Skydiver Survives 10,000-Foot Fall

(MYFOX NATIONAL) - A British skydiver has remarkably survived after a 10,000-foot plunge to the ground when his parachute failed to open, according to the Daily Mail .

Paul Lewis, 40, jumped from a plane on Friday like he had hundreds of other times, but something went terribly wrong as he was freefalling toward the ground.

His main parachute failed to open, and then his reserve parachute failed to work properly and Lewis plummeted through the air before crashing onto the roof of a hangar at Tilstock Airfield in Whitchurch, Shropshire.

Lewis, a freelance cameraman, was filming tandem jumps for the Parachute Center, a skydiving firm based at the airfield. Luckily, the roof of the hangar broke his fall and he escaped with only some head and neck injuries. Lewis is expected to make a full recovery.

"I watched him fall and as soon as I saw the parachute spiral I knew something was wrong. He is incredibly lucky. If he'd fallen 10 feet either way he would have landed on concrete," said Colin Fitzmaurice, who runs the Parachute Center. "He doesn't have any broken bones and his condition is not life-threatening. We are sure that he will make a full recovery."

In 2007, experienced parachutist Michael Holmes survived when a tree broke his fall after his main canopy and reserve failed to open after a 12,000-foot jump.

The person to have fallen the greatest distance without a parachute and survived is Vesna Vulovic, a Serbian flight attendant who fell 33,000 feet after her plane broke apart in January 1972. She landed in snow in the former Czechoslovakia.

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