I guess the all-powerful christian sky pixie was too busy doing something
more important than to save a life yesterday, maybe he cured all children of
cancer yesterday or healed all amputees yesterday, and that just hasn't hit
the news yet.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/10/21/bridge.death.ap/index.html
FAYETTEVILLE, West Virginia (AP) -- Thousands of people watched a
parachutist jump to his death from a bridge during a festival Saturday when
his chute opened too late, a sheriff said.
Brian Lee Schubert, 66, died of injuries suffered when he hit the water 876
feet below the New River Gorge Bridge during West Virginia's annual Bridge
Day festival, said Fayette County Sheriff Bill Laird.
Schubert, from Alta Loma, California, had been well known in the sport of
BASE jumping since 1966, when he and a friend became the first people to
jump from El Capitan, a nearly 3,000-foot-tall rock formation, in
California's Yosemite National Park. (Watch sheriff give details of accident
and scenes of the event -- 2:31)
The sport's acronym stands for the places jumpers usually leap from:
buildings, antennae, spans and earth.
Lew Whitener, a newspaper photographer covering the annual Bridge Day
festival for the Register-Herald of Beckley, said it appeared Schubert's
chute didn't start to open until he was about 25 feet above the water. The
crowd gave a collective gasp, he said.
"It was everybody kind of held their breath then an eerie silence afterward.
Everybody kind of looked at each other and said 'Wow,"' Whitener said.
A large rock obscured the crowd's view of the man's body hitting the water,
Whitener said.
The fatality is the first since 1987 at Bridge Day, a popular event that
typically draws an estimated 100,000 spectators and about 400 parachutists
to the southern part of the state.
For one day a year, the National Park Service allows people to parachute off
the world's second largest single-span bridge to the national river below.
The bridge, a well-known icon in West Virginia, is featured on the back of
the state's quarter.
To qualify to jump off the bridge, applicants must have skydived at least 50
times.
Jumping at the festival continued after Schubert's body was recovered and
taken to a funeral home. Laird said officials allowed it because weather
didn't appear to be a factor in the accident. There were 804 separate jumps
Saturday, officials said.
"No measurable winds or anything would appear to have contributed to adverse
conditions making this any more dangerous than base jumping would ordinarily
be," Laird said.
Mathis Reimann, who jumped within an hour after the accident, said
Schubert's death made him think about safety.
"It's a dangerous sport and makes it clear that you really have to be
careful," said Reimann, who lives in Michigan.
Since 1981, there have been at least 100 BASE jump fatalities around the
world, according to the World BASE Fatality List, a Web site maintained by a
BASE jumper
.
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