Apparently, skydiving and power lines don’t mix that well! Just what do we mean? Well, you will just have to take a gander at this story to figure out moreā¦
Evidently, there was a parachuter in California who had to be rescued in dramatic fashion after the chute he was using became ensnared in a tangle of power lines.
The Riverside County Fire Department were the first responders on the scene at around 11:11 a.m. in Lake Elsinore when this mishap happened last May.
After the deputies and firefighters responded to the scene, they immediately noticed that a single parachuter had gotten their chute stuck in some nearby power lines.
There was a dramatic photo shared by this department that is showing this person about 30 feet off the ground and their legs are doing nothing but dangling high above the street and their chute is sure enough stuck in those power lines.
Southern California Edison is an electricity supply company, and they had arrived on the scene in order to cut down those power lines so that they could safely bring the person down using a bucket lift according to the fire department.
“The patient was evaluated by firefighters on scene and transported to an area hospital by ground ambulance [with] minor injuries to their lower extremities,” the department said.
Once they had safely removed the skydiving enthusiast, Southern California Edison was able to safely remove the chute from the power lines without further incident.
Interestingly enough, there were more than 2.8 million skydiving jumps done in the United States in 2020, and most of these occurred without incident. The United States Parachute Association noted that the annual fatality rate had hit a record low of just 11 last year.
“The reality is that the vast majority of skydiving accidents are a result of simple human error,” the association said on its website. “Many of the accidents occur because the jumperāoftentimes an experienced skydiver who is pushing the limitsā makes an error in judgment while landing a perfectly functioning parachute.”