Tree hazards
Rurik sends us a link to the story about how the Joint Base Lewis-McChord fire department was called out to rescue a male paratrooper from his perch in the top of a 30-foot pine tree near Mount Ranier. From Firehouse;
But they had to wait for the Thurston County Special Operations Rescue Team to rescue the female paratrooper, who was between 70 and 75 feet off the ground, Lacey fire battalion chief Steve Crimmins said.
Yeah, the guy who was 30 feet off the ground should have deployed his reserve and climbed down like we’re trained to do. The lady in the taller tree was kind of stuck, though. Well, I always think it’s humorous when someone besides me ends up in the trees.
Category: Military issues
I suppose that’s why the statement of “if you feel you can get down safely” is in pre-jump.
But this much is true….it’s always better them than me.
And its not like the trees in that part of Washington don’t have many , many branches. Hell, the southern DZ at Lewis is ginormous. WTF puts jumpers in the trees there? Granted, once you hit those woods its like Land of the Lost/Dinosaur country. Oh well, it looked sunny and I’m sure they both had a great view of MT Rainier from there.
@Elric – “WTF puts jumpers in the trees there?”
Assuming he was jumping a T10/T-11….’I’d go out on a limb’ [hah!] and say that it was caused by a complete lack of upper body strength to pull a slip.
Would it be fair to assume that those who land in trees receive no end of shit for it?
…Being but a Wing Wiper Of Little Brain, I must ask this – aren’t there supposed to be fairly serious dangers to hanging in the harness for longer than about 30 minutes or so?
B/r.
Mike
A broad daylight, Hollywood (no combat equipment for you legs) jump and your sorry ass ends up in a tree?
We’re not logging this jump and you get chute-shake out for a month!
I bet if the DZSO came at that tree with a chainsaw your little Sally ass would have found a way down.
Civilians have to pluck paratroopers out of trees? Un-frigging-believable!
I landed In between some trees and the damn chute landed in it. A night C/E out of a 141 in the snow. Thank god for the snow … I was 1st out. Didn’t release my equipment and landed softly. Shit happens, that is why you get paid the big bucks (jump pay). That is MY only personal tree landing experience, however as for others, hell yes… but no civilians ever got them down. They were man enough to untangle themselves out of their prickly situations and earn their jump pay.
So had this been in combat how would she have gotten down?
If it had been combat, SHE wouldn’t have been there in the first place!
Why jump out of a perfectly good airplane?
I got hung upside down in a tree at Normandy DZ once. The guards beat through the woods till they found me and yelled “are you ok?”. I said I was and the peckerwoods turned around and left. Yes, I deployed my reserve and climbed down.
@3: not necessarily. I climbed the risers once and it didn’t help much.
There seems to be a lot of badasses not stuck in trees here. It’s always easier to say how you would get out of a situation you aren’t in.
This is why not to jump out of good flying aircraft. I was a helo crew chief and we would autorotate safey to the ground.
First, I hope never to be in a parachute. Second, if I ended up needing to jump from a not-so-good aircraft, I hope there would be no trees around. No clue how to get out of a tree if hung up there in a chute. And probably wouldn’t care if it was a military or civilian rescue crew that came to extract me.
And y’all could laugh as much as you wanted to laugh.
@13 – There’s not really anything badass about following the rules of the air and the rest of sustained airborne training. Shit happens sometimes, but often, people simply don’t do what they’ve been trained to.
I’m breaking balls more than anything. I always loved the guys who would stand over your shoulder telling you how to do something then if you said, “you wanna do it?” They are just as fucked as you were. Training will carry you a ways, but there are a lot of times you are just fucked. I remember one of my platoon sgts stories of one of his jumps, he remembers exiting the plane then waking up in the back of a hummvee covered in piss and blood, shit happens.
@#10 “Why jump out of a perfectly good airplane?”
For the money… of course!
BTW- No such thing as a “perfectly good airplane.”
CI: not necessarily. Jumpmasters and/or pilots f-up on occasion and leave jumpers with few options.
Ended up stuck in a tree myself once. I was the last man out of a Huey. #1 and #2 out went out over the DZ. #3 jumper reportedly went out over the treeline at the edge of the DZ. The rest of us were kinda screwed; you can only slip so far.
Heard later that the jumpmaster got reamed, but can’t say for sure if that’s so.
@Hondo – Agreed; I didn’t mean to imply that those didn’t occur….but more often in my experience it has been jumper error.
My only almost tree landing was when myself and another coordinated for the last pass to have a 3000′ CARP [as opposed to the 1500 for students]. The aircraft made it to 3000′ but the Nav didn’t recompute the RP. Luckily I was able to steer towards a small patch of brush about 500m short of the leading edge of the LZ.
@10 – Because it’s statistically safer than landing in one. And chicks dig paratroopers!
@5 Not according to the female Black Hat at the swing landing trainer. Had something for leg LTs and would routinely leave us in the harness shed until you went numb.