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Wingsuit Water Crash

By Rocky Thompson on October 18th, 2011

It’s confirmed that BASE jumper Christopher Brewer survived this 876-foot drop in a wingsuit even though his chute didn’t open. They estimate he was going between 60 and 80mph when he hit the water. The 27-year-old was part of a Bridge Day event and it’s estimated that there were 100,000 people there during the course of the day. That’s quite a few onlookers. The jumper suffered a broken pelvis, lung injuries and a spinal injury. One thing you have to hand it to the guy for – he held the panic at bay and used his wingsuit to slow him down as much as he could even though the chute didn’t open.

via Deadspin

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 18th, 2011 at 7:52 am and is filed under Videos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “Wingsuit Water Crash”

  1. Ben October 18th, 2011 at 8:00 am

    I wonder if that’s a new world record for the highest belly flop.

  2. Eddie October 18th, 2011 at 9:55 am

    It doesn’t appear that he pulled the chute in time.

  3. super_duper October 18th, 2011 at 10:18 am

    lets see…… ermm.. yap.

    worst. cometary. ever.

    EVAR!!!!

    Hope he has a full recovery.

  4. MM October 18th, 2011 at 1:13 pm

    I’m no expert but it sure looks like he waited too long to deploy he drogue chute. You don’t even see him reach back until near the very end and when it does come out there is NO TIME for the main to deploy. Any BASE experts out there?

  5. Bobby October 19th, 2011 at 9:15 am

    @MM: It is not uncommon for a wingsuit BASE jump to involve very late deployment. One of the “advantages” of a wingsuit jump over a regular jump is the extra airtime it affords and the closer you can get to the ground while traveling slower, so folks like to push the envelope and see how low they can hum it in before opening. This video shows why this practice is extremely dangerous, the burble created behind the wingsuit can create pilot chute hesitation. At a normal altitude this hesitation may not be an issue, but when you are close to land that hesitation could be fatal. Lucky for this jumper that he was over water.