Australian woman survives bungee fall from Victoria Falls Bridge

By Melissa Wishart

Twenty-two year old Australian woman, Erin Langworthy is lucky to be alive after plunging headfirst into the Zambezi River in Africa when her bungee cord snapped on New Year’s Eve.
Miraculously, Erin escaped her near-death experience with mere cuts and bruises, after leaping 111 metres from the Victoria Falls Bridge, with the cord snapping around 20 metres above the river.

Upon hitting the water, Erin found that the cord was still wrapped around her legs, with the end of the rope snagging on rocks underneath the water and dragging her beneath the surface.
“It was quite scary because a couple of times the rope actually got caught on some rocks or debris,” Erin told Australia’s Nine News.
“I actually had to swim down and yank the bungee cord out of whatever it was caught on to make it to the surface.”
Video footage of the fall showed as the rope snapped and Erin plummeted into the river below, and as she was carried downstream with the cord trailing in the water behind her.
“It went black straight away and I felt like I’d been slapped all over,” She said.
After managing to free the cord, she was able to swim to the side of the river and wait to be rescued.
“When I was first pulled out of the water they put me on my back and so all the water that I’d inhaled meant that I couldn’t breathe, so I made them roll me onto my side.
“And that’s when I started coughing out water and blood.”
Erin has since recovered from the incident, saying “Yes, I think it’s definitely a miracle that I survived.”
Zambia’s tourism minister Given Lubinda told the Lusaka Times, “The bungee has proven to be a very viable operation considering that more than 50,000 tourists jump on it every year.

“It has been in operation for 10 years. This is the first time I am hearing of an incident. The probability of an incident is one in 500,000 jumps.”

An investigation by the Tourism Ministry into why the rope snapped is now underway.