Basejumper.com - archive

Anyone know who this was?

http://www.kairn.com/...ent-en-wingsuit.html

According to France 3 Alpes last night: "An American devotee of wingsuit was the victim of a parachute opening incident, Thursday, November 5, at the beginning of the afternoon His condition has required emergency hospitalization.. "

It is stated that:. "It is up to the road Moussoux in Chamonix, under the Brevent wingsuiter of the thirties was recovered by rescue His parachute did not open as he should have. The victim is a man born in the United States. With the helicopter Jackdaw 74, he was taken to hospital in Annecy. The man had flown with his "winged combination", and c is when preparing its landing he met a problem with his parachute ".

Nowhere does it say this is a FATALITY, merely an incident that required hospitalisation. I have since confirmed that this was not a fatality, the jumper in question is recovering in hospital. PLEASE amend....

My mistake

:) thanks!

Is this the jumper who now has a fundraiser to help him out?

https://www.gofundme.com/z9b3mhms


Any more info on what lead to the accident?

Indeed it is, and anyone who knows him knows the sooner he's back flying, the better for the whole flying family! Didn't know that was launched, I'll be throwin in :)
He hit hard under a partially inflated canopy with line/lines over, no silliness involved here (beyond what he's normally up to!) just crappy luck on the roll of the BASE dice, could happen (in my case has..) to anyone so wish him well and help out if you can please!
Cheers!

Just discovered the fundraiser my self, well worth posting it here and spreading the word!

Was it line over or tension knot? And if tension knot what was his canopy?

Not a line over, not a tension knot.

Brake line was looped through the tailpocket velcro, holding the slider up and pulling the tail of the canopy down so maybe 2.5 cells were inflated. Sounds crazy - looks crazy - somehow really happened.

And it happened on opening?! Not due to packing? That is nuts!

On another note: jumping without the proper insurance is not cool

I don't know, but that's the question, isn't it? Maybe packing in 5 minutes isn't quite as cool as it sounds...


To be fair it sounded like he had insurance which covered the immediate costs just not the long term treatment - which is a particularly shitty situation and hard to foresee.

That's too bad :( severe injurie, that can be a long road ahead. Hope he recovers well!

Apologies for the mistake!

Zak actually invented a new malfunction and there's something to learn about it. As a picture is worth a thousand words, here's an illustration of what happened.

Left side : a normal packjob
Right side : 2 misrouted low lines when closing the tailpocket

The effect is that the tailpocket was tangled with the misrouted lines, under the slider, keeping it locked at canopy level.

From the point of view of the packer, sitting on the canopy and looking down at the the trailing edge, the least I can say is that it's really not easy to spot.

Black lines with a black tailpocket is probably not the safest color combo. Now I imagine packing this way over a dark floor or under low light condition would make it virtually impossible to see the mistake...

And by Murphy's law, the question is not whether shit will happen or not - but when. Doing close to a thousand jumps per year is statistically quite challenging over time.

Zak had subscribed to the proper insurance, which provides a bombproof third-party liability coverage. There's as well some medical assistance covered. But it basically resumes to bringing you to a hospital which will do everything to save your life, fix your injuries and ensure you're not in a life threatening situation anymore. And then kick you out.

Now he needs to do some proper rehab to recover from his brain injuries, and this part is not covered by the insurance yet very expensive.

And - that - is really not cool.

If you hesitate helping him, just see it as an investment in extra knowledge!

As an Australian citizen living in Australia there is no company that will cover me

Judging by the black/white combo on the lines, I'm guessing that's a Squirrel canopy? I've never seen that style of tailpocket before, and I'm curious what other manufacturers make the tailpocket exactly like that. The bottom part on my BlackJack's is similar, but definitely not the exact same. Most tailpockets I've seen (usually older) are just a basic rectangle with velcro sewn on the edges.

Was Zak jumping an Ibex or Outlaw? I don't mean to attack the manufacturer, but ask about if that particular design contributed to the packing error (which I understand was not a result of carelessness) at all.

He was jumping an Outlaw. The tailpocket in the previous picture is a prototype (not that it matters concerning the malfunction).
I reproduced the malfunction on 2 other tailpockets from other manufacturers.

It's a packing mistake, calling it carelessness or not is subjective. The point was to emphasize on the fact that such an obvious mistake might become really hard to see in the proper context.

It's like slipping on the exit. You can say it happened to others because of bad luck or negligence, and fool yourself pretending you're extra careful.

I know i will slip on 1 exit over a thousand. That's just an order of scale, but pretending I'm too good to do such a bad move would be hypocritical.

I think the main problem here is that the tailpocket has a flap. Admittedly it is easier to pack the lines with the flaps, and I would suspect you get less velcro stuck to lines, which causes the lines to wear less quickly, but this might be an argument for having a traditional tailpocket. It appears to me that the flaps cause the lines to load the velcro in a shear direction. If lines were trapped that way on a traditional tailpocket, I would think it would push through the velcro, in a peeling direction. Did the two other tailpockets you reproduced it on have similar flaps?

That's correct regarding the shear vs peel force. But that's why I just got my tailpocket (with no flaps) re-done by my rigger to have flaps (like Atair tailpockets for example) - because I was getting line dump despite having new velcro.

It just seems like a packing mistake - and anyone can make mistakes. :(

This is an incidents forum, not the BSBD one. A none fatality is a incident still, and should not have hindered quick updates. why wasn't information exposed sooner? I have known Zak almost 5 years and lota of jumps together...and find out 2 weeks after the fact...

It was originally marked as a fatality, then corrected after I pointed out he's still very much alive, I just didn't delete my request for correction :)
As to why it wasn't "reported" earlier, I think most incidents that could be simply aren't if the jumper survives, unless they themselves post about it afterwards, a general failing of our community.
As I had left a few days prior, wasn't there to observe, had only second hand knowledge, I was reticent to post any details which might be inaccurate - which I eventually did anyway.. (Apologies again..)

Regardless of flap vs. No flap design, couldn't this problem be avoided by either full stitching of tail pocket onto canopy closer to the edge or at least - probably easier and more solid, but just as effective - a few well-placed stitches in the very tip of each corner, leaving much less room for lines to get stuck under?
Yes, this was essentially a packing error, but one to which we could all fall victim, and making corners of tail pockets less prone to this doesn't seem hard to do... I'll be throwing a few stitches into each bottom corner, for good measure..

Copy, thanks for the response.

The only tailpocket where this configuration is impossible to achieve is the top load tailpocket from Apex. But this tailpocket will stay locked in another faulty configuration (if you pass a stow around the previous one) - although this configuration is hard to achieve without noticing it and equally extremely unlikely to happen - it's still possible in the proper context , for example when packing too fast in the dark...

We are playing with trade-offs and there is no perfect configuration. No flaps on the tailpocket lead to premature openings and quicker wear of the velcro, as well as making the change of velcro way more complicated, while flaps increase the minimal force required to open the pocket. The manufacturer makes a choice depending on the average rate of malfunctions. The jumper customize his gear based on his type of practice and ideas.


That's exactly the point I wanted to highlight in the picture - double checking everything will always be necessary.
For improving the gear, I think contrasting the colors of lines with tailpocket would be the most effective thing to do first.
If you have a good solution for the corners, don't hesitate to post a picture here.

But on the other hand the main job of the tailpocket velcro is to stay closed through the opening sequence, and despite the fact that the flap style tailpocket has always been used on the huge numbers of Atair canopies out there no-one else has ever managed to do this before.

So while redundancy and elimination of failure modes, no matter how unlikely, is a good thing do you want to compromise the main function of the part to guard against a mistake so staggeringy rare even for the most laissez faire packers?

I feel there is some fatalism in stating this could happen when packing on a dark floor in low light. I don't see any good reason to pack under circumstance where I cannot verify the quality of my packjob.

However, I do not want to call it carelessness, I feel it is rather the logical consequence of trying not to miss out on jumps. My personal lesson learnt from this incidence therefore is to rather miss out on a jump than sacrificing the possibility to pack properly.

I haven't heard of jump numbers on tombstones, so I tend to put emphasis on the aspects of BASE surrounding the actual jumps.

Was he wearing a helmet, and if so what kind of helmet? In videos I've seen him use a carbon fiber skydive helmet (correctme if I'm wrong), which is nothing more than a fancy camera mount when it comes down to it... They offer no real protection when it comes to head trauma.

Most of the tailpockets have this design because of a result of years of experience. Try to change but be ready to meet other problems.
Here problem is human. To reduce human error in this case could be the different colors between tailpocket and lines like mentioned but most lightweight canopies already have spectra or vectran lines with black tailpockets.
Other way to reduce human error is taking more care packing your canopy, you only have one.

May I ask what insurance company he was covered under

I asked Simon a few years back to modify one of my canopies to this style tail pocket because I was / am more concerned with line dump than any potential packing errors. Zak was pretty notorious for closing the container on some of the messiest pack jobs any of us have ever seen.

I've heard two second hand stories of other tail pocket line entanglement malfunctions; one in Europe and the other in twin falls. I hope these people will contribute their stories for the benefit of the discussion.

Zak's helmet was a carbon fiber shell with the padding removed for lower volume. Who knows if an impact rated helmet would have changed his outcome, but i'll continue to wear mine.

I was not aware that the flaps were designed to prevent tail pocket blowout. Knowing this, I agree that the flaps are a good idea as opposed to the traditional style, which would only prevent a known packing issue.


I think this is pretty counterintuitive. The motorcycle saying goes "dress for the crash, not for the ride"

1- When you BASE like skydiving on a dropzone (back to back, fast trash packing, ...), you might have skydiving malfunction, but low and without reserve ...
When I see how people back2back here and in Lauterbrunnen, I'm surprised this kind of mal didn't happen before.

2- Some people are jumping everyday and are living in an expensive town like Chamonix, but they don't have the money to get a proper insurance and then we have to pay for their mistakes ?!

I can't afford living in Chamonix and I don't jump everyday because I work, but I pay for my insurance and I never ask for help for mistake I can do (and I do too ...)

Hope he will fully recover !

Sorry to be off topic but I really like your signature line and I'm totally with you regarding the tree landings

There is a bizarre trend it seems to not bother with insurance and then ask everyone to pay when you screw up. If your able jump you should be able to cover your own ass. Hope he heals. But please get insurance in future.

Im pretty sure it stated he had health insurance. They covered the hospital bills but not the rehab...Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

No one has to pay for Zak's mistake. But anyone can choose to help, thanks to his cousin's effort with the fundraiser. Maybe the bizarre trend this guy is talking about, is the internet.

As stated several times earlier in this thread, Zak does have insurance and it did cover all of his normal emergency care and his hospital stay. The clause excluding a certain type of rehab in a certain country was buried in the fine print. Zak's insurance oversight was one that any of us could have made. I personally never thought to check my policy for that exclusion. It's a free lesson.

It should be said that Zak not only had his insurance in order to the best of his knowledge, but he is probably the only American BASE jumper to have gone to the trouble of applying for a long-stay visa in France in order to legally be in-country for longer than a tourist visa allows.




As for the rest...

Someone earlier in the thread made the point that equipment should be designed for the 99.9% of normal cases, not the .01% of error. I agree with that. This TP flap design is less likely to entrap bights of line in the Velcro sections during normal everyday proper packing than TP designs which sandwich without flaps. It was a deliberate design decision.

Apart from the obvious lesson on packing complacency, this incident might encourage people to think more about headwear. Anyone who would like to lessen the chance of a traumatic brain injury should consider a real helmet. Skydive shitty crap shit has no place in BASE jumping. Buy a real helmet that has an impact protection rating and is certified for alpine sports, airborne sports, or motorsports.

Zak is now in rehab and I wish him all the best with what will require a major effort on his part and on the part of his caregivers and his family. To the local jumpers who visited him in the hospital, helped his family with information and visitation, and generally offered him real in-person support: you are all awesome. Being alone in a hospital in a foreign country, sucks.

-Matt

When climbing in Chamonix, we used to buy insurance through the French Alpine Club. It was cheap. If you didn't have it, they would bill you for the rescue, and back then, climbers died almost daily somewhere on the Massif. Rescues happened every day. We used to camp in Snell's Field, just across the river from the helicopter pad.

It was so cheap that there was really no excuse for not having it. That was decades ago, but unless things have really changed, it is well worth the price.

I think the biggest lesson to learn from this incident is to dillegent with your packing, even if your trying to rush to get the gondola at Brevent of Aiguille du Midi...

I myself was rushing packjobs at Brevent this season, and I wasnt proud of it.

its a single parachute system, and we are pulling not much higher than 100 meters, we should all try and remember that.

Most of us still buy FFCAM insurance.

If there are other jumpers out there interested in this insurance, please visit http://www.base-jump.com/fr/services/assurance

edited because unfortunately Zak was not covered by this insurance.

If I go through the translated guidance, there is a tick box referring to a requirement to have a medical certificate certifying fitness to participate in mountain sports. What is meant by this? We do not have anything like that in the UK. Does it even apply to other nationalities?

I would just say "yes." You are doing mountain sports, so it isn't much of a question. I dunno if you have to have a doctor certify you, though. It kind of sounds like it.

As for the accident, it is like many. He made the mistake on the ground.

Would a 4-line check have picked it up? We always did a 5 second 4 line check to make sure that the canopy hadn't gotten inverted while carrying it around after the last jump.

goto the doctors and get a medical certificate and have them just mention this

"no cons to the practice of mountain sports" and email a copy back to them and your done

And yes it covers worldwide which you have to select if your not a French (EU resident' maybe) to be covered both in France and abroad. But check with them to make sure, also I Msg you the info too

Nope. Happened well after that.