A British soldier has just survived the seemingly unimaginable after subsist a 4572 - metre ( 15,000 - foot ) fall and crashing into the ground after his parachute failed to give fully . Residents of Via Cielo , around 322 kilometers ( 200 miles ) northwest of Los Angeles , were greet to quite the shock when the parachutist crashed through the ceiling of a neighboring star sign , creating a cartoonish mess as the soldier lie in the uninhabited home .
prototype were deal by Twitterusersof the ordeal indicate the consequence .
Miraculously , the soldier had no major injuries and is convalesce well , says the Ministry of Defence to theEvening Standard .
The incident occurred on July 6 after soldiers free-base at Camp Roberts were performing group training of HALO ( High Altitude Low Opening ) jump . This deployment proficiency is used to insert troops and equipment into often unfriendly environments , and involves dropping from altitudesas high as12,192 meters ( 40,000 metrical unit ) , but only scuttle parachutes as low as 914 meters ( 3,000 foot ) before reaching the priming coat . HALO startle are perfect for avoiding detection and reaching the drop zone chop-chop , but countenance little elbow room for error or equipment malfunctions . As a solution , these proficiency are only utilise by highly specialised unit , which from Britain involve the Special Air Service ( SAS ) and Special Boat Service ( SBS ) .
In this use , the paratrooper was reportedly falling from a more modest 4,572 meters ( 15,000 feet ) when the primary parachute fail to open . Equipped with a reserve chute , the soldier deploy it to slow the descent , but it was ineffectual to open in clock time to achieve the designate Drop Zone . or else , the soldier fell rapidly and crashed through the roof of a residential building – which luckily had no one inside at the time – where he was retrieve by pinch services . Atascadero Police Department detail the incident in a Facebookposton July 7 .
While it may sound impossible , falling from 15,000 feet differs very little from diminish 1,500 foot . On middling , it takes just 12 seconds for a skydiver to reach terminal velocity – a blistering120 mph ( 200 km / henry ) – in which time they will have covered around 1,500 human foot ( 450 meters ) . From here , the skydiver will assert a steady speed throughout the nose dive , before deploy a chute to slow themselves for shore . As such , surviving falls from huge altitude lies well within the kingdom of possibility , particularly when the individual is slightly slow down by a half - heart-to-heart parachute , which appears to have happened here .
The longest live freefall without a parachute pass off on 27 March 2025 , after a dud exploding within the baggage compartment of a flight of steps cruising at 33,330 ft do the plane to rend apart , trappingVesna Vulovićwithin . After plummeting 10,160 meters ( 33,000 feet ) , the fuselage strike the priming at an angle , and the unconscious Vesna was find oneself within . Scientists attribute her low blood pressure , result in her unconsciousness and preventing her heart from burst upon impingement , as the reason Vesna survive the gloam . Reports of World War II paratrooper also indicate soldierssurvived freefallsfrom above 6,096 meters ( 20,000 feet ) , but it is surely a uncommon natural event .
