Leaping for Life

Leaping for Life - Requiring Vinci Parachutes in SkyScrapers

Burtonsville, MD, USA

In my previous article of September 19, 2001 entitled:Attack Against America; attack against the world.

I had recommended and stated, inter-alia, that:

QUOTE

iii. employees [IN TALL BUILDINGS] on and visitors to Floors 6 and above should be provided with or have access to a parachute each. Certainly, you don't send a person to sea without being able to swim or having a life raft.

Would these measures, particularly the parachutes, have saved 100% of the persons in the WTC disaster? Absolutely not! 50%? Probably not. But if they will save 1%, 2% or 10% of those 5,400 declared missing now, we will probably have about 50, 100 or 500 people with us today, probably more. Even 5 people saved because of their parachutes would have been worth it.

UNQUOTE

Thus, I suggested the standard provision of parachutes as a means of getting away from skyscrapers under a life-threatening condition such as was happened on September 11 at the World Trade Center in New York. It was not altogether a crazy idea, but I did hear quite a few chuckles as to its practicality.

However, I have continued to doggedly pursue the idea in every arena that I have discussed the WTC event.

Little did I know that the EXACT idea of jumping (or escaping) from fixed objects - as distinct from sky-diving - using parachutes was already an "extreme sport" (another example of an extreme sport is bunjee jumping), but that it had started with an idea by Leonardo Da Vinci (who in 1485 designed but never built a parachute), and has adherents in the sport called BASE Jumping. B.A.S.E. is a terminology that I ran into just yesterday, and stands for (jumping from) Buildings, Antennas, Span (Bridges) and Earth (eg Cliffs).

This was what I read in a 1995 article:

Leaping From Tall Buildings: - A Rescue Option - and More! http://www.aero.com/publications/parachutes/9512/pc1295.htm

QUOTE

With the advent of "fixed object-/B.A.S.E.-parachuting," proof is at hand that extremely low-level parachuting can be a reliable means of getting down safely from a high object on the earth's surface. "B.A.S.E." (or BASE) is an acronym for "Building, Antenna, Span, and Earth." This form of "sport" parachuting has become popular with some experienced skydivers, despite its added risks. BASE jumping is not recognized as "legitimate" sport parachuting by the United States Parachute Association, or by parachuting governing bodies of other nations, because of such jumping's extraordinary inherent risks (more so, they must feel, than conventional sport parachuting / skydiving). Such "fixed objects" jumps have been made from varied sites, including:

* "World Trade Towers" - New York City * "El Capitan"; a 3, 000-foot high rock outcropping with a smooth face-Yosemite National Park, California * "Sears Tower" - Chicago * A river bridge-Rhode Island * The "Space Needle"-Seattle, Washington * Radio / television antenna towers * "New River Gorge Bridge"-West Virginia (An annual "bridge jump day" is held at this site where a "legal" fixed object-/BASE- jump can be made on only one day a year, in October between the hours of 10 AM and 4 PM, under the strict control of the U.S. National Park Service.) * Building-mounted and mobile cranes at construction sites * A landmark building tower - Montreal, Canada * "Leaning Tower"-Pisa, Italy

UNQUOTE

Is it not a remarkable irony that the FIRST BUILDING MENTIONED in this 1995 article is the World Trade Center, which twin towers are now no more? In fact, I also did not know that in 1975, a man named Owen Quinn had already jumped off one of the towers with a parachute!

Anyway, there is more in the body of the article that I referred to:

QUOTE

For centuries thought has been given to saving lives of people living or working in human-made structures. Fires can drive desperate people trapped in skyscrapers - or airplanes - to certain death as they escape searing flames. One fire survivor who bailed out of a fiery F6F U.S. Navy fighter plane said, "I would have jumped from that plane even if I didn't have a parachute. You can't imagine such pain! I would not have let myself die that way! " ......

The renowned, prolific Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) understood the inherent peril of humans rising above the earth's surface. And his thinking process about such "rising" was not limited only to majestic, soaring, bird-like flight.

He also had the notion that some way was needed for a person to safely leave tall buildings in time of emergency. His mind stirred with ideas, looking for an answer to the dilemma facing persons in dire need of some means of escape. However, there was nowhere to go to get background, to learn what others were doing. Rich research resources such as huge libraries and national archives and computer databases that are at hand in the 2Oth century did not exist in da Vinci's time. His solution was to do a lot of thinking......

Shortly after the turn of our century, Lee Miller, of Chicago, Illinois, spent a lot of time pondering a notion for "a new and useful Parachute Device, ... " Finally, on December 7, 1911, he filed an application with the U.S. Patent Office in Washington, D.C. [ "Patent Number 1,037,959, Parachute Device," ]

His basic premise when he first started doing his thinking was that the "device" would be used by an aviator, but along the way to filing his application he had additional thoughts and on September 10, 1912, the granted patent said:

"The invention relates to aerial life saving devices of the parachute type, and has for its object the provision of a device which can be worn as part of the clothing of aviators operating aeroplanes, balloons, and the like, or those engaged as steeplejacks at lofty elevations, and subject to danger from falling.

A further object of the invention is to provide in connection with the parachute, for the automatic and rapid expansion of the same regardless of the position assumed by the wearer in his fall. Another object of the invention is the combination, in such a device of a man, of the necessary elements to effect its automatic operation in such a manner as to entail the least burden because of the weight and the least interference with the movements of the person so equipped."......

Miller's patent specifications did not mention adaptability of his life-saving device as a means of escaping buildings on fire. But about the same time Miller was completing his planning for an aerial life-saving device, another inventor thousands of miles away in Europe, was immersed in his own thinking. One of that inventor's primary considerations was the rescue of victims in burning structures.

About the time Miller's patent was ultimately approved and published in September 1912, Adolf Odkolek von Augezd, a subject of the Emperor of Austria-Hungary, residing at Baden, near Vienna, filed an application with the U.S. Patent Office for his own invention, saying:

"I. . . have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Parachutes: . . . "

A year and a half later, on December 9, 1913, von Augezd's patent (parachute; #1,081,137), making fourteen claims for uniqueness, was granted by America.

Early in the patent specifications he states:

"My invention relates to parachutes and has for its object a mechanism for efficiently and reliably opening parachutes attached to persons or objects above the ground. As experience shows most of the accidents with parachutes are due to the fact that the parachute does not fully open and therefore cannot carry the full load or is prevented from properly operating by the object itself which it is designed to carry. For avoiding these inconveniences and thereby rendering parachutes perfectly safe in use I provide according to my invention means for shooting the parachute as a whole upward by a driving agent such as an explosive charge or fluid under pressure and for shooting outward its ribs or periphery by driving agents such as an explosive or fluid under pressure before the load to be carried by the parachute becomes operative upon the same. Thus my improved parachute becomes a reliable means for escape by aeronauts, for persons in burning houses and the like."........

Inventor von Augezd especially noted:

"The device may also be used as a fire escape in buildings... For this purpose the parachute may be mounted near a window in such manner that it is shot obliquely upward for bringing it out of reach of the flames.... The length of the [suspension] cords has to be determined according to conditions in which the device has to be used. Any construction of parachute may be used."

Ideas for people rescuing themselves continued to be announced by inventors from time to time after Herr von Augezd's U. S .-patented device. But little was, or is yet, done by architects or builders to incorporate some means of emergency egress from towering infernos. Occupants generally are left to find a safe means of interior descent. Such escape action is usually impossible, with power outage eliminating use of elevators, with smoke- and flame-filled corridors and stairwells blocking passage. Or the frightened occupants have to rely on waiting to somehow be rescued by fire departments. However, despite buildings of every type rising to extraordinary heights, rescue vehicles still only have ladders reaching limited elevations.....

As an example, in the late 1970s, the U.S. Patent Office issued a patent to a South American inventor for a parachute escape system for buildings.

Use of a parachute to leap from a building can readily be seen as an extreme measure. But persons in life-threatening predicaments are quite willing to resort to such an extreme to save themselves. Even without any means of self-rescue at hand, many people have knowingly leaped to death rather than face the agony and horror of fire...

UNQUOTE

What a discovery!

Many people around the world saw live on TV on September 11 the willingness of many people "to resort to such an extreme to save themselves" without parachutes, and it is such avoidable hopelessness as described in the last above that really drove me into suggesting a parachute for every high-rise worker without the benefit of this particular 1995 insight!

Then I heard on CBS yesterday that a parachute firm in the Midwest was beginning to sell parachutes precisely for that purpose - getting away from burning buildings in a hurry - but I did not catch its name: Was it the Duluth, Minnesota based Cirrus Design Corporation [http://www.cirrusdesign.com/] or better yet, the $800-a-piece "chute" by the Three Rivers, Michigan-based company appropriately named Executivechute Corporation's ["The Life Preserver of the Sky" http://www.executivechute.com/]

I will be checking, but if you know anything quick, do let the world know.

Now that is Yankee capitalism - and a life-saving one! We should go for it! It could be good Christmas gift for that top-executive brother or sister of yours working in the 90th floor someplace. Others, rather than request the possibility of a "golden" parachute as part of his or her hiring package, should request for a Vinci parachute instead.

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