Paragliding attrition in Santa Barbara
Shawn Knight joins the growing numbers of Santa Barbara area residents who have lost their lives paragliding
I read an article on Shawn Knight’s death on a paraglider. I felt obligated to reply to the journalist, who I felt did a pretty good job except for one thing:
I was surprised you didn't mention the others. Paragliding has taken a heavy toll of professionals in your community from Ojai to Santa Barbara.
Bruce Wallace
Ron Faoro
Marjorie Variano
Gregory Knudson
Shawn Knight — Global paragliding fatality # 2,114
One of the reasons so many people get into paragliding is the positive feedback they get from the press, who are yet to figure out the difference between the hang gliders that used to fill the skies above Santa Barbara and today's plague of vastly inferior soaring parachutes. Thanks to the press, the national hang gliding organization, the paragliding industry who took it over, and the hang glider pilots themselves, who allowed it to happen and own it, an entire generation has grown up thinking there is little difference between the two sports.
An example is the newspaper article describing rescuers as "finally locating a downed airfoil..." But there was no airfoil. Paragliders kill their operators when the dangerously modified soaring parachute's unsupported, ram-inflated airfoil fails to maintain its shape in normal atmospheric turbulence. When the canopy folds up, there is no airfoil. There is no aircraft.
When a paraglider suddenly becomes a death trap, particularly under 400 feet where an emergency reserve does not have time to fully deploy, the skill level of the pilot doesn't matter. He is just a body falling out of the sky.
The Santa Barbara area is racking up quite a history of prominent citizens killed by paragliders. Marge Variano was principal of an elementary school; Gregory Knudson was a 747 captain with Cargolux; Ronald Faoro was a local veterinarian; and Bruce Wallace of Ojai, 30 miles to the west, was a key figure in the start-up of biotec giant Amgen. Faoro forgot to fasten his leg straps and fell from his paraglider. Knudsen and Wallace died when their canopies collapsed within the Paragliding Dead Man's Curve (PDMC), where they could not deploy their emergency reserve parachutes. Variano also may have taken off without her leg straps fastened.
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A pre-publication excerpt from Ghosts of Wind and Cloud by Rick Masters
Vol X: The Silken Jungle: 2018-2022, p. 274