Oh, chute!
A British skydiver plunged a terrifying 2,000 feet when his parachute malfunctioned — yet survived with a stroke of nearly incredible luck.
Paul Lewis, a parachutist of 20 years’ experience, was videotaping a novice’s jump from 10,000 feet Friday afternoon, The Times of London reported.
He deployed his main parachute, but it failed at 3,000 feet. When his reserve chute also malfunctioned, he went straight down for nearly half a mile.
But the second chute snagged on the pitched metal roof of an airline hangar — saving him from falling the remaining 30 feet to the concrete below.
“As soon as I saw the parachute spiral, I knew something was wrong,” Colin Fitzmaurice, owner of the Parachute Centre told the paper. “Even before he hit the ground, I’d called an ambulance.
“He is incredibly lucky. He’s almost without injury. If he’d fallen 10 feet [laterally] either way, he would have landed on concrete. I went to see him earlier today [in the hospital], and he was in good spirits.”
It took firefighters nearly an hour to reach Lewis, who suffered head and neck injuries.