A Virginia woman said she wants to skydive again after surviving a 13,500-foot fall during a November mishap.
Jordan Hatmaker, 35, broke her back, leg, and ankle when her parachute got entangled with her leg and caused her to hit the ground at 125 mph, according to a report.
“Everything happened really quickly,” Hatmaker, who fell for 20 seconds, said.
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Hatmaker was falling with her instructor, but when she pushed away after 10 seconds of free fall, something went wrong, she said. She pulled the cord that was supposed to release her pilot chute, which is used to deploy the main chute, but it got caught and tangled with her leg, and she soon began to fight to get it free.
Her reserve chute deployed, and the jolt it caused resulted in the main chute breaking free. The force of the main chute inflating caused both canopies to fly away, the report noted.
“I didn’t have any thoughts because I was spiraling, so I didn’t know what was going on. I was just in strategy mode,” Hatmaker recalled.
The woman crashed back to Earth on her left leg, bounced, and ended up on her back, she said.
“I hit with my left leg first, and then I bounced off of my butt and face-planted, and that’s how I broke my back. There was just extreme burning through my lower back and down my legs,” according to Hatmaker.
“First I tried to push myself off the ground, and when I couldn’t move anything, my first thought was I was paralyzed, and I was yelling that out,” she said. “I’ve never heard sounds like those come out of my body. I screamed bloodcurdling screams.”
Hatmaker had been skydiving since 2015 and was seeking to obtain a license to solo jump when she made her 16th jump Nov. 14, according to the report.
She was helped within minutes of crashing and was flown to a hospital, Hatmaker said.
“When my back broke, some of the pieces of my vertebrae went into my spinal canal,” she said. “They said, ‘We don’t know what kind of mobility she’s going to have,’ but they didn’t think I was going to be paralyzed because I could wiggle my toes.”
“I was very thankful to be alive. That was my thought I had most often,” Hatmaker said. “I had a lot of hope in that I would walk again, even though I couldn’t lift my legs or move them back and forth. I had a lot of hope that I would do everything I wanted to do again.”
One thing on Hatmaker’s to-do list is visiting Mount Everest, something she had initially planned to do days after her fateful jump.
“That moment I could only lift it maybe half an inch off the bed … it was just so great to conquer a milestone. It was a sign of progress, and I was really thrilled and excited. It just gave me more motivation to keep going,” she said.
Three months after the accident, Hatmaker began walking.
“It doesn’t feel real. It feels, like, so surreal that that even happened, but I’m thankful that the accident happened. I feel like there’s, like, a lot of growth that came out of it, and I really think there’s opportunity in tragedy,” she said.
“You can always find something positive, even if you can’t see it now,” she continued. “There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, and you’re going to be better for whatever you’re going through.”
She even hopes to resume skydiving one day, Hatmaker said.
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“Don’t tell my family!” she joked. “We’ll see what [happens] when I get to the plane door.”
