NE Firefighters Pluck Skydiver from Tree

Aug. 29, 2018
A woman skydiving solo for the first time wound up stuck in a tree 70 feet above ground for three hours in Weeping Water before being rescued.

Aug. 29 -- Somewhere near Weeping Water, Nebraska, a tree is missing a few limbs today.

Thankfully, the skydiver who landed in that tree over the weekend is not.

Abbey Lacy, a nurse in Omaha, says she had no idea what she was about to get herself into when she took her first solo jump on Saturday afternoon. She’d jumped tandem several times before, but this time she alone was in charge.

“I landed in a tree about 70 feet in the air, where I remained for about 3 hours until rescue crews were able to get me down,” Lacy, 29, wrote on her Facebook page after her headline-making rescue.

“It was the most terrifying and painful thing that I’ve ever experienced.”

The jump went south when she lost radio contact with the person on the ground guiding her landing, she told the Omaha World-Herald.

“I panicked ‘cause I saw the tree line getting closer, and I braked and went down and I knew I was going to hit the tree,” she told the newspaper.

She landed more than six stories in the air, stuck among the limbs, only the parachute and a tangle of cords keeping her from plunging farther.

Lacy, a registered nurse at Methodist Hospital in Omaha, took quick stock.

“OK I’m hanging on to this tree. I’m not broken. I’m not bleeding. I’m fine,” was her first thought, she told WOWT in Omaha.

But getting her out of the tree wasn’t as easy as falling into it.

Three local fire departments, EMTs, a sheriff and police department — seven agencies in all — came to the scene, according to a Facebook post by the Plattsmouth Volunteer Fire Department.

Firefighters had to figure out how to get to her. They saw live power lines between them and Lacy, so workers from the Omaha Public Power District had to turn off the juice.

Rescue crews brought out chainsaws to cut through thick limbs in the way; another entire tree had to be cut down to clear a path, the fire department described on Facebook.

“Because of where I was they couldn’t get ladders tall enough to get to me and the fire trucks couldn’t get to the tree to get those tall ladders up,” Lacy told the TV station.

Meanwhile, Lacy’s legs went numb. They stayed numb for hours.

She had wrapped her arms and legs around a limb when she first hit the tree, she told the World-Herald, but had to let go when they went numb. She was terrified to let go, she said, because she didn’t know whether the parachute cords would hold her.

Her harness cut off the blood flow to her legs.

She could feel the chords slipping.

She panicked, she told the newspaper.

There was yelling.

As rescuers worked their way to her, they and members of the Lincoln Sport Parachute Club down on the ground shouted out reassurances — “kept me strong,” she wrote on Facebook.

“And they were able to get that ladder up there. They sent two guys up and got it right under me and they had to cut me off my parachute so I could fall down on the ladder,” she told WOWT.

She posted a photo of herself in the back of an ambulance on her Facebook page.

“I’m at UNMC tonight with bumps, bruises, cuts, scrapes, and a leg with some pretty serious nerve and muscle damage. But I’m okay!” she wrote. “And as soon as I’m better I’ll be back out there!”

Yep, she’s going to jump again.

“I’m just a bad driver, so it’s fine.,” she told WOWT.

___ (c)2018 The Kansas City Star (Kansas City, Mo.) Visit The Kansas City Star (Kansas City, Mo.) at www.kansascity.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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