A skydiver who plunged 14,000ft without a parachute and survived has told of her thoughts during the terrifying fall.
Emma Carey was 20 when she and her instructor jumped out of a helicopter in the Swiss Alps in June 2013. Emma, from Australia, told the Darling, Shine! podcast how she was “loving it” when she first jumped and fulfilled her dream of skydiving.
She described feeling a tap on her shoulder and crossing her arms as instructed. At that point, the instructor was supposed to pull the parachute.
But Emma felt her hair being “ripped backward” and began calling out to the instructor, asking if they were OK but got no response. She assumed he was doing everything he could, but then saw the “scrunched-up parachute” in front of them.
Emma said: “I thought 100 per cent like this is it. And then we hit the ground. Somehow I wasn’t knocked unconscious at all. I was completely awake, the entire time.”
Asked whether she thought she was in heaven at this point, Emma replied: “Yeah, I was like, surely I’ve died, surely this is it. And then the next feeling that I had was just the most intense pain through my whole body, and I was like, I’ve gone to hell.”
Emma has written a book about her experiences. She has also learned to walk again after initially being unable to move her legs at all.
On her official website, Emma, often referred to as “the girl who fell from the sky”, wrote: “I am so excited to be alive that I feel like the luckiest person in the world.
“I’ve found a way to see beauty in absolutely everything - the world, the people, the emotions, the lessons and I feel a kind of happiness which I had never experienced before my accident.”
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