Naive New KL Tower CEO Declares There Are No Safety Issues Days Before A Record Number Of Tower Strikes And Other Accidents

A couple of days before KL Tower’s annual BASE Jumping event in 2018, new KL Tower CEO Datuk Rozlan Mohamed and other KL Tower management had a meeting with previous KL Tower BASE Jumping Organiser Gary Cunningham. The meeting was to discuss KL Towers manager’s threatened prosecution of Gary after he had publicly revealed the insistent negligence of the event contractor Aziz Ahmad, and new KL Tower management. Their reckless disregard for participant safety had risen to a ridiculous level where it was a greatly contributing factor to many accidents at the KL Tower BASE Jumping event each year. After neutralising the negligence of Aziz Ahmad in 2017, which successfully eliminated the serious accidents and chaos that stems from Aziz negligence, Gary was expelled from the event. It was very odd that the new KL Tower management was very displeased with Gary’s efforts to clean up the negligence and eliminate serious accidents from the event.

Previous KL Tower management was focused on maximising BASE Jumping event safety, after they too had become erratic years earlier insisting on setting up their event in a reckless manner that quickly brought a fatality in 2010. BASE Jumping event safety often gets in the way of personal agendas of KL Tower event managers, and other event contractors. Event safety issues are often quickly dismissed and event management quickly go into denial that there are any problems until they have a dead BASE jumper to shock them into reality. BASE jumping is a very high risk activity that always must be treated with the high level of respect that it demands.

Furthermore, Gary had publicly exposed the new KL Tower management’s request to ban Sibu BASE Jump participants from the KL Tower BASE Jump event. Sibu BASE Jump was another event that Gary was involved in organising for the previous decade. It is believed that the new KL Tower managers desired to destroy the Sibu BASE Jump event as vengeance to Gary. Of course, a tourist icon of Malaysia such as KL Tower cannot be seen trying to destroy extreme sports tourism in Sibu. This was very unlike previous KL Tower management who seemed mostly like decent well-meaning people.

New KL Tower managers had insisted all claims made by Gary were false. They sent a letter to Gary demanding that if he did not make a public apology to be published for 7 days, and then delete all his social media accounts including all the comments from past KL Tower employees strongly agreement with Gary, that he would face prosecution at great expense to himself. Gary’s response was not quite as KL Tower managers were expecting. He publicly questioned what was actually false, and reiterated through each claim in greater detail explaining why they were true.

The meeting started with the KL Tower CEO stating to Gary that he believed there were no safety issues and that he believed that Gary was the only one who believed there was. It was uncertain where Datuk Rozlan Mohamed’s information was coming from. It was a very bold claim by a man who had no prior experience with BASE jumping, while Gary was a world-leading expert at buildings display jumps. Gary had completed 925 BASE jumps from KL Tower, and a total of over 2000 building display BASE jumps off buildings throughout Malaysia. Being the prime KL Tower BASE jumping organiser for over a decade, Gary was the person who logged and analysed all the accidents at Malaysian BASE jumping events. No one came anywhere near close to having the knowledge that Gary had about numerous BASE jumping accidents in Malaysia and the many factors causing them.

Of course, Datuk Rozlan Mohamed’s claim that he believed there were no safety issues was akin to Boeing believing that there were no safety issues with their 737 MAX right before the second one crashed, again killing all on board. If a large and usually responsible company like Boeing could convince themselves that there were no safety issues, due to being more focused on their business agenda, then it would certainly be very easy for a new KL Tower CEO with no experience in high-risk activities to go into strong denial about safety issues with their contractors for the KL Tower BASE Jumping event. In a country like Malaysia where corruption is rife, there is no shortage of people with vested interests giving KL Tower managers bad advice and steer them towards false believes.

Gary assumed Datuk Rozlan Mohamed’s comment was an attempted insult to him, and his unmatched wealth of knowledge about BASE jumping events off buildings. He was a little amused at the new KL Tower CEO showing a great level of ignorance. In the coming days of KL Tower BASE Jump 2018, Datuk Rozlan Mohamed would be proven very wrong.

KL Tower managers had hired Avery Badenhop as there new BASE jumping organiser for the event who had very limited recent experience at KL Tower. Not surprisingly the event produced a record number of tower strikes, a record number of people crashing in and getting hung up on the side wall (including Avery himself) next to land area, a return to having canopy collisions at the event, and a multitude of other issues.

Avery claimed that there was only one incident at the event, so it is assumed he was oblivious to all the others (including his own?). If KL Tower was serious about maximising event safety, then they would have gotten one of the highly experienced BASE jumpers with significantly more experience than Avery had at KL Tower to manage the event. Avery had no idea about all the regular issues and mistakes people make at KL Tower, so he had no possible way of knowing what to educate participants about before jumping started, or how to maximise event safety. Avery got caught out himself coming into land, having no idea about all the issues faced there when landing in a crosswind. It was disappointing to see others crashed in too with all education of the known issues taken away from the event. It is a common sense thing which KL Tower management and Avery were in strong denial about.

Also at the meeting between KL Tower managers and previous KL Tower BASE Jump organiser Gary Cunningham, it was discussed about KL Tower managers request to ban Sibu participants from the KL Tower event. KL Tower managers were in very strong denial that they made any request to ban Sibu BASE Jump participants. Their new BASE jumping organiser Avery Badenhop had certainly sent around messages to most of the Sibu participants, stating that KL Tower had requested that he ban Sibu participants from the KL Tower BASE jumping event. Avery told some Sibu participants that he had refused to go ahead with the ban, but warned them to keep low-key at KL Tower and not to wear Sibu T-shirts at KL Tower. Other Sibu participants were told they would not be banned but it would be looked on negatively (or words to that effect) if they went to Sibu. And some Sibu BASE jump participants were outright banned from KL Tower BASE Jump, being given the reason that KL Tower was banning Sibu participants.

Tower management insisted that Avery must have made it all up himself and agreed to call Avery into the meeting to get to the bottom of it all. But they wanted to talk to him first in private, and then resume the meeting later in the afternoon. Minutes after Gary is the meeting he received a message from KL Tower Events Manager Mohd Dzulfiqhary Bin Ibrahim stating that Avery refused to face him. It is uncertain if Avery’s refusal was true. It was true, it was the one chance KL Tower management had to clear up the matter which they were strongly threatening to prosecute Gary for exposing, but they suddenly had no desire to pursue it. It would have been too much of a sticky situation for their new KL Tower BASE Jumping organise to come clean and agreed that he actually sent the messages, and possibly lie one way or the other KL Tower manager put him up to it or not. And KL Tower managers wanted to vindicate Gary, for exposing the disgrace that was happening at KL Tower. The only good evidence available that it was in fact KL Tower management who requested the banning of Sibu participants, is a statement from another event contractor who had questioned KL Tower Chief Project Officer, Mr Affandi Abdullah about it. Affandi had informed the contractor that Avery had refused to go ahead with the ban, which was in line with what Avery told some of the Sibu BASE jump participants. Gary questioned Avery about the requested the ban when he saw him several months later, but Avery refused to give anyone up due to the code of silence he learnt from several recent years in prison. Both Avery and KL Tower management would continue to protect each other.