A skydiver was extremely fortunate he was not electrocuted when he crash-landed on hydro wires near an Innisfil skydiving school Thursday afternoon.

“This guy was very, very lucky,” Innisfil Hydro operations supervisor Peter Stephens said. “We’re not exactly sure how he got into the position he was in. Somehow he ended up between the trees and the wire.”

If the man had made contact with the 4,800-volt hydro line he would have be killed or at the very least severely burned, Stephens said.

When hydro crews arrived at Sideroad 10 just south of Con. 4 at about 4 p.m., the man had been hanging in mid-air from his chute for about 15 minutes, Stephens said.

“He was pretty shaken up when we first got here. He pretty much just wanted to get down out of that parachute. But he was concerned that he wasn’t tangled up with any live wires above him.”

Hydro crews backed a pickup truck underneath him and flight instructors released the man from the parachute harness. The skydiver was not injured, and was able to walk away from the scene.

An instructor with the Skydiving Toronto Inc., who didn’t want to be identified, said the vast majority of skydivers land in the vicinity of the Cookstown Aerodrome.

“But some guys just don’t listen,” the instructor said. “If there’s 1,000 jumpers, maybe 1 per cent don’t land where they’re supposed to.”

But Gino Carbone, who was working in his backyard when the skydiver hit the trees and wires, disagrees.

“This happens every two or three days,” he said. “They land on the road, they land in the trees, they land in with my sheep, on my fence.”

Two weeks ago, a skydiver landed on this neighbour’s roof, he said. Some men took a ladder from the garage without permission to the get the man down, Carbone said.

“These people — they are something incredible,” he said.

Carbone said the skydiving school has even offered to pay to cutdown trees on residents’ properties to make it safer for skydivers.

Usually, the skydivers try to leave the area discreetly when they land on private property, he said.
“Mostly they stay quiet,” he said. “They don’t like to advertise.”

Joe Chow, president of Skydive Toronto, said there have been more errant landings than usual this year.

“The weather has been very unstable this year,” he said. “We try to get them to land in the airfield.
if not, they try to land in the biggest open area they can find. It’s unfortunate someone landed on a roof, but no one was hurt and there was no damage.”

Chow said he is still investigating the hydro line crash.

“We have 10,000 jumps a year, and I don’t remember anyone ever hitting hydro wires before,” he said.

Winds were considered moderate the day of the crash and shouldn’t have been a factor, Chow said.