Man survives 1 000m fall

2006-08-21 09:10

Danel Blaauw

Bloemfontein - A man from Bloemfontein survived a 1 000m fall by landing in a ploughed field after his parachute failed to open properly while he was executing his first jump.

Shocked family and friends stood watching at Tempe airport in Bloemfontein as Benno Jacobs, 35, struggled to disentangle the ropes of his parachute while hurtling through the air at a dizzying speed.

"As it was my first jump, I thought it was only a bad jump, and not a fall," said the father of two.

Jacobs didn't even break a bone or tear a ligament.

He suffered a few bruises, a bruised lung, a swollen lip and an aching body.

'A miracle'

"It's a miracle. I wasn't really injured." Jacobs was admitted to the neurological unit of Bloemfontein Medi-Clinic for observation.

The only things on his mind as he was falling about 1 066m on Saturday afternoon, were his children and a prayer.

"It must have been a very short prayer," he smiled.

His mother-in-law, Rika van der Spuy, who watched him fall, described the incident as an absolute miracle on Sunday.

"It was terrible," she said. "Everybody was in a shocked state. Nobody could believe that he had survived."

Usually a jump took about six minutes, said Jacobs. Although it felt like ages, Jacobs hit the ploughed land within 60 seconds of leaving the aircraft.

Jacobs, Daniel van der Spuy, his brother-in-law, and Theunis Lambrechts, a colleague, did a parachute course at the Bloemfontein parachute club on Friday evening.

The three men executed their first jump on Saturday afternoon.

Jacobs said he immediately realised the ropes were tangled.

"They call it a line twist," he explained.

After what felt like ages, he managed to disentangle the ropes.

"But I couldn't pull the brake."

Because it took him so long to disentangle the ropes, he could not estimate how close he was to the ground in order to open the emergency parachute.

Jacobs, a sales manager at Peri Wiehahn, said he was amazed when his parachute started spinning. "It was 75% open, but there was a rope over the top."

After the fall he simply got up and, with a bleeding nose and somewhat disorientated, walked to a farm gate about 100m away, where an ambulance was already waiting.

"It hurt a bit, but the adrenalin rush must have been so much that I didn't realise how much it actually hurt."

He said although he was the third person to jump from the aircraft, he was the first to land.

According to his calculations, he hit the earth at about 60km/h.

"I beat them (his brother-in-law and colleague)," he laughed.

The only other adventure sport he does is quad-biking, although he has done the Argus cycle race seven times.

He always wanted to do parachuting, but after his narrow escape, he has said he wouldn't be trying that again.

- Volksblad