/ 4 May 2007

Student survives skydiving scare

A third-year Rhodes University student has laughed off a skydiving accident that saw him hospitalised with a spinal injury this week, Grocott’s Mail reports.

”I knew I wasn’t going to die because I had two parachutes. I’ll be walking in about two weeks’ time and I’ll be skydiving again,” said information-systems student Mark Houghton (23).

Houghton crashed into the ground on Monday when his parachute failed him as he was about to land in the EP Skydivers drop zone after jumping out of a plane at 3 500 feet (1 050m) on Monday.

The experienced jumper, who has 80 jumps under his belt, is now recovering at St George’s Hospital in Port Elizabeth from a compressed fracture in his lower vertebrae and a fractured right ankle.

On Monday, his friends and jumping partners knelt over him as he struggled to speak from a trauma board before being rushed to Settlers Hospital. He was transferred to Port Elizabeth the same night.

”His chute was the wrong way around and the two canopies opened at the same time and he fell hard,” Jessica Goble, who witnessed the accident, told paramedics at the scene.

She said Houghton’s main canopy failed to open and when he tried to deploy his reserve canopy, it opened into his main one. ”The two opened at the same time at about 100 feet [30m] and he started falling faster. He fell on his bum,” she said.

According to EP Skydivers owner Joos Vos, Houghton was doing a solo jump when the accident happened. He said Houghton’s reserve parachute inflated perfectly, but he had followed an ”out-of-sequence procedure”, which resulted in his two canopies opening at the same time and a harder-than-normal landing.

Doctors expect Houghton to make a full recovery in about six weeks. ”It’s nothing life-threatening,” said Vos.

Houghton was reluctant to speak about what went wrong on Monday. ”I had an unfortunate landing, but I managed to survive by basing myself correctly,” he said. — Sapa