Paraglider badly hurt in crash

A Cape Town paraglider was critically injured when his glider allegedly had a catastrophic malfunction and crashed in the Magaliesberg mountain range outside Pretoria.

The accident happened moments after 28-year-old Daniel Johannes Rossouw took off from a ridge 10km from the Hartbeespoort Dam wall on Sunday morning.

Rossouw, who was airlifted by a Netcare 911 medical helicopter to hospital, is believed to have crashed into a rocky outcrop moments after he and a group of friends took off from the mountain.

A farmworker, working in a valley below the take-off point, raised the alarm, alerting Rossouw’s friends to the accident.

Mountain Club of South African search and rescue spokesman Dean van der Merwe said the accident happened within seconds of Rossouw taking off.

“He was the last in the group of four to take off. As he took off, a farmworker heard his screams and saw him crashing into a steep slope.

“The farmworker immediately raised the alarm signalling to his friends what had happened. When Rossouw’s friends landed, they drove up a service road to a point close to the crash site and alerted authorities,” he said.

Van der Merwe said Rossouw’s friends, who found him hanging upside down from his glider, which had snagged on rocks and shrubs, alerted medics to the critical injuries he sustained, and an air force Oryx helicopter was placed on standby.

Netcare 911 spokesman Jeff Wicks said that because of the difficult terrain, a medic and a trauma doctor had to hike to the paraglider, who had sustained critical injuries to his head and spine, after landing in the Netcare helicopter 200m away from the crash site.

He said the paraglider was placed onto a manual ventilator and stabilised before he was airlifted to Netcare Union Hospital in Alberton, which is a specialist hospital.

“The patient remains in a critical condition. The cause of the accident at this stage is unknown,” Wicks said.

Fellow glider Walter Neser said Rossouw had enough experience to fly in the area and the conditions they were flying in.

“It was an early morning flight and the weather was very calm. We were just planning on having a glide down from the spot, from which we fly regularly

“Because he was the last to take off, none of us witnessed what happened, but my best guess is that Daniel didn’t clear the trees on take-off, got hooked by them and was turned sideways back into the mountain,” Neser said. - Pretoria News