Episode 4 Close Calls: On Camera

A close call, a moment of danger. LOUD BANG

-When life can hang in the balance.

-Oh, my God.

A split second, where the outcome could go either way.

If he's alive, it's going to be a miracle, really.

The difference between disaster and survival.

He was shouting, "Don't die, Mummy!"

These are the people who have been there and lived to tell the tale.

SPECTATORS GASP AND SHOUT

I thought he'd broken his neck.

Their instincts and resources coupled with

the quick thinking of others helped to pull them through.

We were just engulfed in flames.

And their dramatic experiences were recorded on camera.

I wasn't going to be coming up. It was curtains, it was over.

It's a day they'll never forget,

the day they had a close call.

Today on Close Calls...

a mother and child cling to each other on a sheer rock face.

Adventurous nine-year-old Sam

has climbed up more than 40 feet and got stuck.

His desperate mum's impulsive response

is to claw her way up to reach him.

She has, but now she has another major problem.

I looked down, pretty quickly, really, I'd worked out,

that there was no way I could get Sam down the rocks.

She said, "We can't get down, we just can't get down."

Also today, two of the army's top parachutists

are locked in a desperate struggle

when a stunt goes horribly wrong at a public display.

As I hit Wayne, one side of the parachute went round his arm

and the other bit went round his leg

and it collapsed that side of the parachute.

The elite Red Devils have become entangled.

Now one must hold on to the other as they plummet towards the ground.

Westcombe Beach, south Devon.

A mum cradles her terrified young son in her arms.

They're clinging to a sheer rock face with no way down.

Mum of two Kate has scaled the vertical rock

to try and rescue her stranded nine-year-old son Sam.

I knew I had to get up to him.

I just needed to be there with him up on the cliff.

Now they are both perched on a tiny ledge more than 40 feet up.

This picture is taken by horrified husband and dad Rich,

watching from below.

She just said, "There is no way we can get down,

"there's absolutely no chance.

"I'm not doing it, I can't do it with Sam.

"We need some help to get down."

Kate and her husband Rich live with their two children in West Yorkshire.

The whole family love the great outdoors,

none more so than young Sam.

Sam's always been extremely adventurous.

He's never happier than when he's outdoors.

Inside, he's a bit of a caged animal,

whereas if you get him outside, he's just in his element.

From an early age,

both Sam and his six-year-old sister Cleo have enjoyed climbing.

The whole family do.

They regularly go to the local sports centre

to use the indoor climbing wall, but Sam much prefers the open air.

I like free climbing.

I don't like it so much when I'm on the walls

and I'm in a harness and I'm inside.

He climbs trees and he climbs the bank.

It's the summer holidays

and the family are down in Devon for a week, visiting Kate's mum, Jenny.

On the first day of their trip, a sunny Saturday,

they head for a remote beach.

We drove down to Westcombe on the coast

and the children were really excited.

Sam and Cleo were playing quite happily on the beach

with their granny,

so me and Kate just decided to go up onto one of the cliff tops.

Sam and Cleo and Gran go for a walk too,

but soon Sam's adventurous instincts take over.

Our granny was looking after us

and basically Sam wanted to explore the rocks.

And I just went sort of ahead and then when I got to the rock,

I was quite excited - "That looks good, I'll go and climb that."

Far ahead of Cleo and gran Jenny, Sam has found a rock formation

known as a stack, a column of rock rising from the ground.

This one at Westcombe Beach towers 60 feet into the air.

Sam can't resist climbing up.

The rocks were very loose

and, like, I was quite lucky that I didn't fall,

cos I always had to find a stable place every time I stepped.

Sam's enjoying the challenge and has no thoughts of stopping.

But this is no climbing wall and there are no safety ropes.

He climbs higher and higher, but he soon realises he's gone too far.

I sort of looked down and I thought,

"Oh, I can't get down.

"There'll probably be another route down."

But there isn't. The stack tapers inwards below him.

It may have been fun to climb up,

but it's impossible for nine-year-old Sam to climb back down safely.

I was sort of scared of how high I was.

Then I sort of shouted help.

But on the isolated beach, his cries go unnoticed,

until six-year-old Cleo and gran Jenny catch up

and hear him calling for help.

We looked up and up and up

and then there he was, sitting on a ledge.

My grandma said, "I'll go and get Mum and Dad."

Kate and Rich are just returning to the beach from their clifftop walk.

My mum and Cleo were sort of running back towards us

and I knew that there was something wrong.

I said that he was up the rock and he's shouting help and crying.

As soon as we got round the corner,

we were both a bit puzzled, cos it was like, "OK, well, where is he?"

And it took me a good 30 seconds to realise

that I basically had to look straight up to see him,

he was so high.

Kate is horrified to see her young son

precariously perched on a narrow ledge.

He's 40 feet up and absolutely petrified.

I was worried that he might panic and fall

and I just didn't want to see him frightened.

Before Rich can stop her, Kate's motherly instincts take over.

In a heartbeat, she begins scaling the rock face to try and reach Sam.

I knew I had to get up to him.

I just needed to be there with him up on the cliff.

Rich tries to find a more accessible path.

I sort of went round the base of the stack

to see if there was a safer way up

and that's when I realised there was no alternative.

This was the only way to go up.

By the time he came back round the corner,

he realised and I realised

that there was no way I could come down from where I was.

To Rich's horror, his wife is now in just as much danger as Sam.

My concern in that moment switched to Kate,

cos I knew Sam was there on a ledge,

but I knew she was going to try and climb up to him

and that she wasn't safe at all.

Compelled by the cries of her distraught son,

Kate keeps climbing up and up.

I got to a point where I felt like I was stuck,

because I'd got pretty high, Sam was very close to me,

but I couldn't quite see him, there was an overhang

sticking out in the rock.

And I just thought, "Where is she?" I could just see a drop.

I hoped that she hadn't fallen.

He got really, really upset at that point, when I got stuck.

-He was beside himself.

-He was shouting to Mum...

.."Don't die, Mummy!"

And that combined with Rich and my mum and Cleo on the beach

screaming at me not to go any higher...

..was quite overwhelming and I think that's why I became...

I sort of froze and became quite scared at that point.

But it's too late to turn back.

From where I was standing underneath,

I could just see both her legs were just shaking,

which is obviously very dangerous.

If you're climbing, you have to be very sure-footed.

She'd got no ropes on,

so at that point, I was really starting to panic.

I did get really frightened and I felt foolish.

I felt like I'd made a mistake, because I've got two children

and now I was putting my own life at risk as well.

Although she's shaking, Kate's still desperate to reach her son.

She looks for a way of pulling herself around an overhanging rock

and up onto the ledge where Sam is perched.

"Don't fall, don't fall and kill yourself."

I just... Cos I just...

Cos she said to me, "I'm not on a stable ledge."

It was a bit of mind over matter. I said to Sam,

"Sweetheart, I'm going to be OK,

"but do you think you could be quiet for a moment

"while Mummy concentrates on getting up the last bit to you,

"then we'll be together and it'll be OK?"

She had to say, "Shush, Sam, shush!"

He was really good. He went completely quiet then.

Kate needs to keep cool.

One wrong move and it's a 40-foot drop onto solid rock.

I thought, "If I get this wrong and I fall, it'll probably kill me,"

cos I knew that it was much higher than I'd ever climbed before.

Kate blindly feels for the rocks above with one hand,

hoping to find something strong enough to grasp hold of.

I managed to reach up and find some tufts of grass just over the rock

that was sticking out and I, um...

was testing them to see if they'd take my weight.

Once I'd found what I thought was going to be

the best handholds I was going to get,

I just pulled myself round the rock and luckily...

that grass was strong enough to take my weight

and I did get over and round the top, then got up to him.

Kate can finally comfort her child.

Richard's photo from the beach shows the staggering height

the pair have climbed.

Kate pulls Sam in for a cuddle.

There was enough space for us

to sit on a ledge with our backs pushed right up against the rocks.

Sort of clinging on,

to know that we weren't going to fall immediately, at least,

and I just had on overwhelming sense of relief and I was just so happy

to be there with him after seeing him stuck up there on his own.

Later...

a Royal Navy team attempt to rescue Kate and Sam.

It was immediately apparent that we needed to winch them off.

But their hazardous location and the helicopter's downdraft

makes their position even more precarious.

The wind was so powerful and my mum was just holding on to me.

Whitehaven, Cumbria.

The British Army's parachute display team, the Red Devils,

are performing at a local air show.

Spectators' cameras are rolling.

Suddenly, drama in the skies above -

team members Mike French and Wayne Shorthouse have become entangled.

Mike's parachute is wrapped around Wayne's body.

They are descending much faster than they should.

The crowd below realise the danger.

The two paratroopers are fighting to free themselves.

It's a race against time.

They are 1,700 feet up, but less than a minute from the ground.

Corporal Mike French was born with paratrooper blood.

His father and uncle were both in a Parachute Regiment,

so when he left school, Mike headed straight for the army.

I joined the Parachute Regiment when I was just under 17,

did Kosovo when I first joined the battalion at 18,

Northern Ireland a few times, Iraq twice, Afghanistan twice.

Mike is now a member of the Red Devils parachute display team

and has over 1,800 jumps under his belt.

To the average person, the thought of jumping out of a plane

might seem terrifying, but Mike absolutely thrives on the rush.

There's no better feeling

than falling through the sky at that speed.

It's more a strange excitement more than anything else.

It's that little... It's the reason we do this job.

Guys wouldn't do it if it was boring.

I think we'd go find something else to do.

Mike's pal and fellow Red Devil Corporal Wayne Shorthouse

has served alongside him in conflict zones.

He also loves the thrill of falling through the air.

It's the adrenaline rush, really.

You're jumping into different arenas, different sizes

and it presents all these new challenges.

Mike and Wayne are both proud of being part of the Red Devils,

the group of 12 elite soldiers drawn from the Parachute Regiment.

Their main goal is to promote the army and help with recruitment.

We do up to 50 displays every year round the country

and some abroad as well.

There's a lot of postings we can do within the army

and this is probably one of the most fun.

It's a great job, absolutely love it.

Mike and Wayne have been performing together in the Red Devils

for the last five years.

One of their most spectacular stunts

is a highly skilled canopy formation called a stack.

Two of us on top of each other

and then we split to a formation called a bi-hand,

where we'll be on top of each other, then both of us be side by side.

It essentially puts our two parachutes next to each other,

attached at the waist, so as we're flying through the sky,

if we each pull down on our outside toggles,

the parachutes turn away from each other

and we'll dive towards the earth.

Mike's role in the team is stack pilot,

meaning he's in charge of coordinating stunts during a jump.

Display parachuting...

Well, skydiving in general is very dangerous, but display parachuting

and especially the canopy formations -

one of the most dangerous sports you can do, really.

A lot can go wrong and sometimes it does go wrong.

Today, the Red Devils are at Whitehaven Air Show

in the Lake District.

It's an overcast day,

so the team will be jumping from below the clouds.

Spectators round the harbour are watching and filming the display.

The plan is for the team of six jumpers to land in the water.

The ground crew, photographed here,

will use red flares to help guide them in.

2,500 feet above, the team leader is the first to leave the plane.

Now it's Mike and Wayne's turn to jump, one after the other.

Mike was going to be the stack pilot,

which means he was going to be going second and I went first,

so I exited the aircraft, then Mike exited straight after me.

They reach speeds of 120mph as they freefall through the sky.

Within seconds, Mike and Wayne deploy their parachutes.

Both men also have a reserve chute in case of problems,

but for now, everything is going according to plan.

This spectator's footage shows the beginning of the planned stunt.

Mike's on the left and Wayne's on the right.

Mike flies towards Wayne.

They're aiming for a controlled collision.

I get a bit lower, get down to where he is

and I hit my parachute into his back.

I can actually grab hold of it

and I'm going to pull myself down into his lines.

They've done this countless times before, but this time...

something goes drastically wrong.

As I hit Wayne, one side of the parachute went round his arm,

the other bit went round his leg

and it collapsed that side of the parachute

so then there was just one side of the parachute open.

Then eventually that came round and wrapped round him

and we were completely entangled.

They've got just 55 seconds before they hit the ground.

In the 50-year history of the Red Devils,

there's never been a situation like this during a display.

CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS

Photographer Peter King is in the crowd,

capturing the drama above through his zoom lens.

His pictures show the seriousness of the situation.

Mike's parachute is wrapped around Wayne and they are falling fast.

The guys actually caught each other in the air.

The crowd started to notice,

there was almost a ripple through the crowd.

-CROWD MEMBER:

-Oh, no!

But we could see guys with legs swinging.

One guy was quite clearly hanging off the other.

Also watching from below is Red Devils team member

Lance Corporal Ian Cain, part of the ground team today.

There is a moment where you suddenly go,

"Oh, dear, this hasn't gone quite right.

"How are they going to deal with it?"

At first, the adrenaline starts to pump through your body,

so the first thing you do is stop, take a deep breath

and just assess what's actually going on.

It's happening very quickly.

They are both trying to keep a cool head.

Wayne needs to untangle himself from the chute so it can open fully.

If they can separate quickly,

they've still got time to land safely in the water below.

I actually initially saw it round his arm and thought,

"That's all right, he'll get that off in a minute."

Looked around and then the next time I looked up,

it was back round him again.

Wayne is fighting to separate them, but because of Mike's weight,

the parachute cords are wrapped too tight across his body and he can't.

I thought, "We'll give him a couple of hundred feet to get it off"

and then at that point, I'm shouting out,

"OK, Wayne, just keep hold of me."

They have one other option.

Mike could sever the cords of his collapsed main parachute

using a safety knife and activate his emergency reserve chute.

But as they plummet towards the earth, there's a huge problem.

We couldn't precisely tell you how high we were off the ground.

If I come away, my parachute may not have time to open.

We thought, instead of cutting away,

it'd be a safer option for us to land together.

It's a game changer -

they've gone from struggling to break apart

to now desperately trying to stay together.

Mike's only hope is that Wayne can hang on to him

and bring them both down using his canopy.

I could see the top guy, Wayne, kicking his legs

and I could see that he was trying to catch the parachute.

My concern was, "I hope they are locked off,

"I hope he has got him and he's not going

"to suddenly fall away from him, cos then things would be bad."

But Wayne's view of the ground is obstructed by Mike's collapsed chute.

Wayne has to steer while Mike shouts up directions.

In just 20 seconds, they'll touch down.

Instinct and experience kick in.

Me and Wayne have known each other

and worked with each other for years,

so we know each other better than we know ourselves, really.

Mike could actually see what was actually going on above me,

cos my view was quite restricted.

I'm shouting up directions

and Wayne's pretty blindly pulling down on different toggles and risers

to turn us into that arena.

On the ground,

the other Red Devils are landing in the harbour as planned.

But photographer Peter is concerned Mike and Wayne are way off course.

We started to get a sense of how quickly they were going past us.

This shot shows the boys coming in some distance from the landing zone,

the other side of the harbour wall.

That's when I thought they would have been in trouble,

because the harbour on the other side,

it's got a lot more of the more industrial ships,

a lot of masts, a lot of ropes.

But Wayne and Mike must land in the water.

Their rate of descent is too quick to hit the ground.

A safety recce the day before

had identified the far side of the harbour as an emergency alternative.

They aim for it.

Mike was saying to me, "We've got to steer to the left,"

I would steer to the left,

and we saw that we had a safer landing area,

so we took that option.

But landing isn't their only fear.

When they hit the water, there's a real danger Wayne,

still tangled in the parachute cords, could be dragged under.

Mike might now need to rescue his mate.

I'm covering my cut-away handle and keeping an eye on Wayne.

As soon as I hit the water, I actually cut my main away.

If the lines were actually wrapped around his arms, his legs,

then he'd have gone down.

CROWD APPLAUDS

I swam over to him.

I just saw his big grinning head sticking out the water.

It was all fine. There was a boat there waiting for us,

cos we have a boat for every parachutist in the water,

so those guys are pretty much shadowing us as we're coming down,

but, yeah, the crowd, I think they enjoyed the show.

Photographer Peter and the rest of the crowd are happy to see

the two men safe on the recovery boat.

As they came round the corner, you could feel a little bit of relief,

a little bit of a lift, a lot of applause, a lot of shouting.

The guys were obviously happy and waving

and everything seemed all right.

Oh, well, I was relieved, I was happy,

and I thought, "Yeah, I can't wait to see them."

It was as close as you'd want it to be on a display.

There's no getting away from that - it didn't go right.

Local Cumbrian Mike has chosen the unluckiest of days

to bring his family along to watch.

The first thing was when we got out of the water

and my parents were stood there.

My mum was a little bit worried, she wasn't too keen on the idea,

but my dad's ex-Parachute Regiment,

my uncle's ex-Parachute Regiment, so they...

Yeah, they just called me an idiot and had a bit of a laugh.

Mike and Wayne have so much faith in each other that,

for them, it's just been another day at the office

and undeterred, just two days later, as this picture shows,

they're up in the sky again, doing what they do best.

A similar display, but I was on the bottom this time.

So...it was quite nerve-racking to start with,

but just good to get back in the air to do it again.

Those guys are super-cool, aren't they?

Now, we all know that boys will be boys,

but here's one whose taste for adventure got him

and his mum into real trouble.

Back to Westcombe Beach, south Devon,

where Kate has climbed more than 40 feet up a vertical rock stack

to reach her stranded nine-year-old son Sam.

The adventurous youngster loves to climb,

but this time, he's gone too far.

On the beach below, the rest of the family are holding their breath.

I looked down and they were obviously waiting to hear

what I had to say, so I said...

Pretty quickly, really,

I'd worked out that there was no way I could get Sam down the rocks.

She said, "We can't get down. We just can't get down."

So that's when I said to Kate's mum I'd go off inland

and try and get some help.

But it's no easy matter.

There's no phone signal on the isolated beach.

His car is parked over half a mile away

and the nearest village is a five-minute drive.

I started driving towards the village

and kept stopping, kept stopping - still no signal.

I started knocking on doors, knocked on two or three doors

and no-one was there.

Then I saw this man with his child in a garden and just said,

"I need to ring the emergency services.

"My phone's not working - can I borrow your phone?"

That's when I rang the police, got back in the car,

shot back down to the beach.

Kate and Sam have now been huddled together on the rock face for an hour

when finally, help begins to arrive.

Fairly soon after he got back, the coastguards arrived.

They came really quickly.

They turn up equipped to climb,

but once they see the pair's location,

they call in the Royal Navy helicopter for Culdrose in Cornwall,

60 miles away.

Pilot Mike Luscombe and his crew are there in 30 minutes.

We got told there were two people stuck on a cliff,

so what we will always do is get there as quickly as we can

and then assess the situation.

As they arrive, Rich takes a photo of the coastguard

guiding the helicopter in with a flare.

Mike and his crew can't quite believe what they find.

Our first impression as a crew was,

"How on earth did they get up there?"

It was just a really unusual place to find somebody.

It was immediately apparent

that we were going to need to winch them off.

The trouble, of course,

is that if we just come straight over the top, our downwash -

there's nine tonnes or so of helicopter -

the downwash from that could possibly have dislodged them.

The power of the helicopter's rotor blades

is like a gale-force wind directly downwards over Kate and Sam's heads.

They're hanging on for dear life.

The wind was so powerful and my mum was just holding on to me.

It really did feel like it was going to blow us off the rock.

Actually, that turned out to be very frightening again.

The plan is to lower a winchman onto the rock stack

to pluck Kate and Sam to safety.

I stood off to the side, we put our crewman down at a similar height

to where the people were, but around the other side of the rock stack.

I traversed the helicopter sideways to where he needed to be,

then he did a Spider-Man impression

and basically scampered round the side

and grabbed hold of them.

Down on the beach, Rich films on his mobile phone

as the winchman reaches his wife and son.

Because there were two of them and because the beach was right there

at the bottom, we decided the best and the quickest way

of doing the rescue would be to put them both in the strop

with our crewman still there,

so we had all three of them on the end of the wire,

lift them from the rock stack,

traverse 40-50 feet, whatever it was,

and then gently let them down onto the beach.

Yeah, that was very emotional, that moment.

The actual rescue, in a way,

was more emotional than having them on the cliff,

because I think that's when I realised

how serious the situation had become.

You're just seeing your wife and your child

being rescued from a rock where they're in a huge amount of danger,

or they could have been potentially in a massive amount of danger.

Finally, after two and a half hours of being stuck on the tiny ledge,

Kate and Sam are lowered onto the beach.

We were so relieved and happy to see Cleo and my mum

and Rich on the beach and we definitely had a big cuddle.

But Sam was jumping about.

He was really relieved that he'd went on a helicopter.

Sam may have enjoyed the journey down,

but it's the journey up that his mum and dad want to discuss with him.

We said we needed to make some clear rules in the future.

I said that I didn't want to stop him climbing,

but he needed to ask every time

and, actually, we stayed in Devon for the rest of the week

and he was very good - every time he wanted to climb something,

he asked me and we generally went up together.

It's an experience the whole family will never forget.

There could have been a very different outcome

if Kate hadn't risked her own life to reach her son.

With all these things, it's only with hindsight

you realise how dangerous it is. Sam could have killed himself,

she could have killed herself climbing up.

And if it wasn't for her being that brave, he would have been...

Oh, it could have been a lot, lot worse.

She just...

She was a hero and she climbed up.

I felt really lucky, because everything worked out

and I didn't fall.

Yeah, we were very lucky

and very glad that things worked out the way they did.

The lengths and heights a mum will go to for their child.

Join us next time for more close calls.