the public to see the carnage aspect of the sport. they do not know how to promote an activity filled with ugliness.

434,

The incident forum _should_ only be for the hard straight talk about incidents and save the warm fuzzies for the memorial forum.

however, basejumper.com does not have a memorial forum so Incidents is the next best thing.

Therefore I propose that basejumper.com add a memories forum to the site with the same general groundrules as the dropzone.com version.

44

 

http://www.uspa.org/...abid/81/Default.aspx

http://www.flyaboveall.com/accidents/

Report system/tools could also be useful for near accidents to. I know several near mishaps been told to me during the last 3 weeks now, could have been fatal, but lucky it was not.
http://www.sfbapa.org/content/view/24/59/

you can ,of course ,understand those who were close to the deceased or seriously injured, getting upset reading a 'strangers' guesses and speculation in lieu of fact and detail.
_________________________________________________

In many cases, for whatever reason, people involved deny 'the facts'.... For instance, in the Royal Gorge Bridge incident, people 'denied' the deceased was wearing a base rig, labelling it 'speculation'. We've seen some of the same thing in Helicopter and Balloon wingsuiting accidents, where the truth is obscured by people who think that it puts their friend in a bad light....

In the end, however, truth will come out, just too late for anyone to hear about it, or to help....

So to try and deny 'speculation' in these forums will erode their use to the point they serve no purpose.

The whole point is that being a "BASE jumper" with internet access hardly qualifies someone to perform a post accident analysis based on hearsay and second, third, or even fourth hand information. There are some people on this site who are qualified to do so, but they can, and usually do, perform this duty OUTSIDE of this venue. Ignorant speculation, even with basic facts supplied immediately after an incident does nothing to actually progress the safety of jumping, and, in my opinion has a negative effect on the activity by giving people a false sense of security (ie: "I would never do that so I'm ok...") and flatly incorrect information. The best thing to do is wait until qualified persons within the jumping world have done a full investigation and reached a qualified conclusion. Then they will post it here for the masses to read and the pointless speculation can begin. Don't think that just because an accident isn't being discussed on an online forum that it isn't being thoroughly investigated and discussed by the right people (witnesses, equipment manufacturers, expert riggers etc) via other channels. Would you expect the governing safety body of any country to post incomplete data on a forum to gain consensus about an accident from the "community" before they completed their investigation?

...and as a side note, I do check and read this page at regular intervals to obtain information for my own personal use, but I also understand if it sometimes takes a while for info to come out. Other than unprecedented massive fatal gear failure, there are very few things which would need to be posted quickly to lives. It's usually the same thing: jump within your ability level and don't f_ck up.