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| Pete_w
Member Username: Pete_w Post Number: 24 Registered: 11-2004 Posted From: 129.96.151.79 Rating: N/A |
Sitting in an emergency department watching your mate get hooked up to an ECG monitor and being infused with saline and morphine isn’t exactly what you expect is going to happen when you head out on a minor midnight jumping mission. But so it was last Thursday night that Tom and I found ourselves in the Royal Adelaide Hospital, him on the monitors looking mildly concerned at how concerned the doctors seemed to be, me looking on bemused, wondering just how we ended up here, and how lucky we had both been. The chunks of flesh missing from his right forearm apparently weren’t the problem, it was the potential internal damage that had the docs eagerly awaiting the results of the heart tests. The night started out as most standard city BASE adventures do. A few beers at the pub and a discussion of the plan. Adelaide is certainly not Australia’s fixed object jumping capital, and so 400ft AM antennas suddenly seem to look appealing when that’s all you have at your disposal. Indeed the antenna in question has been regularly jumped from several different heights with little or no problem. But on this night that was all about to change. After a quick scaling of the perimeter fence and the putting on of rigs it was a relatively easy climb onto the little building next to this thing and then the all important ‘jump’ onto the antenna. I had heard stories in aussie base folk lore about people being zapped by antennas while climbing onto them and waking up several minutes later on the ground wondering just where they were and why they were lying in a field in an industrial area with a rig on. My mental note was basically never to touch the ground and the antenna at the same time. Having completed this ‘jump on’ uneventfully, and sort of concluding that this skinny antenna didn’t actually seem to be on, we began the external ladder climb up it. AM antennas, so I’m told, are not the ideal ones to be hanging around on. Talk of hardware getting warm, feeling sick, and the potential of having multiple headed children later on in life, are all good reasons to keep your time on an AM antenna to a minimum (or stick to cliffs, whichever seems more sensible). So we climbed quickly, getting about 2/3 of the way up in 5-10 min. At this point we were at about 250ft, where the antenna changes configuration so to speak. I guess it’s kind of like one antenna standing on top of the other. People that have jumped it before had said just to make sure at that point that the next bit wasn’t on. I reached up with one hand still on the ladder and sort of flicked the next section with my fingertip. The blue sparks that I saw and the smell of burning quickly told me that we weren’t going to climb any higher. Tom was just below me and we decided that we should climb around onto this little 1 metre square box that just happened to be positioned next to us. I guess it is to store antenna repairing stuff and the like. The problem was, a 1 metre square area is not a great deal of room for two people to be manouvering around on especially when on three sides of it there is a 250ft drop and the other side appears to be an antenna that is very much alive. The box seemed to have some sort of earthing wire attached from it to the antenna behind it and this wire also elicited sparks when touched so we climbed onto this precarious little space as best we could. After getting two or three minor shocks while getting into position, we really were keen to get off. Unfortunately the antenna was going to have the last laugh. As Tom began turning around to go, he made some reasonably solid contact with some part of the whole system, not sure what exactly, and before my very eyes (and no doubt inside his own) he was being electrocuted. The whole thing lasted about 5 or 6 seconds, several primeval yells, that distinctive crackling/buzzing sound of electricity (like when an insect gets hammered by one of those blue zapping lights on the back veranda) and of course some interesting body movements. I think after some seconds I had grabbed the yoke of his rig and sort of pushed him off where he was contacting it but I can’t really remember but suddenly the fireworks stopped. The strong smell of burnt flesh filled the still Adelaide air. When good times go bad. A bit shaken up so to speak, after anyone would be after having god knows how many volts pumped through them, Tom decided that now would really be a good time to leave this antenna. He faced the Adelaide night skyline, I pulled out his still stowed 46” and carefully folded it into his hand, and he was gone into the darkness. An on-heading opening thank Christ. I joined him on the ground soon after and we gathered up our canopies. His arm was bleeding pretty heavily. Back in the car on the way to the RAH, we inspected the damage. Several sizeable holes were now in the place of what used to be muscle. An exit wound was located soon after on his right leg. Undeterred, he joked about potential time off work and maybe running into a friend of his, James, in the ED who was a local skydiver and emergency doctor that possibly worked on Thursday nights. And so it was that we rocked up to the triage nurse who seemed a little dubious as to the truth behind our story that he had been messing around with cables in the roof of his house. Hmm… We soon levelled with the doctors as they mulled over his injuries. At least a few of the nurses as well as ourselves found the story amusing. A 3 day stay in hospital, a bit of plastic surgery/skin grafting and the arm should be as good as new. I believe Tom is taking the week off this week for some ‘R and R’ as he put it. So I think the SA Base scene has lost one of its (few) sites as I don’t think many will be rushing back to that one. Perhaps some less electrified objects should be on the cards. Watch this space for more updates… Pete W. | ||
| Plummy
Member Username: Plummy Post Number: 28 Registered: 8-2006 Posted From: 58.108.99.171 Rating: N/A |
Great story Pete... I have heard about those 'insulators' that separate the 2 antennas and to avoid the temptation to climb around it..... great story, great escape...... as for the potential for multiple headed children... I thought a kid with one head like yours would be enough  Stay safe mate.. plummy | ||
| Gary_p
Member Username: Gary_p Post Number: 25 Registered: 2-2005 Posted From: 121.217.44.234  Rating: N/A |
Listening to '80's talkback radio with Bazz & Pilko thru your mercury dental fillings as you climb.... ......Priceless. | ||
| Maxim
Contributor Username: Maxim Post Number: 9 Registered: 11-2004 Posted From: 124.169.40.18 Rating: N/A |
Yeah its quite daunting that i once had to sit at 400feet mark with some lights while the others i was jumping with climbed the rest way to 700feet and while i was waiting i could clearly hear Triple J. thing is i have no fillings |
