CLH - Hoerspielforum und mehr

Zitat

In the early darness of Novemeber 23, 1998, Dan Osman was killed in a 1,200-foot fall from Yosemite National Parks Leaning Tower.
Following a jump of some eleven hundred feet -a world record- the rope broke at a point nearly two hundred feet above his harness.
He must have understood, for an instant, that the system failed.
He was almost certainly killed upon impact.
Osman was thirty-five.
Osman and a number of friends had erected the equipment weeks before, and spent several days jumping on the gear before Osman was detained by authorites for a suspended driver's licence and related offences.
On the afternoon of his death, Osman and a friend returned to the site to remove the gear.
The equipment had been exposed to the early winter elements- snow , rain, cold nights, and warm afternoons with dramatic temperatur swings-for over a month.
Thw nylon climbing ropes in the system were almost certainly damp to the core at the time if the accident, and rope manufactures estimate as much as a 40% decrease in rope strength while wet.
In all likelihood, the rope broke at a point that had previously been knotted .
The nylon fibers in the area of such a knot, already strained by the first series of jumps, would have been further weekend by the expansion and contraction cause by the variations of humidity and tempreture.
That Osman concidered the equipment sound is both suprising and a testement to his extraordanary faith in its strength.
He was sure of one thing he wrote in a personal letterjust days before the accident, and that wes the rope would never break if properly rigged.
Speculation that his decision to jump on the gear was in some way suicidal is unfound.
There is strong indication that Osman was intending to slow down, at least temporarily, and spend more time with his daughter.
He made comments to that effect, and had proposed marriage to Nikki Warren a week prior to the accident."
"In the dilating flash of time through which he fell, untethered, I hope that we has not afraid.
He had erned that, certainly, if nothing else.
A final moment of composure-not of resingnation but of rediness, of welcome-for the sword stroke he could not elude."