Beachy Head base jumpers prompt coastguard calls
BEACHY Head base jumpers who throw themselves from the clifftop have been criticised for wasting resources and “distressing” walkers who do not know they have a parachute.
Thrill-seekers use the East Sussex beauty spot as a jumping point for the hobby which involves leaping from the cliff and quickly deploying a parachute before reaching the ground.
The RNLI has warned that unsuspecting walkers see them and think a person has fallen to death or injury and ring the emergency services.
On Tuesday, two coastguard teams were deployed to Beachy Head following a call just after 3pm with concern for eight people.
The Maritime and Coastguard Agency confirmed that they had called both the Birling Gap and Eastbourne coast rescue teams to investigate. At the scene, the coastguard confirmed the eight were a team of base jumpers. The coastguard advised the team that if they want to do a jump, they should call it in advance so it can take down details and will not need to deploy a rescue team unnecessarily.
A member of the Eastbourne RNLI said that the base jumpers at Beachy Head were distressing for people who watched them go over the edge without “realising they were base jumping”.
Mark Sawyer, 57, said that base jumpers who did not inform the local coastguard they were planning a jump could lead to a call-out for emergency services “when it can be avoided”.
The coxswain of the Eastbourne lifeboat said: “An issue we get is the distress it causes people who see them doing what they think is jumping off Beachy Head.
“The two considerations are the distress it causes members of the public, because of what Beachy Head is known for, and obviously the instigation of coastguards being sent out due to those 999 calls saying they’ve seen people jump off.
“Then the local coastguard teams get deployed or pulled out of work responding to what they think is a distress situation.
“So however much we don’t want to be killjoys and we don’t want people to
‘An issue is the distress it causes people who see them doing what they think is jumping off Beachy Head’
stop doing what they do, just use the common sense factor of telling the coastguard.”
He added that base jumpers “need to be aware of the considerations of calling out the emergency services when it can be avoided”.
In the past five years, the Eastbourne RNLI has been called out to 10 incidents at Beachy Head involving base jumpers. Mr Sawyer said the worst incident was in August 2018. “We had one base jumper come down, his ’chute only partially opened and he crashed against the cliff face and then ended up on the bottom. He had a broken leg and a broken hip, so that was a particularly nasty one,” he said.
A spokesman for HM Coastguard said: “Make sure that you are aware of your surroundings at all times and stay on official paths, whether they are temporary or permanent, by taking notice of warning signs.”