Alana Shamrock is seen in this undated photo.
Alana Shamrock, 28, died Saturday night when her parachute malfunctioned at the Parachute School of Toronto in Georgina, north of Toronto.
KITCHENER — An experienced skydiver who fell to her death last weekend has been identified as a former Kitchener resident and University of Waterloo graduate.
Alana Shamrock, 28, died Saturday night when her parachute malfunctioned at the Parachute School of Toronto in Georgina, north of Toronto. York Regional Police released her name Wednesday.
It was the second skydiving death in less than a year at the school.
Shamrock attended Resurrection Catholic Secondary School in Kitchener, Conestoga College in Kitchener and the University of Waterloo, according to her Facebook page. She graduated from UW in 2012.
Shamrock and her boyfriend jumped together, said Adam Mabee, chief instructor at the parachute school. Both had their own parachute. Her boyfriend wasn’t injured. Shamrock, who lived in Newmarket, had jumped from airplanes 250 times. Saturday’s jump was from 5,500 feet. Mabee said he knew Shamrock very well. “She was a very well-liked person around here — a friend to many.”
Her Facebook page says she used to work at the YMCA and Extend-A-Family, which has an office in Kitchener that helps people with disabilities form relationships and participate in the community. Shamrock’s obituary requests donations to “charities related to long-term care facilities or cognitively challenged persons.”
“Alana was passionate about skydiving, knitting, scrapbooking, travelling, music and patient advocacy,” her obituary says.
A celebration of her life will take place today in the chapel at Williamsburg Cemetery in Kitchener.
Shamrock’s main parachute deployed, but “it didn’t open in normal fashion,” Mabee said. “There was a malfunction of the main parachute.”
An automatic activation device deployed the reserve parachute, but it may have been when Shamrock was too low to the ground, Mabee said. “It appears that it did not have enough altitude to get inflated.”
Her death is the second fatality in less than a year at the school. In July 2013, Igor Zaitsev, 42, of Etobicoke, died after a jump went wrong. Zaitsev was an advanced student who had completed a five-hour training class at the school. He crashed into the yard of a house near Highway 48.
Police have called in Canadian Forces experts to investigate Shamrock’s parachutes.
“It’s probably going to be a matter of weeks before the Canadian Forces team is going to be finished their investigation of the equipment,” Mabee said. “That may give us some answers. Up until that point, we don’t have a whole lot to work with, unfortunately.”
He hopes the investigation will make skydiving safer.
“It might help. Certainly the focus of trying to figure out what happened is to see if there’s any way it can be prevented in the future.”
John Gustafson, spokesperson for the Canadian Sport Parachuting Association, suggested the reserve parachute activation device — triggered by the combination of high speed and low altitude — can be a double-edged sword.
“The wonderful thing about them is they potentially save lives,” he said. “If a person is unconscious in free fall or somehow unable to deploy their main parachute, there’s a backup measure that’s sort of free of human limitations.
“The drawback is if the main parachute’s pulled too late, the automatic activation device might have already started doing its thing and now you potentially have two parachutes out and they can entangle or just not fly correctly. Two is definitely not better than one.
“That being said, it’s not an unsurvivable situation. I saw a guy land just this last weekend with two parachutes open and he bruised his rear end and his ego, but he was fine.”
Gustafson said it’s too early to say whether a coroner’s inquest should be held.
“An inquest would help if there was a suggestion of sloppy training or low safety standards, something like that. But you can have solid training and really good safety standards and still have accidents.”
He said the Toronto school does not have a bad reputation.
“When you have a lot of people doing a sport that has even a small amount of risk, sometimes the law of big numbers catches up to you,” Gustafson said.
The Parachute School of Toronto website says it has trained 56,515 first-time jumpers.
“Whether you are an experienced jumper, are new to the sport, or just want to watch from the ground, you’ll enjoy our facility. … Come fly with us and feel the adrenalin rush of a lifetime!” the website says.
Skydiving is much safer than it was 30 years ago, Gustafson said. In the late 1970s and early ’80s, four to six skydivers died each year in Canada. Now, thanks to automatic activation devices and better parachutes, the average is one a year, said Gustafson, who has more than 1,000 jumps under his belt.
“Most of the accidents we see today have nothing to do with equipment failure,” he said. “It’s usually either students refusing direction or experienced skydivers pushing themselves too far, trying more aggressive manoeuvres.
“There are some risks in the sport that people have to accept and prepare for. I don’t want to see anyone get complacent.
“But compared to (30 years ago), it’s night and day. In a lot of ways I feel safer jumping out of an airplane than I do driving through Vancouver traffic. And I probably am.”
http://metronews.ca
A woman who died in a parachute accident north of Toronto last weekend is being remembered as a person who was "passionate about skydiving."
Alana Shamrock, 28, fell to her death last Saturday after jumping with her boyfriend from a plane about 5,500 feet above the ground. According to the Parachute School of Toronto, she experienced equipment failure.
Shamrock's body was found on Old Homestead Road in Georgina, near Baldwin Airport, police said. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
"It is with heavy hearts we announce the passing of Alana," an obituary for Shamrock said. "Born in Calgary, Alberta and a current resident of Newmarket, Ontario, Alana was passionate about skydiving, knitting, scrapbooking, travelling, music and patient advocacy."
According to Adam Mabee, the chief instructor at the Parachute School of Toronto, Shamrock was a regular at the school for the past seven years. She had logged more than 250 jumps.
A visitation service was held on Wednesday at the Erb & Good Family Funeral Home in Waterloo, Ont. Visitations will continue on Thursday at the Chapel of Williamsburg Cemetery in Kitchener, Ont.
Mourners at the scene Sunday, May 18, 2014, the day after a woman was killed in a skydiving incident near Keswick.
The woman was experienced, says instructor at Parachute School of Toronto, which has now lost two skydivers in a year.
The death of a “relatively experienced” female skydiver Saturday evening has rattled instructors at the Parachute School of Toronto.
The woman, 29, was a licensed skydiver with over 250 jumps, according to Adam Mabee, chief instructor at the school.
“She was certainly well past the point where she needed to work with an instructor on a regular basis,” Mabee told the Star. “She was licensed to supervise herself from start to finish, on any given jump.”
The woman jumped with one other person, a male, on Saturday evening. Both skydivers exited the plane at 5,500 feet, and each had their own parachute.
How the routine jump turned fatal is not immediately clear.
“At this point we don’t have a whole lot of details,” said Mabee. “We know she had a malfunction on the main parachute, and she went through her emergency procedures to get her reserve (parachute) out instead.”
The reserve parachute appears to have been activated too low to the ground, says Mabee.
York Regional Police received a call regarding the skydiving accident around 7:40 p.m. Saturday evening. The victim was found on Old Homestead Rd., near Baldwin airport.
The woman was pronounced dead at the scene, according to EMS.
The accident has been rattling, says Mabee.
“She was liked by everyone around,” he said of the victim, his voice breaking. “But it is what it is. This is certainly very rare.”
The Parachute School of Toronto is at Baldwin Airport, south of Lake Simcoe. The school is affiliated with the Canadian Sport Parachuting Association, according to the website.
The website also advertises that the school has “trained over 49,000 first time jumpers and provided more than 210,000 jumps.”
Bill Bryan is a flight instructor at Baldwin Airport. He was in his office when the woman and her boyfriend arrived Saturday evening in their car.
“We just kind of waved and smiled as they went by because they usually say hi,” said Bryan. “I thought nothing of it until I heard she had the accident. You think, ‘it’s not real, it couldn’t have happened’.”
Bryan returned to the school Sunday morning.
“It was quiet, and everyone was just sitting around - you could see they were crying,” he said. “She will be missed.”
The victim seemed to be a cautious type of person, says Bryan.
“There are people who push the envelope, but I didn’t know her as that kind of person,” he said. “My belief is that something just went terribly wrong.”
This is the school’s second fatality in less than a year. In July 2013 Etobicoke man Igor Zaitsev, 42, died after a jump went wrong.
Zaitsev was an advanced student who had completed a five-hour training class at the school. He crashed into the yard of a house on Smith Blvd., near Highway 48, after jumping solo from a Parachute School of Toronto plane that took off from nearby Baldwin Airport.
Although conscious when he landed, he was taken to hospital with serious injuries and later pronounced dead.
After Zaitsev’s death, the Canadian Sport Parachuting Association (CSPA) said that only one to two people die each year from skydiving accidents, citing stats since 1996. Skydivers have been performing more than 100,000 jumps a year, according to the CPSA.
Mabee thinks that across the sport, more accidents happen to experienced jumpers — but not in all cases.
“It’s hard to make a broad generalization on why parachute accidents occur,” he said. “There are many different causes of accidents during the sport. There’s nothing that is really typical.”
The police have brought in experts from the Canadian Forces to help with the ensuing investigation. The experts will examine the parachute equipment to try and determine exactly what went wrong.
Looking forward, Mabee expects the school to continue operating as normal.
“The investigation is now largely out of our hands,” he said. “We certainly have taken the day off today, but I expect to back in operation again shortly.”
As for Bryan, he wishes he could rewind the day of the accident - and erase it.
“I think that’s how we all feel,” he said. “Did this really happen? Can we start over again?”
Story and comments: http://www.thestar.com
Jumper who died was experienced, school president said
The president of a parachuting company in Georgina said a woman’s death Saturday has left the company and a male jumper she was diving alongside, badly shaken up.
Adam Mabee of the Parachute School of Toronto at Baldwin Airport, said no one will be jumping at the facility today considering what occurred May 17 in the evening, when an experienced and well-known diver plunged to her death.
She died as a result of impact, Mr. Mabee said.
This is the second death in two years at the facility, located south of Lake Simcoe on Hwy. 48.
“Anytime anything happens, it’s difficult for sure,” he said. “Our facility is a very tight-knit community. She’s a regular jumper here. We’re sitting today out.”
Although he refused to discuss the woman’s name or town of origin, as next of kin may not yet be aware, Mr. Mabee said she was a licenced jumper who would have packed her own parachute and has jumped more than 100 times.
Mr. Mabee added that York Regional Police are investigating and said one officer told him someone from the Canadian Armed Forces may look into the incident.
Mr. Mabee also mentioned the fatal jump was one from 5,500 feet.
He would not say if the pair were in a relationship.
Last year in mid-July, a man in his mid-40s fell to his death at the same facility FTER landing in a man’s back yard.
In August 2002, a man whose jump was scheduled by the school plunged to his death after problems with his chute.
On its website, the Parachute school explains it has trained “55,353 first-time jumpers and counting.”
http://www.simcoe.com
TORONTO - A woman plunged to her death in a skydiving accident in Georgina, near Lake Simcoe, Saturday evening.
The incident happened around 7:40 p.m. on Old Homestead Rd. near Hwy. 48, York Regional Police said.
"I can confirm an accident led to fatal injuries to a female skydiver," Insp. Stu Betts said.
Officers at the scene, about 80 km north of Toronto, did not immediately confirm the woman's age.
Betts said the Parachute School of Toronto Ltd. was the only skydiving outfit operating out of nearby Baldwin Airport.
A person who answered the phone at the business said they could not provide comment and would not confirm the fatal accident was linked to the school.
The school has been linked to two fatal jumps in the past.
Last July, 48-year-old Igor Zaitsev, an advanced parachute student whose jump was arranged by the Parachute School of Toronto, sustained fatal injuries when he landed in a yard near Hwy. 48 and Smith Blvd.
In August 2002, Gareth Rodgers, 38, was on his fifth jump with the school when his main and reserve chutes failed to open. He fell nearly 1,000 metres to his death.
On its website, the Parachute School of Toronto says it has trained “56,515 first-time jumpers and counting.”
http://www.torontosun.com
GEORGINA, ONT. – York Region Police say a skydiver is dead after an accident near Baldwin Airport in the Town of Georgina, north of Toronto.
The Parachute School of Toronto operates operating out of Baldwin Airport.
Last year, an advanced skydiving student died following a hard landing at the airport.
Saturday night, a spokesman for the school said they had no comment about the accident.
The skydiver’s identity has not been released.
http://globalnews.ca
A person has died in a skydiving accident in Georgina near Lake Simcoe, York regional police say.
The incident happened at Highway 48 and Old Homestead Road near Baldwin Airport on Saturday evening.
The victim’s gender and identity haven’t been disclosed. But the victim is believed to be 29 years old.
Adam Mabee, the owner of the Parachute School of Toronto Ltd., which operates from Baldwin Airport, wasn’t immediately available for comment.
http://www.680news.com
York Regional Police are investigating a fatal parachute accident in Georgina, Ont. Saturday night.
The accident occurred on Old Homestead Road near Baldwin Airport, police say.
No description of the victim has been provided and police say the events that led up to the incident are not clear at this time.
The accident occurred near the Parachute School of Toronto.
More to come.
Part of a parachute is snagged on a tree near Baldwin Airport in the Town of Georgina.
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