'I FEEL FORM THE SKY... & LIVED!'

A skydiving accident changed Emma's life forever

- Ruth McCarthy 

Many of us daydream about a holiday abroad but for Emma Carey, her Switzerland getaway turned into a lifechanging nightmare.

At the age of 20, she was five days into a three-month European backpacking adventure with her best friend Jemma when the thrillseeking Gold Coaster got the chance to achieve her lifelong dream of a tandem skydive. However, it went catastrophically wrong.

"I jumped out first and Jemma was next. It was the most incredible feeling... the freefall was so peaceful, you're just so present in the moment," Emma, now 29, tells Woman's Day.

NIGHTMARE IN THE SKY

But the feeling of euphoria was short-lived when the instructor failed to pull the parachute early enough. When he did, the safety chute automatically deployed, tangling both and wrapping around the instructor's neck, causing him to pass out as they plummeted more than 4500 metres to the ground.

 

"I could only watch as the earth came forward to meet me," Emma recalls. "The seriousness of the situation dawned on me as quickly as it was pulling me down.

"I remember thinking there's no way I'm going to survive this. My death was so close, I could almost touch it and I counted down three, two, one." Miraculously, Emma survived. While she didn't lose consciousness, she was terrified when she landed in a field - falling on her belly with her instructor landing on her back and couldn't feel or move anything from the waist down.