August 23 2004 at 08:27AM
When Christine McKenzie hit the ground after problems with her parachute, she lay there, waiting to die.
The 23-year-old never expected to live after her main parachute failed to open and her reserve parachute nearly snapped.
But she did - with only a fractured pelvic bone.
When McKenzie jumped out of the plane at 3 350m on Sunday, she would have begun hurtling to the ground at 160km/h for about 45 seconds.
'I was in a spiral heading to the ground'
But when she pulled on her parachute cord, ready for the gentle descent to the ground, the chute didn't open.
She tugged at her reserve but it opened so forcefully that some of the lines snapped and became tangled.
As McKenzie began spinning to the ground, she tried to untangle the lines. There was nothing she could do.
"I was in a spiral heading to the ground," she remembered.
"They told me later that if I had fiddled with the parachute lines I would have been in trouble.
'I think it was a mere accident'
"It appears that a lot more lines had snapped and the tangle was keeping the parachute in place."
Speaking from her bed at Milpark Hospital in Johannesburg, McKenzie said she was dehydrated, and felt slightly dizzy.
Doctors had found a fracture on her pelvic bone, and despite falling from such a height, she seemed to have no other injuries apart from some bruises.
"I think it was a mere accident. I have only one broken bone," McKenzie said.
She remembers fearing that she was going to die, but luckily she bounced into power lines, which broke her fall.
"If it wasn't for the lines, I would have died," she said.
"It all happened so fast. I hit the ground really hard and I was kinda waiting to die. Then the pain set in.
"I knew I was alive but I wasn't sure how badly I had been injured."
McKenzie had been jumping with the Johannesburg Skydiving Club at the Carletonville airfield on the West Rand. It had been her 112th jump - "and I'll jump again," she said.
Vana Gulliver, an instructor at the club, said having a reserve parachute that malfunctioned was "incredibly rare".
"We have never heard of that before. I wouldn't say she is lucky to be alive, but she's lucky she did not break many more bones," Gulliver added.
This article was originally published on page 1 of The Star on August 23, 2004
