Six Flags accident: Can you survive a 25-foot fall? (2024)
A 14-year-old girl survived a 25-foot fall from an amusem*nt park ride in Queensbury, N.Y., on Saturday when several good Samaritans caught her before she hit the ground.
But would she have survived the fall, if no one was there to catch her? Possibly, said one emergency room doctor. "The probability of surviving a 25-foot fall — even into the arms of a crowd — is influenced by many factors, including your speed, as well as host of many other variables," Dr. Robert Glatter of Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, said in Forbes magazine.
He said falls from a distance greater than 30 feet have a high probability of inflicting serious injuries involving the spleen, liver and lungs, along with blunt chest trauma and rib fractures.
Falls from more than 20 feet usually result in a trip to the emergency room, but even low-level falls can cause serious head injuries, according to the American College of Surgeons.
The median lethal distance for falls is four stories or 48 feet, according to the reference book Trauma Anesthesia.This means that 50% of patients who fall four stories will die. The chance of death increases to 90% when the fall is seven stories, the book said.
As for what kills people when they fall, "most people who fall from a height die because they fracture their spine near the top and so transect the aorta which carries blood out of the heart," Sean Hughes, professor of surgery at Imperial College in London told the Guardian.
Landing on your side might be the best way to survive a fall, Hughes said. It doesn't take much of a fall to cause damage. "From a height of 3 meters (roughly 10 feet) you could fracture your spine," Hughes said. "At around 10 meters (about 30 feet), you're looking at very serious injuries."
Each year, an estimated 424,000 people die because of falls, making fallsthe second-leading cause of unintentional injury death, after road traffic injuries, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.
Though not fatal, approximately 37.3 million falls are severe enough to require medical attentioneach year, according toWHO.
Falls from more than 20 feet usually result in a trip to the emergency room, but even low-level falls can cause serious head injuries, according to the American College of Surgeons. The median lethal distance for falls is four stories or 48 feet, according to the reference book Trauma Anesthesia.
A study of construction accidents in India found that nearly half of all fatal falls happen at a height between 0 and 20 feet. The next largest group of fatal falls was between 21 and 40 feet. In other words, 20 feet is enough to be fatal, but fatal falls have occurred at even lower heights.
Falling from a height of under 30 feet gives you about a 3 out of 4 chance of survival. Fall from 40 feet or so and it's a coin toss. Fall from 60 feet or more and it's time to pray for a miracle.
Just as many people died from falls less than 10 feet as from more than 30 feet. Fall fatalities aren't all about how far you fall and how hard you hit the ground, but also which body part hits. Striking your head at any height can be fatal.
So in summary, falls from heights of around 20 feet can easily result in life-altering injuries or even death. The human body simply isn't designed to withstand impacts at that velocity. If you or a loved one has suffered injuries from a fall at this height, seek immediate medical help.
Falls from more than 20 feet usually result in a trip to the emergency room, but even low-level falls can cause serious head injuries, according to the American College of Surgeons. The median lethal distance for falls is four stories or 48 feet, according to the reference book Trauma Anesthesia.
The median height leading to death is about 49 feet (15 meters), or about 4 to 5 storeys. 100% of victims die after falling 85 feet (25 meters), or about 8 storeys. Obviously, the 100% figure is incorrect as there have been individual people who survived higher falls.
At the extreme end of the scale — and perhaps the most famous example — is the remarkable case of Vesna Vulović, a flight attendant who survived a 33,000-foot fall from a plane without a parachute in the 1970s.
Falls from a distance greater than 30 feet (about 10 meters) have a high probability of inflicting serious injuries, Glatter said. He said there's a commonly cited measure of risk for death from falls that's called the LD50 — it's the distance at which you have a 50 percent chance of dying.
Vesna Vulović (Serbian Cyrillic: Весна Вуловић, pronounced [ʋêsna ʋûːloʋitɕ]; 3 January 1950 – 23 December 2016) was a Serbian flight attendant who survived the highest fall without a parachute: 10.16 kilometres (6.31 miles) or 33,330 feet.
A fall from heights can lead to severe injuries or even be deadly. One interesting thing about these falls is that the largest percentage of fatal falls happen from 11 to 15 feet. These account for 19.7% of all fatalities in falls.
The anecdotal threshold for sustaining critical injuries from a vertical fall has been defined by the American College of Surgeons' Committee on Trauma (ACS-COT) at >20 feet (6 meters) [3]. This threshold is corroborated by the published literature on survivors from accidental and suicidal free falls [1].
Research shows hip fractures are to blame for nearly 30 percent of fall deaths among adults 65 and older. Worsening eyesight and poor hearing can make it harder for older individuals to spot hazards.
You can die from simply falling from a normal standing position and hitting your head on the pavement or a bathtub etc. 10ft will easily kill a person if they hit a vulnerable and vital area such as their head, throat, neck etc.against a hard surface or object.
Plummeting 91 meters (300 feet) and landing on solid rock is generally not conducive to survival. Against all odds, however, one climber survived the “unsurvivable” after a rope slid through her harness and she entered freefall downwards, escaping with severe but non-fatal injuries.
At the extreme end of the scale — and perhaps the most famous example — is the remarkable case of Vesna Vulović, a flight attendant who survived a 33,000-foot fall from a plane without a parachute in the 1970s.
Vesna Vulović (Serbian Cyrillic: Весна Вуловић, pronounced [ʋêsna ʋûːloʋitɕ]; 3 January 1950 – 23 December 2016) was a Serbian flight attendant who survived the highest fall without a parachute: 10.16 kilometres (6.31 miles) or 33,330 feet.
The injuries caused by high falls from over the seventh floor are considered mostly fatal. It is possible to survive the high fall from over 30 metres at landing on the surface of high deformity (snow or water).
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