"10 seconds left to live": Skydive survivor recalls horror moment
Young Aussie Emma Carey has recalled the gut-wrenching moment she realised she only had “10 seconds left to live” during a freak skydiving accident that happened nine years ago.
Emma Carey, now almost 29, is lucky to be alive after her parachute became tangled and then strangled her instructor during a tandem skydive. The pair fell 14,000ft out of the sky.
The accident unfortunately went down on the fifth day of her three-month long overseas trip when she decided to skydive in Switzerland alongside her best friend. Emma realised something was seriously wrong when she spotted the parachute flapping out in front of her rather than in the air above. When the parachute was finally deployed it became tangled with the strings of the safety chute and choked her instructor, causing him to pass out almost instantly.
“I remember thinking, oh my god Jemma will have to find me on the ground, I remember thinking about my family and the main thing I remember feeling is regret for not embracing myself fully up until that point” she shared.
The then-20-year-old copped the brunt of the fall, landing facedown with the instructor on top of her. Quickly trying to roll him off, she became distraught realising she couldn’t feel anything from the waist down. Ms Carey was rushed to hospital where surgeons operated on her back and pelvis. Her spine was broken in two places, rendering her a paraplegic.
After recovering from surgery, she was reunited with her family and friends in Australia where she started rehabilitation. By some miracle, she slowly but surely began to get the feeling back in her legs and eventually learned to walk, albeit with a small limp.
However, Ms Carey has remained positive throughout the ordeal and now looks at the terrifying moment she felt sure she was going to die as a “rebirth”.
“I know how it feels. To think I only have 10 seconds left to live and now I get the rest of my life, whatever that is, so I think it's actually really nice for me to have that memory because it helps to keep me grateful,” she said.
Carey has written a book “the girl who fell from the sky” detailing the day her life was changed forever.
It has been nine years since the shocking incident and little did she know, nine years later she would be where she is today.
Image: Nine