Australian dies in Malaysian base-jump

29 Sep 2010, 1:16 pm   -   Source: AAP
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Friends of Kylie "Buffy" Tanti say her parachute got tangled with a helmet-mounted camera, causing her to fall to her death while BASE jumping in Malaysia.

An Australian woman who died BASE jumping in Malaysia got her parachute tangled around a helmet-mounted camera and only managed to free it at the last second.

Stunned onlookers could only watch in horror as Kylie "Buffy" Tanti from Pheasants Nest, in the NSW Southern Highlands, plunged to her death on Tuesday.

She had jumped off Malaysia's second tallest building, the 165.5 metre Alor Setar tower, in Alor Setar, northwestern Malaysia, as part of a training session.

A friend of Ms Tanti's said her pilot parachute, designed to catch the air and yank out her main parachute, got caught around the camera.

"She managed to clear this but it was too late," Gary Cunningham, spokesman for the Australian BASE Association told AAP on Wednesday.

Zaidi Zainal Abidin watched the incident unfold and said the 42-year-old made no sound.

"Although her parachute failed to open, I did not hear her scream or shout for help," he said.

Another witness, Mohd Zaidi Zainol Abidin, watched in horror as Ms Tanti struggled to open her parachute.

"I was standing about 100 metres from the tower when she jumped," he told Malaysia's Star Online newspaper.

"I saw her struggling to pull open the parachute but her attempt failed."

Friends described Ms Tanti as a straight-talking extreme sports enthusiast who became one of the first Australians to take up skysurfing - the sport of skydiving and performing aerobatics on a board.

She wrote on her Facebook page not long before the tragedy: "One day, death is going to take the life from everything we love. So while you are able, love what you have."

Ms Tanti was part of a 19-strong group of Malaysians and foreigners that completed several successful jumps before the tragedy, the newspaper reported.

The group was said to be training for a BASE jump in Kuala Lumpur in mid-October.

The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade confirmed Ms Tanti's parachute failed to open and said consular assistance had been offered to her family.

Mr Cunningham said Ms Tanti had 10 years of experience as a parachutist but was relatively new to BASE jumping.

It involves jumping from four types of fixed platforms from which its acronymic name is derived: buildings, antennae, spans (bridge), and earth (cliff).

BASE jumping is a popular sport in Malaysia and the death is said to be the first involving the activity there in 10 years.

The Alor Setar tower is the country's second tallest building, behind Kuala Lumpur's Petronas Twin Towers, and was closed for maintenance at the time of the incident.

The death follows that of BASE jumper Daryl Norris, 49, whose parachute failed to open after leaping off 305-metre Wallaman Falls, northern Queensland in May.

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