After 17 years of participating in and organising the KL Tower BASE jumping event, completing 925 BASE jumps from KL Tower, I was finally dismissed from the event after neutralising the insistent negligence of new KL Tower managers and their event contractor Aziz Ahmad that always led to preventable accidents each year. Standing up to their new force marketing practices for BASE jumpers families which resulted in a mass case of food poisoning for participants and their families, destroying their holidays within a couple of day, was also a contributing factor. KL Tower do not force the same things on their general visitors, so why do they treat BASE jumpers families so badly? Previously participant's families and personal crew were treated very well.

I stamped out Aziz's practice of bringing new novice BASE jumpers to the event after 2011. But Aziz's lax attitude towards participant safety continued to be a problem for the event with him always providing event safety crew that had no knowledge, skills, or training. They would often obliviously encourage safety breaches which always led to serious accidents and injuries. Aziz's event safety crew would freely admit that they had no knowledge about BASE jumping and were not there to provide any level of safety or guidance for the event. It was a problem we tried to have rectified for many years, but each year the problem kept on getting worse. It became a more significant problem in later years once the launch point level changed with a glass fence installed around the perimeter, and a ramp launch point and other novelty launch points were added. BASE jumps then had less of an opportunity the study the wind and how it affected the jumps before them, so they became more reliant on event safety crew that actually had zero knowledge. The event manager from CD Events also tried to rectify the issue over a few years, but each year he was forced by managers higher up to hire Aziz to provide unacceptable event safety crew. Every year KL Tower management resisted our push to provide capable volunteer crew that could help provide a minimum level of safety at the event. We did not care if all event funding still had to be channelled to Aziz, we just wanted a smooth running event where we could prevent many of the horrific injuries.

The 2016 event was a step worse in any other. With a non-responsive safety crew in the landing area, the event started off with no wind indicators in the landing area. While the wind direction looked obvious, it turned out to be turbulent and swirling in the landing area. Aziz Ahmad would initially acknowledge requests to get his crew to put up wind indicators, but it was never actioned. Aziz’s safety crew would also not radio up any warnings that people were crashing in all over the place. After radioing down many desperate pleas, Aziz would finally respond that it was not his safety crew’s problem to rectify the safety issues in the landing area. They again seem to be paid to just be spectators are at the event, and provide zero support. On the second day once Aziz’s crew were ordered to be responsive to radio all calls, they just started blocking all radio communications between the different launch points and giving false clearances to jump. It created the dangerous potential of the different groups colliding after opening of parachutes, particularly when coming into land.
Mass food poisoning from food provided by KL Tower also took hold of most participants and their families during the event, which turned it into a dreadful and dangerous event.

In the end our only option to step up event safety to a minimum expected level and start to eliminate many of the re-occurring preventable accidents, was to train knowledgeable volunteers to work in place of Aziz’s so-called safety crew. Once this was done in 2017, it had the desired effect of eliminating tower strikes from the event will. There was also a great reduction in other incidents, and a flow of the event was much smoother. Aziz would still be hired in 2017 to provide safety crew. We still needed some of them to make up for the shortfall in volunteers we had. But Aziz’s crew would turn up at the launch point of the beginning of the event and again state that they had no knowledge or instructions other than to just show up there. They then declined my offer to learn from our volunteers what they needed to do to become useful, and disappeared for the rest of the event.

In the past KL Tower had put a lot of effort into being very proactive with many of the less significant safety issues. It was not understandable why they would always totally ignore the most significant safety issue and insist on setting up their event in a manner that would always ensure there were many preventable accidents that often resulted in participants being seriously injured.

In 2018 they replace me with relative novice organisers who had very limited recent experience at KL Tower, to bring back a record number of tower strikes to the event. KL Tower managers were so upset with me that they requested their new organiser ban anyone going to the Sibu BASE jumping that I organised. Once I publicly exposed this KL Tower managers threatened legal prosecution for tarnishing their image. They demanded I publish a public apology. I demanded that they make a public apology for the spiteful way an icon of Malaysia (or their new representative) wanted to destroy the holidays of many international tourists to Malaysia.

I have no regrets forcefully stepping up event safety towards the minimum expected level. I certainly could not go on organising the event with increasing levels of insistent negligence of Aziz Ahmad and the new KL Tower managers. I have enjoyed the 2100+ building display BASE jumps I have done throughout Malaysia, including 925 BASE jumps from KL Tower. One of my highlights was setting a world record at the end of 2005 for personal completing 133 BASE jumps in 24 hours. I thank all the past KL Tower management for the wonderful opportunities that they have given me to become a world leader in building display BASE jumping. Hopefully in the future there will be again much more responsible managers at KL Tower and I can come back there.

This website will remain as a history of the event. To counteract the irresponsibility of KL Tower managers who have eliminated the wealth of safety knowledge accumulated about the event, I will add articles in the future about common mistakes and levels of complacency that lead to various accidents, so future BASE jumpers can continue to learn from the past rather than rediscover the issues the hard way.