Trying To Educate BASE Jumpers How To Prevent KL Tower Strikes And Other Building Strikes
By Gary Cunningham
Trying to educate BASE jumpers about making the extra effort to ensure that no tower strikes happen at the annual KL Tower BASE jumping event was always a challenging task.
Despite education given to BASE jumpers about the serious problem of tower strikes and the frequency that they happen, BASE jumper’s core belief and feeling that it should be almost impossible to hit such a massively overhanging tower remained dominant. The basic standard safety precautions everyone was asked to take to ensure there were no tower strikes at this high-profile BASE jumping event continued to be looked upon by many as overly cautious and totally unnecessary. But every year one or more BASE jumpers would find out the hard way how easy it was to hit KL Tower when they failed to take the standard safety precautions.
We learnt over the history of the event that there were many influential factors in the event atmosphere that lured even the best-intentioned and most safety-conscious BASE jumpers to succumb to complacency and breach event safety guidelines. Each of the influential factors needed to be addressed individually if we wanted to eliminate tower strikes from the event and prevent the horrific injuries that often resulted.
The High Priority To Eliminate Tower Strikes And Other Building Strikes
With many BASE jumpers seriously injured slamming into KL Tower over the years, eliminating tower strikes was a high priority. It became an even higher priority in 2014 after the KL Tower Chief Project Officer gave me a lengthy lecture before the event, explaining in detail how bad the image of a tower strike was for KL Tower and its parent company Telekom Malaysia.
This lecture followed a disastrous run of building strikes during the previous two weeks at BASE jumping events in Sabah and Sibu. We had just managed to reopen the Sabah Foundation Building after six years of not being welcome back due to the poor conduct of previous Malaysian event organisers. But we only managed to permanently shut it down again after 3 people hit the building, causing significant damage.
The first person who hit it smashed a non-tempered glass window. I had declined the person’s application to participate in the event due to his lack of experience, but when he showed up there anyway, local co-organiser Aziz Ahmad insisted on undermining the integrity of the event against strong advice and let him jump. A couple of years prior I had stamped out Aziz’s negligent practice of bringing people with little or no BASE jumping experience to other events, as they had always ended up crashing into buildings or getting hurt in other ways. It had already played a part in getting other buildings shut down and it was only a matter of time before he got another beginner killed. But Aziz had still not learnt. With no care or respect for his obligation to our event hosts to maintain reasonable standards for the event, Aziz resumed his level of negligence which had the same expected result.
We had long seen that when any event personnel showed a lack of care, the attitude is soon adopted by many BASE jumpers. It becomes an infectious environment where complacency is highly contagious and quickly spreads. BASE jumpers soon cut loose in their jumping with the adopted carefree attitude, and it usually does not take long before the accidents start happening. This set the scene for more building strikes in Sabah. At one stage Aziz’s new event partner hassled me for not jumping into a headwind where VIPs were situated. While I continued to jump from the safest point of the building with regard to the wind, it seems others were being encouraged by local organisers to breach the safety guidelines.
After the first building strike damaged part of the building, the building managers were gracious enough to allow jumping to continue. But this turned out to be quite detrimental. The third person who hit the building breached our safety guidelines, jumping into a light headwind for reasons he felt were justified. He smashed a larger window on impact. Large pieces of glass then fell down and smashed a couple of more large windows on the bottom skirt of the building. The inside building foyer, and the outside of the building, were showered with glass shards. The BASE jumper was cut wide open, but fortunately, no one else was injured. The building was left with a RM30000 repair bill and BASE jumping was never again welcome there.
A few days later there were a couple more unfortunate building strikes in Sibu. One person ended up as front-page news hanging up on the building, and the other resulted in broken bones.
The series of building strikes at the two buildings was a bad look for BASE jumping events. Much more effort was obviously required in the areas of having responsible organisers, maintaining event standards, better education of BASE jumpers, and stronger enforcement of safety guidelines.
Of extra concern was another building display jump done before the KL Tower event at the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development building in Putrajaya. It was set up by novice Malaysian BASE jumper Idros Yusop, who was promoting himself as the prime organiser of all Malaysian BASE jumping events despite Sibu officials and KL Tower managers wanting no involvement with him. Unknown to everyone until the Sabah event had started, Aziz had invited Idros to the Sabah and Sibu events to pose as the event organiser. Idros had previously been BASE organiser for the KL Tower event series in 2009 and 2010. But like Aziz, he had been promoted well beyond his level of experience and served purely as a puppet and a “yes man” for previous KL Tower managers, rather than someone with knowledge who could responsibly guide them. During this time he followed orders to decay all event standards and safety measures. Slashing event entry requirements to effectively zero predictably brought the first BASE jumping fatality to Malaysia in 2010. I wanted no part of his very naïve and negligent organising style as we had already learnt the very harsh lessons of being lured into accepting this as standard practice. When Idros previously took control of events I eventually gave up warning him about the negligent set-up of their events, and the soon expected results, as it was just ignored. I succumbed to just adopting the Malaysian carefree attitude like everyone else. It did not take long to be bought back to reality with my predictions immediately proving to be deadly accurate. With the persisting raw emotion of a novice BASE jumper fatally impacting at high-speed meters away from me at his next event, I vowed to stamp out negligent Malaysian event practices. It was also a huge wake-up call and a shocking eye-opening experience for a new KL Tower CEO, who had to deal with a deceased BASE jumper when they were just a couple of weeks into the job. The new CEO immediately tried to put BASE jumping back on a responsible path, but some long-term event contractors never learnt. As soon as another new KL Tower CEO came along in 2014, the rogue event contractors saw it as their opportunity to again bring back their level of negligence to Malaysian BASE jumping events.
At the display jump in Putrajaya in 2014, we were rushed into the building without a chance to have a good look around and properly assess the building and surroundings. In the quick glance we had, it looked like a deceptively easy jump to most people, but it stood out to me as a very deadly building to hit with its horizontal fins. It also had a potential turbulent area from the feature sticking out. Knowing the frequency that building strikes happen, particularly at poorly set up events, I calculated that this building would kill within about 500 jumps done off it (which is just half a day of jumping at some events). It was another prediction and expectation that proved to be deadly accurate in future years when jumping resumed there. Idros gave no briefing to highlight the potential dangers of this building as he probably had no idea himself. At the launch point, Idros was rushing BASE jumpers to jump off into a direct headwind when his VIPs arrived to watch the jumping. This always invites a building strike. He seemed naïvely very keen to quickly achieve another BASE jumping death in Malaysia, totally oblivious of any safety issues.
It was an unexpected turn of events with Aziz and Idros back in full force to derail the efforts of creating responsible and sustainable BASE jumping events. They had never learnt the art of BASE jumping and were stuck in the mindset of "luck jumping". Jumping without the knowledge to avoid common issues, or the trained skills to deal with the inevitable issues, they relied on pure luck for all the expected issues to never happen. This is how they encouraged everyone to jump, and how they run BASE jumping events. Their lack of knowledge and caution usually accelerated the chance of incidents happening. As again demonstrated by the incidents at the 2014 events, and demonstrated by the long history of carnage and a death in Malaysia, it never takes too long for luck to run out. Aziz knew that better than anyone with his own incidents he had over his very small number of BASE jumps and inadequate training.
It is uncertain what awareness KL Tower managers had of the chaos and carnage in the 2 weeks prior to the 2014 KL Tower event. Their heightened level of concern about tower strikes appeared to come after executives of their parent company Telekom Malaysia were hassled by the media at a press conference in the lead up to the event. The media had been focused on a very serious tower strike where there was a greatly delayed rescue that they still remembered from a couple of years earlier. Many BASE jumpers like to believe the myth that no one cares about the accidents and that they are quickly forgotten about, but that was again being shown to be not entirely true. Novice event organisers often try to use this common myth to excuse their negligent setup, and BASE jumpers also try to use it to excuse breaching safety guidelines.
Of course, we wanted to do everything to try to prevent BASE jumpers from getting injured, and not give KL Tower a bad image. However, at times not all KL Tower management, event contractors, or BASE jumpers were committed to achieving this important goal. We had seen a lot and leant a lot about tower strikes and their prevention over many years, but there were still some lessons to be learnt.
Failure To Eliminate Tower Strikes In 2014 And The Lessons Learnt
Despite the increased desire to prevent tower strikes from happening at the 2014 event, we failed badly. A record 3 BASE jumpers slammed into the tower shaft on the last morning of the event. Each sustained a broken bone. One of them sustained multiple broken bones, was knocked unconscious, and crash-landed at the top of a very tall tree in the middle of Bukit Nanas Forest Reserve. It was a significant and lengthy rescue operation.
The series of tower strikes in 2014 was yet another learning opportunity about the levels of complacency we all still had. I noted that even I still had a subtle level of complacency which was a factor in allowing the most serious tower strike to happen. In particular, it was a lesson about everyone’s desire and complacency to keep on jumping from the launch point ramp when the wind was starting to turn back towards the tower at a shallow angle. Theorising and wishful thinking that the cross-component of the wind would still push everyone who had a major off heading opening past the side of the tower shaft proved to be not quite correct. The wind helped carry one person out to the side of the tower shaft, but that was where he slammed into the tower hard and was knocked unconscious. We learnt that the ramp, which was a relatively new feature of the event, coupled with the addition of a newly installed glass fence around the rim of the open deck level, had changed the dynamics of the launch point which led to an overall decay in event safety for many different reasons. It needed to be managed much better by crew who had a high level of knowledge.
Continued Failure To Prevent Tower Strikes In 2015
The record number of tower strikes resulting in horrific injuries, and the lecture I had received from KL Tower management before the event, only created a greater level of determination to eliminate tower strikes from the event the following year in 2015. We had practically seen everything that leads to tower strikes happening every year. It should have been just a matter of ensuring all the knowledge we had learnt was applied to prevent them. However, the 2015 event became another lesson on just how much extra effort was required to curve the behaviours and complacency which continued to lead to tower strikes happening. This included the behaviours of event management, event safety contractors, and BASE jumpers, who all seemed keen to prove that the known issues experienced every year without fail were not a real problem. It stood out this particular year the level of complacency and denial that many BASE jumpers had was on the rise.
Failure To Educate All BASE Jumpers In 2015
As jumping was about to start on the first morning of the 2015 event, it quickly became evident that I had failed to get through to all BASE jumpers during the safety briefing about the appropriate level of caution we expected everyone to take to ensure tower strikes were eliminated from the event. With a headwind on the main ramp, one of the participants announced to me that it was ok to jump into a headwind as they did it the previous year without a problem. He seemed oblivious about the 3 people that did not get away with it the previous year, who all received horrific injuries from slamming into the tower. These tower strikes were highlighted in the safety briefing among many others.
It was clear that much more work needed to be done on the event safety briefings to try to get the message through to a larger number of participants about going to the extra effort to eliminate tower strikes from the event. One of the very few things we asked of BASE jumpers was to never jump into any kind of headwind. Every year without fail, when BASE jumpers started jumping into headwinds, one or more BASE jumpers would hit the tower. This included very light headwinds, and wind blowing back towards the tower at a shallow angle, which is when most of tower strikes occurred. Strictly following the guideline not to jump into any type of headwind would eliminate the majority of tower strikes, as long as the other safety precautions such as good entry requirements and good participant education were maintained.
Attempts To Educate BASE jumpers At Safety Briefings
The compulsory safety briefing was conducted for all participants at the start of every KL Tower BASE jumping event. It was aimed at arming BASE jumpers with the knowledge we had learnt over the history of the event about all the common issues and mistakes people have made, to give them the best possible chance of making it through the event without incident. I always saw the safety briefing as the most important part of the event, as it was the last chance to try to educate BASE jumpers and give them a final detailed reminder of all the potential issues before jumping started. If what BASE jumpers learnt or were reminded about at the safety briefing did not save them from having an accident at the event, it likely saved some of them from accidents in their future jumping.
The safety briefing included a section about tower strikes. Graphic videos were shown of all the tower strikes that had happened at KL Tower every year, along with details of many of the resulting horrific injuries. The aim was to give BASE jumpers an idea of how real the threat of tower strikes was at this massively overhanging tower, and how easily they can happen. It would hopefully get all BASE jumpers to start thinking about maximising the precautions they take to avoid a tower strike on every jump they do.
One event participant explained to me that when they saw the first couple of videos of tower strikes they got the basic idea that a tower strike could happen. But it was not until more videos were shown of tower strike, after tower strike, after tower strike, that they realised how real it was and that it was almost guaranteed to happen at each event if maximum safety precautions were not maintained. So I know at least some people were paying attention to the safety briefing.
One problem with the safety briefings is that not everyone understands English well, so not everyone gets a full understanding of what is presented. However, the briefings are made as visual as possible so participants can see with their own eyes everything that has gone wrong in the past and the mistakes that have been made.
Overall, safety briefings were reported to have the desired effect on many people. Participants would often tell me that their friends came to the event with many wild ideas about the radical things they were going to try. But after seeing all the incidents shown in the briefings, they had a new understanding and greatly toned down their radical and overly optimistic ideas to operate with a level of caution more acceptable for this high profile BASE jumping event.
While the safety briefing had a positive effect on many participants, there were always some who either fail to understand the basic concepts, or they disregarded them altogether. Many BASE jumpers believed that the potential issues would never happen to them, or that they could always deal with them. But at every event some would find out how wrong they were.
Other Steps Required To Prevent Tower Strikes And Where It Failed
A good safety briefing is only one of many steps required to help prevent tower strikes and other known issues. Setting up the event in a responsible manner starts with setting good experience requirements. Thorough applicant screening should be done by highly experienced BASE jumpers to ensure all participants have reasonable knowledge, experience, and skills to be able to jump without incident and be able to deal with the inevitable issues.
There was a period when Aziz Ahmad insisted on undermining event standards and integrity by bringing people who had little or no BASE jumping experience to the event so they could try "luck jumping". Undesirable results were always guaranteed. After one of Aziz’s “luck jumpers” crashed into the Telekom Malaysia headquarters building for most of the way down, KL Tower managers strangely thought it was a good idea to expand "luck jumping" on a wider scale for a couple of years until they achieved the guaranteed result of the death of a beginner. Preventing some of the tower strikes from KL Tower and some of the building strikes from other Malaysian events, and most certainly a future death, was a matter of stamping out this negligent practice.
The education given to all participants involved really needs to start well before the event so that the knowledge is embedded in their minds. We saw over the years that BASE jumpers start to become very complacent at the event after doing just a few jumps. They soon forget about many issues which were presented during a 2-hour safety briefing the day before the event, and start breaching event safety guidelines.
The Importance Of Well-Trained And Knowledgeable Safety Crew
The most important and final line in defence against BASE jumper complacency, and maintaining the safety guidelines to prevent tower strikes, is having a good safety crew. To prevent tower strikes the safety crew should ensure that BASE jumpers only jump from a safe spot around the rim with regards to the wind. A good safety crew should have a good understanding of what they are seeing and be able to keep BASE jumpers well-informed of the wind they see at opening height and at the landing areas. They should be able to inform BASE jumpers of any issues other BASE jumpers have recently been experiencing with the wind, and advise of the best flight paths, or flight paths to avoid in the prevailing conditions.
This was always the one area where the event was let down. The biggest influential factor that led BASE jumpers to breach safety guidelines and crash into KL Tower every year was actually the so-called event safety crew who often directed BASE jumpers to jump into headwinds. BASE jumpers already had complacency with their core belief that it should be almost impossible to hit such an overhanging tower. They gained an extra false sense of security when the event safety crew would naïvely direct them to jump into a headwind. BASE jumpers just blindly followed the unsafe directions of the safety crew. It instantly reversed all education given to BASE jumpers about how to avoid tower strikes, and guaranteed that one or more BASE jumpers would crash into KL Tower every year.
Yes, that is right. Part of the high entry fees that BASE jumpers were paying went towards hiring unsuitable event contractors and so-called safety crew who would ensure that some BASE jumpers would get seriously injured every year slamming into KL Tower.
Aziz Ahmad had the monopoly on providing event crew every year. He was well-meaning in the early years, but as knowledge slowly increased with many incidents that happened, it stood out that what Aziz could provide for the event in the form safety crew was totally inadequate. Both Aziz and his safety crew would state that they have no knowledge about BASE jumping and are not there to provide any level of guidance or safety. So it was not certain what they were being paid to do, other than continue to be a huge liability for event safety and ensure that BASE jumpers continue to have serious accidents. The supply of crew who had no knowledge skills or training became a rort of the event for Aziz.
The detrimental effect that an inadequate safety crew had was overlooked for several years, as it was expected that BASE jumpers could look after their own safety. With many accidents continuing to happen, it obviously was an unrealistic expectation. The dynamics and atmosphere of the event left BASE jumpers to quickly develop a lax attitude towards their safety and start doing crazy things. The problem was only exacerbated by a so-called safety crew naïvely directing them to breach safety guidelines.
There was no chance of eliminating tower strikes and many other incidents from the event until we had a knowledgeable and capable event crew who could be an asset to the event in accident prevention. The untrained safety crew provided by Aziz every year would only continue to naïvely incite many incidents.
After an incident in 2012 which again highlighted one of the many issues of the so-called safety crew, we started to push harder to get capable crew who would not be a safety liability to the event. A well-meaning BASE jumper had set up to jump at the ideal spot into a crosswind. But being a long way from the launch point coordinator, who was situated in a direct headwind, he had to move further upwind to get clearance to jump. With the complacency of the safety crew guiding everyone to jump into a headwind, he jumped from the upwind side of the tower. He had a major off-heading opening and the headwind helped to accelerate him into the tower. He required a US$6000 operation in Kuala Lumpur to screw his broken fibula back together. If we had a capable crew that followed the safety guidelines then this and many other incidents would have never happened.
At the end of the 2012 event, the event manager from the local event management company tasked with organising the event, agreed in future to replace the crew provided by Aziz with crew that I could hand pick and train myself. It was suggested that even if we had to fly in a few people, it would be the same cost as what Aziz was being paid for his unacceptable service. However this never happened, and Aziz continued to be given more chances year after year as the problem slowly became worse.
Defiant Event Safety Contractor Ensures More Tower Strikes In 2015
Knowing that Aziz could not and would not train his crew to a satisfactory level leading up to the 2015 event, I at least wrote some detailed instructions for them to follow. These instructions highlighted not to allow anyone to jump into a headwind. However, Aziz refused to pass these instructions on to his crew.
After the first tower strike happened, Aziz was again reminded to ensure that his crew did not direct anyone to jump into headwinds. But he had no interest in maintaining safety guidelines and remained defiant. With an attitude of “No one cares, so why should I”, he clearly was no longer suitable to be involved with managing any areas of responsibility for the event. Aziz was normally a super helpful person, but his attitude had started to decay with growing levels of resentment and defiance in the recent years as I and the event manager from the local event management company started to clamp down and try to rectify his many areas of negligence. It was also the second year in a row that Aziz failed to properly coordinate between the main launch point and rope swing. This was another serious potential risk that we could not trust Aziz with which needed to be rectified.
The following day Aziz’s safety crew continued to direct BASE jumpers to jump into headwinds, oblivious or carefree of the fact that it was guaranteed to result in someone slamming into the tower.
With a high level of complacency, BASE jumpers would just follow the unsafe directions of the untrained event safety crew and jump into a headwind. This time it resulted in a BASE jumper ending up lying unconscious on the ground floor roof after he impacted the tower several times.
Fortunately, Bomba rescue were very tuned to the event chaos and carnage by this time, knowing exactly where to place their men. They were there with the unconscious BASE jumper just 4 seconds after he impacted on the roof. Bomba rescue stood out as a highly professional organisation that put a lot of effort into learning and training after they got caught out with a greatly delayed rescue 3 years prior when KL Tower staff took them to the wrong level.
Why Was The Negligence Allowed to Continue?
It certainly made no sense that KL Tower managers continued to make decisions that would sabotage the safety of visitors to their tower. I am sure some of the managers would be horrified if they realised the full gravity of the decisions that they were making.
KL Tower had mostly been (or at least attempted to be) a very professional organisation. They put a lot of effort and money into trying to help us maximise event safety. However, many of their efforts were misguided, focusing on things of little importance, and totally neglecting the most critical issues such as the event safety crew. While front-line event management knew there was a problem and tried to fix it, upper management was most likely oblivious to how bad the situation had become. Aziz just had to assure them that there were no issues and event funds would continue to be channelled to him. Upper management often made very misinformed or misguided decisions for the event as they really had little understanding about BASE jumping, and there was never any shortage of "yes-men" happy to misguide them.
New KL Tower managers who came along in later years appeared to simply not care and seemed to have no sense of the high risks or their expected a duty of care. They appeared to be naïvely determined to ensure tower strikes continued with preconceived ideas that there were no safety issues with BASE jumping. It is uncertain how they arrived at having this false sense of security when there had been a long history of incidents that demonstrated all the issues, and even a death. They were trapped in the mindset of wanting to believe there were no issues, just the same way many BASE jumpers want to believe that no one will crash into KL Tower when jumping into a headwind despite it happening every year.
Rising Complacency Led To Record BASE Jumping Deaths In 2016
The rising level of complacency, and denial that all the known issues would ever eventuate, had become a worldwide problem in BASE jumping.
Sadly KL Tower event participants did not learn the level of caution we tried to instil in them. With the event safety crew encouraging them to neglect basic safety precautions, they only learnt to have a false sense of security “luck jumping”. They saw at the event that most people can get away with “luck jumping” for short while. But luck soon ran out for 1 in every 20 KL Tower BASE Jump 2015 participants, who died while BASE jumping within the following 12 months. This totalled 5 out of 100 participants. It was a record number of BASE jumping deaths for KL Tower participants within the 12 months following the event.
Ironically, after putting a lot of effort into trying to stop the complacency of BASE jumpers, I fell victim to my own level of complacency with an old set of gear early in 2016 and almost joined the death count. I was lucky to survive a gear failure on opening which immediately released one side of the parachute. Spiralling into the concrete ground below with half a parachute I was left with a shattered spine, shattered femur, a few other broken bones and a punctured lung. These injuries put me out of BASE jumping for almost 3 years.
The problem of complacency had become so bad in BASE jumping that leading up to the 2016 KL Tower event there was an average of one BASE jumping death in the world every 2 days during the month before the event. It totalled 15 BASE jumping deaths in August 2016.
The Further Decay Of Event Safety With New KL Tower Management In 2016
The unprecedented number of BASE jumping deaths one month before the event was a very concerning situation. Much greater effort needed to be made to stem the growing level of complacency at the KL Tower BASE jumping event, and crush the negligence of local event contractors that ensured easily preventable accidents would continue to happen every year. But KL Tower management did not appear to share the same concerns.
The great determination I had to step up event safety to at least the minimum expected level and finally eliminate tower strikes from the event, was extra motivation to try to recover enough from my own significant injuries to make it to the event. By the time of the event, it was still very painful just to stand up, but at least I could kind of walk in a painful fashion once I got going. This made it a difficult event, but it would become much more difficult with an escalation of the normal event chaos, and extra levels of defiance from unsuitable event contractors.
Plans to hire a capable safety crew were again foiled, when the event manager from the local event management company informed me that Aziz Ahmad would again be hired to provide safety crew. He gave me what he knew to be false assurances that Aziz would ensure that there were no safety breaches. All he could say was his hands were tied as someone much higher up had ordered that Aziz be rehired. Aziz had gone from a known liability that KL Tower managers wanted to expel from the event a few years prior, to now being a protected person. Whoever was making these decisions was oblivious to just how much they were sabotaging event safety.
Since all funding was being channelled to Aziz, the next plan was to try to get knowledgeable and capable volunteers who could work alongside, or if need be, over the top of Aziz’s crew to do the jobs that Aziz’s crew could not or would not do. The volunteer crew would be made up of the many knowledgeable family members and friends that BASE jumpers often brought to the event. Many of them were well-tuned to BASE jumping. The main goals were simply to stop BASE jumpers from jumping into any type of headwind, and properly and efficiently coordinate between the main launch point and rope swing. But KL Tower management foiled this plan by implementing new force marketing extortion practices for BASE jumper’s families and friends, driving many of them away. So I amended the safety briefings to inform all participants to not follow any unsafe instructions given by the event safety crew.
Leading up to the event, a new Head of Events and Sponsorship was appointed at KL Tower, Mohd Dzulfiqhary Ibrahim. With every new KL Tower manager comes a high level of naivety about the high risks of BASE jumping. The learning curve starts again at zero. When I met the new manager and I warned him that the event was being organised in a negligent manner, he seemed very dismissive of it. It was an instant red flag within minutes of meeting him. It became clear to me that he would be of no help to rectify the problems. Being very new to KL Tower I could not expect much of him. The next red flag came after a small group of BASE jumpers were taken to a promotional function at City Hall, which was squeezed in just before a long day of all important safety briefings. Instead of being rushed back to KL Tower after the function where all other BASE jumpers were waiting for the safety briefing to start, we were suddenly being taken on a long detour. It turned out that they thought it might be nice to take us on a city tour, that most of us had already seen, instead of conducting the safety briefing. More red flags appeared after the ramp covering failed at the start of the event, sending BASE jumpers tumbling off the edge. Other BASE jumpers pointed out how carefree the new KL Tower manager appeared to be when I explained to him how easily it could have led to serious injury or death. As the event went on more installed infrastructure failed, which also could have easily resulted in serious injury or death.
I actually managed to get one capable volunteer who could help me at the launch point, despite KL Tower managers trying to inhibit this. Being unable to jump myself that year due to severe injuries I sustained earlier in the year, I could at least strongly supervise the launch point for as long as my broken body could hold out. But there were still major problems with Aziz’s event safety crew, with Aziz becoming more defiant than ever. When Aziz Ahmad radioed up clearance for jumping to start there were no wind indicators in the landing area. This was not an initial concern as the wind direction seemed obvious, and it was expected that Aziz’s ground crew would put up wind indicators within minutes. But BASE jumpers immediately started crashing in everywhere with unseen turbulent ground wind, which was very unusual first thing in the morning. Aziz’s ground crew went into radio silence for the whole day, with no feedback of the issues happening in the landing area, and ignoring our desperate pleas to put up wind indicators. It was clear we had zero support from the ground crew, so a BASE jumper’s partner volunteered to take a small flag we had at the launch point down to the landing area and put it up. But this turned out to be not so visible from a distance. After a long period, Aziz eventually responded on the radio to our pleas to put up better wind indicators, stating that it was not his crew’s problem. Eventually, I had to leave my post at the launch point and try to hobble down to the landing area myself with my broken spine and femur, and climb up a pole to put up better wind indicators myself. As I arrived in the landing area BASE jumpers were continuing to crash in everywhere in the turbulent wind. One landing on his head, and another ploughed into the barb wire fence.
On second day event management ordered Aziz to get his crew to respond to all radio calls. But they started responding to communications between the main launch point and the rope swing, radioing up force clearances for the rope swing to jump.
It was almost like Aziz was purposely trying to sabotage event safety in protest of my attempts to get a capable crew. Aziz would explain all the issues as misunderstandings, but these issues do not happen with capable and reliable well-trained crew.
My one trainee volunteer and I managed the main launch point and rope swing for the first two days until we were both taken out by severe food poisoning. I became very delirious for a period of time before I started vomiting everywhere. It turned out that half of the BASE jumpers and their families and personal crew were also taken out by food poisoning from the food provided by KL Tower. As the food poisoning took hold, we saw many normally switched-on BASE jumpers making poor decisions and crashing in, or being forgetful in other critical tasks such as properly securing their safety equipment. So the slightly delirious state they were left in from the food poisoning, mixed with BASE jumping, was a potentially life-threatening situation. The mass case of food poisoning destroyed many people’s event and holiday after two days, with no apologies or refunds given.
Another concerning issue that happened at the event was that Bomba rescue was delayed from rescuing a BASE jumper precariously hanging from a tree, who could fall to serious injury or death at any second. The Bomba rescue emergency vehicle was stopped at the boom gate at KL Tower while the boom gate operator insisted that they pay a fee to travel 50 meters further down the road to perform the rescue. Even the local event management company was quite shocked at this, stating that nowhere else in the world is an emergency vehicle stopped from performing a life-saving rescue like that. It was a representation of what we were left feeling the new KL Tower management were all about, with no interest in the safety or well-being of visitors to KL Tower.
When BASE jumpers are spending a lot of money to fly from around the world to Malaysia, and paying a huge entry fee for the privilege of promoting KL Tower around the world, they expect much better than what they got. It was far from the usual standards of past KL Tower management.
It was certainly a bad start for the new KL Tower Head of Events and Sponsorship. He stood out as quite inept when dealing with high-risk events. But being new, I gave him the benefit of doubt and I expected vast improvements the following year.
Lessons Of A Tower Strike Jumping From The Crane In 2016
Despite the extra chaos, we almost had an event with no tower strikes in 2016. However, there was one tower strike after someone jumped from the crane into a light headwind. With the crane extending out slightly further than the tower head, it is easy to be complacent about jumping from it into light headwinds. But this incident showed that is still easily possible to hit the tower shaft after jumping from the crane in a light headwind. The crane does not actually extend out too much further than the rim of the tower. It took just under 3 seconds from opening until impact with the tower shaft. This is the same time it takes from opening until impact when jumping in a light headwind from the tower head.
If we were serious about eliminating tower strikes from the event, in future we needed to strongly educate BASE jumpers about this and ensure we had a knowledgeable and capable event crew to forcibly stop anyone from jumping the crane in a light headwind.
Sadly, in later years when new KL Tower management went into full negligent mode and removed all knowledge from the event, tower strikes would continue to happen when jumping from the crane. The last one in 2019 resulted in severe injuries.
Finally Neutralising The Negligence Produces Zero Tower Strikes In 2017
2017 was finally the year that we successfully eliminated tower strikes from the event. We also managed a great reduction in other common incidents. It was simply a matter of neutralising the negligence of the new KL Tower management and rogue event contractors, and then applying all knowledge that we had learnt over the history of the event.
To ensure I made it to the event and be able to supervise all operations, I had to delay much-needed spine surgery to remove failed hardware from my spine which had been scheduled to take place days before the event started. This made it another painful event, but I was very committed and driven to step up event safety to the minimum expected level.
The struggles to produce an acceptable BASE jumping event continued. The one ally I had in trying to rectify all the negligence was the event manager from the local event management company usually tasked with organising the event. But he was terminated and replaced with another local event management company where a family friend of Aziz’s worked. The new local event management company had no prior knowledge or experience with BASE jumping. The first thing they did was hire Aziz to provide safety crew for the event.
But this year I was determined to get a capable crew that I could train myself. It was no way acceptable to continue with the usual negligence. Since all funding for safety crew was again channelled to Aziz to provide an unacceptable service, I would again be left to call on volunteers. This led to a clash with the new KL Tower Head Of Events And Sponsorship. He was focused on continuing with his failed force marketing extortion practices for BASE jumper’s family and friends, that left everyone with severe food poisoning the previous year and destroyed their holiday after just two days. I was relying on using knowledgeable and capable family and friends that BASE jumpers brought to the event as volunteer event crew. They needed to be treated much better. KL Tower managers tried to inhibit the use of capable crew, then they tried severely restrict it. But this year I was not taking no for an answer. This was the year we were going to have an event with zero tower strikes, and start to step up event safety to the minimum expected level. It was time to stop the unnecessary severe injuries that often resulted from tower strikes.
Previous KL Tower management were people who always went out of their way to make us feel very welcome. They were happy for us to be there to promote KL Tower to the world. The new KL Tower management stood out as very different. This year was the first year I had heard BASE jumpers comment after the event that it stood out that KL Tower managers really did not want us there.
While it was a great achievement to finally eliminate tower strikes from the event, it was something that would not last. There would be very harsh consequences for neutralising the negligence of the new KL Tower management and rogue event contractors. The new KL Tower management stood out as very reckless and irresponsible people who were naively determined to take Malaysian BASE jumping back down the same dark path as a previous KL Tower CEO did from 2008-2010 where a death in Malaysian BASE jumping was guaranteed.
The Harsh Consequences Of Eliminating Tower Strikes From The KL Tower Base Jumping Event
Article Preview....
After BASE jumpers continued to crash into KL Tower every year throughout the history of the event, often ending up seriously injured, it was a great achievement to finally eliminate tower strikes from the event in 2017. We also achieve a great reduction in other common incidents. It was something that previous KL Tower managers would have highly appreciated. It should have been the first of many required improvements to step up event safety to the minimum expected level. But there would be harsh consequences for neutralising the negligence of naïve new KL Tower management and rogue event contractors. They were all in strong denial that there were any safety issues with the setup of their BASE jumping events, despite a long history of serious injury and a death at BASE jumping events organised by KL Tower.
With the new KL Tower management determined to eliminate all safety knowledge from the event, which they deemed was false, I was immediately dismissed from KL Tower events and run out of other Malaysian events that I organised. But the consequences would be much harsher for some. The new KL Tower management were naively determined to do everything known that would bring back a record number of tower strikes and set Malaysian BASE jumping up for another fatality. It was very clear that they would follow the same dark path as a previous KL Tower CEO did from 2008-2010 which expectedly resulted in the first Malaysian BASE jumping fatality.
Newly appointed KL Tower CEO Datuk Rozlan Mohamed, who had no previous experience in BASE jumping, was in such strong denial that there were no safety issues in BASE jumping, that he sent a threatening letter to me stating his intent to take legal action against me for publishing what he claimed was false information. There was no changing his preconceived ideas about BASE jumping which were far from reality. It is not certain how the new KL Tower CEO arrived at his strong beliefs, but there were no shortage of "yes men" happy to misguide him.
The new KL Tower management and their event contractors all exhibited the same behaviour as the new naïve and reckless BASE jumper that cannot be told and soon gets themselves seriously injured or killed. Except it was other people’s lives and well beings that KL Tower managers were sacrificing with their high level of ignorance.
The efforts of the new KL Tower management and their "yes-men" quickly achieved a return of a record number of tower strikes and it did not take long for the next Malaysian BASE jumping fatality to follow. It all unfolded in the same sequence of events and same timeframe as the first fatality in Malaysia, ticking the same boxes of naïvety and negligence every step of the way.
Their suppression of BASE jumping knowledge generated a cult following from novice BASE jumpers around the world who adopted the same level of denial. It was very successful in undoing all the work to try to educate BASE jumpers about all the known dangers and the high level of caution that should always be used. Insisting that none of the safety issues were real, these naïve BASE jumpers ridiculed all warnings about safety risks from the most experienced building event organiser in the world right up until the day that the expected fatality eventuated. Even after the fatality, the novice Malaysian BASE jumpers were seen to continue to chant in their messages that what they were doing with inadequate knowledge, skills and training was safe. Their false belief that they were knowledgeable and safe BASE jumpers continues.
There was no magic in the precision of all predictions made. Throughout the history of BASE jumping events in Malaysia, the same naïve and negligent practices have always resulted in the same horrific outcomes, within the same timeframes. Yet new KL Tower managers and novice BASE jumpers continuing to do the same things continued to believe they will achieve a different result.