'I thought we were going to die '

After their tow line snaps, three men parasailing glide toward a building but escape injury at the last minute. The ordeal raises regulation questions.

By JANE MEINHARDT

© St. Petersburg Times, published November 4, 1999

CLEARWATER , Florida --- Darrin Villa's thoughts about the beautiful view 1,200 feet above Clearwater dissolved in terror when he heard the parasail's tow line snap.

 Flung around by wind gusts, he and two friends dangled helplessly in harnesses attached to the runaway parasail over the Intracoastal Waterway. The strong easterly wind filled the parasail and swept it away from the towboat and toward Sand Key.

Click for larger view of accident location

 "I'm telling you, we were flying," said Villa, 30. "We were heading right for a building.  We were going to hit the side of it at about the 19th floor."

At the last minute, a big gust of wind lifted the parasail. The three men pulled themselves up on their harnesses. They cleared the top of the 20-story Crescent Beach Club by about 15 feet and dropped into the Gulf of Mexico near the beach.

"We cheated death, that's how I feel," Villa said. "People don't even know how bad this was. I thought we were going to die."

Villa, Mike Knobloch and Kaleiohao Mahoe, members of a Long Island baseball team playing in a national championship in Clearwater, survived Sunday's ordeal with various muscle strains and bruises.

A similar Clearwater parasailing accident in 1990 was fatal.  George "Eddie" Myers, a New York security guard, died when a boat operator cut the line to his parasail. The parasail rope wrapped around Myers' leg and dragged him across a Clearwater Beach construction site, severing his foot.  The winds became too strong for the parasail boat when Myers was killed. The same thing apparently happened with Villa and his friends.

In the nine years since Myers died, nothing has been done to regulate the parasailing industry to prevent such accidents. There are no federal, state or local regulations governing parasailing safety issues.

Bill Morris, Clearwater's harbormaster, met with parasail operators last week to discuss safety and possible city regulations. He said the businesses requested the meeting.

"We discussed creating our own guidelines," Morris said. "We're all in agreement that something should be done. This part of the industry is unregulated. Nothing has been set up anywhere else, so we would be setting up kind of a pilot program."

He has consulted Mark McCulloh, who was in the parasailing business for 28 years and has established the Parasailing Safety Council in an effort to address safety issues. McCulloh testified as an expert witness in the lawsuit filed by Myers' family, which resulted in a $4.4-million judgment against the insurance company for the parasailing business.

Villa and his friends paid $30 each to Parasail City at the Clearwater Municipal Marina for their rides. Kiven Hopper, owner of Parasail City, did not respond to numerous requests for an interview.

McCulloh said some things could have been done to ensure the men had a safer ride. The wind should have been more closely monitored, he said. Villa and Knobloch said the parasail towboat was at a standstill for about three minutes before the tow line snapped. The boat operator could not winch them in and get them back to the boat, they said.

"If that boat is stopped, there is too much wind," McCulloh said. "I would not have advised going up if the boat was stationary or being pulled backwards. That's operating outside of safety parameters. It's too windy."

In addition, he said, the men could have been put in a parasail chair instead of harnesses. Safer for three people, a chair has floatation built into it and enables riders to easily escape in emergency landings. The height of the parasail also could have posed a danger, McCulloh said.

"High flying is a marketing technique," McCulloh said. "I think 500 feet is the maximum anyone should fly. There's no way of telling what the wind is doing when you get a lot higher, and you have no real good idea where the people will end up when they land."

Villa, a pitcher for the Long Island Storm baseball team, installs closet shelving and has been unable to work because of neck injuries. When the parasail landed in the water, a harness strap caught him around the neck, choking him until his friends could unhook him.

"They had problems with all the wind with the two guys that went up before us, but we had no idea if this was normal or not," Villa said. "We trusted the people who run the place. Now I know we never should have been up there. I thought I was never going to see my wife and baby again."