Tangled chute proves fatal

SYDNEY - 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, New South Wales, plunged to her death on Tuesday.

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

A friend of 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, said yesterday.

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

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

"I was standing about 100 metres from the tower when she jumped," he said. "I saw her struggling to pull open the parachute but her attempt failed."

Friends described 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 was part of a 19-strong group of Malaysians and foreigners that completed several successful jumps before the tragedy. The group was said to be training for a base jump in Kuala Lumpur next month.

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

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

It involves jumping from four types of fixed platform 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.

- AAP