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28 Deaths at the Lodi Parachute Center – Likely More
Transparent Tracy covered an ABC10 story three years ago following the tragic death of Sabrina Call, who then was the latest victim of an accident at the Lodi Parachute Center.
According to the story, someone reported seeing Ms. Call’s parachute tangled as she plummeted towards the ground. She, at that time, was the latest death in an unknown number of deaths that have occurred at the center since its opening in 1964. ABC reported the following –
The SFGate’s latest coverage of the Lodi Parachute Center reports that there have been now 28 deaths from deadly accidents since 1985.
The frightening reality is that no one – not the ownership or even the County’s Medical Examiner’s Office – knows the exact number of fatalities at the Lodi Parachute Center. No one.
The article continues, “…there’s no central repository to track the deaths, and no federal or state agency specifically tasked with investigating what happened.” And even more alarmingly –
California is the leading state in terms of government regulations. As reported by Ascend Magazine in July 2023, “State RegData datasets ranked California as America’s most regulated state each year from 2019 to 2022…there were 403,774 regulatory restrictions on the books in California in 2022.”
While this statistic isn’t a surprise for most Californians, it does raise questions about how sky diving operations have such lax regulations given the number of deaths and injuries incurred.
People are literally putting their lives in the hands of strangers in an unregulated industry that is lobbying to remain unregulated.
According to SFGate, “…the United States Parachute Association, a private industry and lobbying group…is currently lobbying against a federal bill that would increase requirements for plane maintenance, which was written in response to the Hawaii tragedy.” The Hawaii incident happened in 2019 when a skydiving plane crashed and killed 11 people.
Many are asking themselves how many people must die before something is done. The Lodi Parachute Center alone should have caused county or state legislators to do something – anything. It won’t happen anytime soon.
The response from county to SFGate reporter was as follows -
This tells you everything you need to know why this business remains open today.
[Story cover photo by Andrew Chamings/SFGate]