Florida man dies jumping from hotel after parachute fails

[marmar]

PANAMA CITY BEACH, Fla. [AP] – A man in his 20s died jumping from a hotel balcony when his parachute didn’t open, police said.

The man jumped from the 14th floor of the Sunrise Beach Resort in Panama City Beach on Sunday night, police reported.

Panama City Beach police were investigating the BASE jumping incident. They have not released many details. .............(more)

https://nbc-2.com/news/state/2021/03/22/florida-man-dies-jumping-from-hotel-after-parachute-fails/

[LizBeth]

1. At least he jumped off hte edge thinking he had a shute and 3 or 4 sec of knowing he was dying.

I want to screen shot and tell my young'ish sons, no jumping off hotel balconies.

[Phoenix61]

2. He was 31 and attempted a jump from the 23rd floor. nt

[dhol82]

3. Is that enough time for a parachute to deploy?

Or did this guy just grab the bed sheet and hope for the best?

[zipplewrath]

4. Yes and no

You can "pack" a chute to open very quickly. But you have to "deploy" it at the right time, i.e. when you have reached an appropriate speed. Too soon, and you slow yourself down such that by the time you reach the proper speed, there won't be enough altitude left. Too late, and, well, it's too late. I suspect this guy didn't have the proper training/knowledge to pull off this stunt. 24 stories, assuming a 20 foot "story" is about 480 feet. You'd have to fall about 10 stories to reach an appropriate velocity, and even then your chute will "open" about 80 feet off the ground. Doable, but the kind of thing that requires alot of "dummy" drops and practice.

Caution, my knowledge is dated and modern technology may have changed these numbers.

[Xavier Breath]

5. I think we can go ahead classify this jump

as a "dummy drop," as it were.

[zipplewrath]

6. Oh, that's cruel

True, but cruel.

[Xavier Breath]

7. Sadly, yes.

I made a tandem jump from a plane once, back in '91. Cured me of ever wanting to do a solo jump or jump again, period. I can't imagine what was going through his head.

[zipplewrath]

10. 2000 jumps

I've got about 2000 skydiving jumps in my past. BASE jumping was all the rage in my day, but other than a few well known jumps (New River Gorge, El Capitan, etc.) I never really saw it as anything other than seriously dangerous. Many/most if not all of the original "pioneers" of the "sport" died doing it. Skydiving has a serious risk of death, but it is relatively manageable. BASE jumping on the other hand is generally extraordinarily dangerous.

[Xavier Breath]

11. My cousin did it as a hobby

and it was his suggestion that a buddy and I try it out. Our "training" was watching a 20 minute video with some in-person instruction with my tandem mate and a few minutes instruction in the plane. What the hell was I thinking?

My buddy and I pull up to the place, it was out in the country, and on the way in we walked past a teenager sitting at a picnic table wearing just swim trunks and eating a bowl of cereal. When it came time to board, we had to wait for the pilot, who we were told was in the restroom. Out he walks, and you guessed it, it was the teen. He had thrown on a shirt and shoes for the occasion. We climbed into the shitty-looking Cessna they had and we took off.

We jumped at 10,000, and it was exhilarating. I have a certificate somewhere celebrating my jump. I think my tandem mate said he had something like 1,200 jumps. One jump was enough for me, so I can't imagine having 2,000 like you.

Some years later I read that the kid who was our pilot had died in an accident with some other skydivers when the plane they were in crashed prior to a jump. He was in his early 20s at that point. Sad.

[Happy Hoosier]

12. I never understood the appeal...

Of such a dangerous sport. I trained for parachute drops as part of aviation training, but jumping out of a perfectly good airplane? Gives me the heebie jeebies! Did you have any close calls?

[zipplewrath]

13. Only one

I beat the odds in many ways. I never had to use my emergency parachute.

I was on my 10th jump when the "appeal" hit me. Up until then I had unrealistic ideas about what skydiving was. The recruitment video I saw gave me unrealistic expectations. But on my 10th jump, someone followed me out of the plane and "dove" down to me. He looked like superman. It is an amazing feeling to feel like you're flying. I was on a jump once with 176 other people. It took 5 airplanes to carry us all. You know that scene in Wizard of Oz when the monkeys are all flying past the window? I saw that first person and more. I flew "around" clouds. I followed a hawk lazily following a creek looking for food. I "flew" over, under, and around other people. I was skydiving one early evening when there were thunder clouds and lighting a good 5 miles away and I watched the reflections in someones helmet. I watched his face "light up" from the reflections. There are things I have seen that can't be seen any other place. We had an expression (of arrogance), only skydivers know why the birds sing.

Yes, it is "dangerous". It's about as dangerous as scuba diving. And there are ways to manage the danger, but yes, you ultimately have to understand that this is not a roller coaster and you can do everything right and still die.

Oh, and my close calls (there were two actually). One, my parachute, which had a top and bottom surface, had the center of the top partially separate from the bottom due to broken stitches. I could barely see, but I did some control checks to make sure I could still control the parachute. So I decide do ride it to the ground and get it fixed. Only when I got close to the ground did I understand that my rate do descent was vastly faster than normal. Training and some luck allowed me to do what was necessary to survive without injury, but it was a mistake and I should have used my emergency parachute. The only other time was during a competition. On competition teams there's usually one perspn who is responsible for altitude. Everyone else focuses on the competition and they are responsible for letting us all know when it's time to stop. Mind you, we all pretty much know anyway, but they are a bit of "back stop" to this decision. On one particular jump we were having trouble "scoring" the last "point". That person took it upon themselves to let us go lower to score the point. It was foolish because the judges won't score points below a certain altitude which we had long passed. Anyway, when we all went to open our parachutes, this person open theirs way to close to the rest of use and I was mad. It took me a couple of beats to realize why that had done that. It was when, looking down, I saw a familiar tree on the ground that was WAY too big. It was the lowest I had ever opened, and really way too close to be "safe". It was actually fortunate that I was over that tree because it was roughly near that tree I was going to land, whether I wanted to or not. I knew that land well enough to know EXACTLY where to land immediately.

I'm glad I did it, and I knew when to stop. And I still miss it everyday.

[Bantamfancier]

8. A story in a commercial building

is 12 feet. That makes his margin of error extremely small.

[Tribetime]

9. What if it's 10ft per floor...thats what I thought was average

[ProfessorGAC]

14. I'd Say The Height Is Much Less

Few buildings would average 20' per floor.
For instance, the 875 N. Michigan building (formerly the John Hancock building) is 100 stories, but is only 1,128' to the roof, or around 11.3' per floor.
The first floor (lobby & retail) is obviously much higher (maybe 25 feet) so the rest of the floors are close to 11' each.
The Empire State Building is 1,250 to the roof, for 102 floors. A bit over 12 feet. Again, the first floor is much taller than the rest.
If that holds for this hotel, this guy tried a base jump from under 300 feet.
I think one's timing would have to be perfect to stand a chance.