Woman who survived 15,000ft skydive after parachute didn't open shares two thoughts she had before hitting ground

A woman who survived a 15,000 skydive where her parachute failed had two thoughts going through her mind before she hit the ground.

In 2013 Australian woman Emma Carey was skydiving in the Swiss Alps with her best friend Jemma, who was very nervous about the prospect of plummeting out of a plane before parachuting to the ground.

Emma had been 'loving' the experience until the time came for her parachute to be pulled, with her instructor tapping her on the shoulder to prepare for a jolt as her sudden fall to the ground was slowed.

Only there was no jolt, and Emma could see her instructor was unconscious because of the parachute cords while their parachute itself was in 'bunched up bundles', according to ESPN.

Stuck in the nightmare scenario of hurtling towards the ground and her parachute not opening properly, two thoughts went through Emma's mind.

Emma Carey survived a skydive where her parachute failed (instagram/em_carey)

Her first thought as she plummeted towards the ground and her parachute wouldn't open was the utterly understandable thought that she did not want to die, that despite all the odds of her surviving her current situation being against her she wanted to survive it.

The second thought was the sad knowledge that if she did die from the fall, then her best friend Jemma would be the one who found her body.

Emma then hit the ground, having remained conscious throughout the entire ordeal, but incredibly neither she nor her instructor died, with them still unconscious and strapped to her.

She had broken her sternum, pelvis and vertebrae and crushed her spinal cord.

While there was pain everywhere and she could not move her legs, the then 20-year-old was able to shout for help.

Jemma had landed about half a mile away and ran towards her friend, waiting with Emma for around an hour for help to arrive.

It was a long recovery for Emma, though her doctors told her she'd been paralysed from the waist down she was eventually able to walk again after a lengthy period of physiotherapy.

Jemma had the unenviable task of calling Emma's family in Australia to tell them she had been critically injured while skydiving and was in hospital.

Emma's mum and sister travelled to Switzerland to be by her side. Her skydiving instructor had been taken to the same hospital and while she did feel mad at them and the whole situation at times she decided forgiveness was the right thing to do, particularly after she woke up in her hospital bed one day to find them by her bedside in a wheelchair.

The leading theory as to what went wrong is that the instructor forgot his altimeter, misjudged their altitude and pulled the regular chute at the exact same time as the emergency chute, resulting in the two becoming tangled.

Emma ended up writing a book titled The Girl who Fell from the Sky and has spoken about her experience several times.