Episode 4 Close Calls: On Camera

A close call, a moment of danger when life can hang in the balance.

What would happen if I wasn't found, or didn't find a way out of it?

A split second where the outcome could go either way.

It's a choice - life or death.

The difference between disaster and survival.

We saw a lady who was critically ill, if not dying in front of us.

I kept thinking the hotel was going to fall on us.

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

It's a day they'll never forget -

the day they had a close call.

Today, on Close Calls -

paragliding instructor Sam is plunging to earth,

spinning at 90mph.

He's out of control.

You're trying to live, you want to live.

It's a choice - life or death.

He's going to hit bare rock, or crash into trees -

either one could kill him.

And...two young boys are trapped on the third floor of their home.

It's rapidly filling with smoke.

It was hard to breathe

and I couldn't open my eyes cos it would hurt.

He was trying to catch his breath, and he was crying and shaking.

Fire officers are racing to save them.

On our way to the job, they confirmed there were two children.

That's as serious as it gets.

Also today, a dad-to-be on a last lads' ski holiday

has an horrific collision on the slopes.

The first thing I knew about the other person

was the moment of impact.

Looked behind me, and we could see his face was just covered in blood -

just red.

Fethiye, Turkey.

It's a blazing hot afternoon when, 6,200 feet up,

paragliding instructor Sam Cullingworth launches himself

off Mount Babadag, a favourite but notorious location

for extreme sports enthusiasts.

Everything seems calm as Sam films the view.

But seconds after these shots, Sam faces the worst moments of his life.

Sam misjudges the thermals.

His paraglider canopy collapses and he plunges towards the ground.

And I lost nearly 2,000 feet.

And, literally, you're just going like this...

HE BLOWS

His onboard camera records the terrifying events that follow.

Sam regularly visits Turkey, where he has a home,

but he comes from less sunnier climes -

Kirkburton, West Yorkshire,

where he works as a personal trainer.

He lives with his fiancee Ali.

Being with Sammy is never boring.

You name it, he's done it -

scuba diving, on the motorbike.

So I always just accepted, right from the beginning, he was always

going to be doing something out there, a bit out there.

Sam isn't what you see on the surface, there's a lot more to him.

But for sports enthusiast Sam, his main love - other than Ali - is paragliding.

I've always, as a child, dreamed of flying.

You get the serenity - when you're up at cloud-base, underneath the

cloud and you're just gliding along and there's these

spectacular views - there's a kind of peace, almost, to it.

Sam's been paragliding for the last 16 years

and is a qualified instructor.

We've taught disabled people to fly.

You know, if they can't walk, they can still fly.

And Sam regularly makes the pilgrimage to Mount Babadag

in Turkey. At 6,000 feet, it's a mecca for paragliders.

I'd gone on a holiday to Turkey to see some old friends there,

and actually go flying off the mountain that I love so much.

It's a hot day, mid-afternoon, when Sam launches

for his second flight off the mountain.

I took off and got in a nice, strong thermal just on the ridge.

Hot air rising off the ground creates thermal currents

that give paragliders lift.

Sam is flying thousands of feet above the bay,

but he's misjudged the thermals

and the error proves catastrophic.

It's entirely my fault, really,

that I ended up in the situation that I ended.

I'd reached the edge of a thermal

and basically there was a downdraught.

The glider collapsed on the outside and went through the lines.

I couldn't recover it.

With his canopy tangled up,

Sam's sent into a terrifying 90mph spin.

I was totally locked out, and I had three-and-a-half Gs pressing

on my body and, literally, you're just going like this.

HE BLOWS

I did think I was going to die and you can pass out -

people have been known to pass out and then they can't do anything,

and I lost nearly 2,000 feet in that period of time.

Spinning violently, desperate, Sam needs all his strength to try

and reach his emergency reserve parachute.

You're trying to live.

You want to live. It's a choice - life or death.

That's it.

All the blood is right at the back of your body, like, in my boots

and behind me, and it was like trying to reach something,

and it just reached, it just literally managed to throw it out.

The moment everything slowed down and stopped

it was just like, "Hallelujah."

But Sam's relief is short-lived.

The reserve parachute opened up and started to fly,

but then my paraglider decided to fly as well, came back up,

smacked the reserve parachute and took a load of air

out of the parachute and I was falling again.

Later - Sam stops spinning,

but he's now too close to the ground to avoid crash-landing.

He's going to hit bare rock,

or plunge into the towering 60-foot trees.

I was, like, "Please!"

Keeping children safe and secure at home

is every parent's priority, obviously.

But it's the bravery and skill of the emergency services

we turn to if things go badly wrong.

Briar Hill, Northampton -

7.16am.

Two boys are trapped in the top floor of this house

while it burns beneath them.

I was scared. It was hard to breathe

and I couldn't open my eyes cos it would hurt.

Cameras mounted on a fire engine show firefighters

attempt a daring rescue.

It's the smoke - the smoke is what generally kills people

and there was an awful lot of that.

Firefighter Chris Evans will be going up the ladder

to try and save the boys, but he knows time is running out.

Sarah Scott is a busy woman.

As well as working in a kitchen that delivers school meals, she's a

single parent to four children who all live with her under one roof.

It's a struggle. I work a lot of hours, but I try and balance it out

with the children so we get to spend time together.

They mean everything to me.

As well as her 23-year-old son and 20-year-old daughter,

there's 15-year-old James and his 11-year-old brother Liam.

These two have a bit of a love-hate relationship.

Sometimes we don't get along.

Sometimes he can be quit...

Quite irritating.

-All right.

-James is very sensible,

he's very trustworthy and thoughtful.

Liam's a bit of a scatterbrain. He's very away with the fairies, Liam.

SHE CHUCKLES

He's just annoying.

But Liam is soon going to need to rely on his sensible big brother.

It's a Monday morning in November.

Sarah's older children have already gone out,

while James and Liam are still asleep.

Sarah herself has had to leave extra early for work.

I had to open up,

so I left at about 6.40

and I planned to call James to wake up for school at 7.30.

But Sarah never gets to make that wake-up call.

Instead, alone in the house,

the boys get woken by something far more disturbing.

Just after 7am, Liam's in his bedroom on the middle floor.

So, I woke up and I saw the room was full of smoke.

I shouted, "James! James, there's a fire!"

And he obviously couldn't hear me.

Liam realises he's going to have to try and reach James's room on the

third floor. But opening his bedroom door,

he finds the hallway clogged with smoke.

It was hard to breathe

and I couldn't open my eyes cos it would hurt.

Desperate for help, he runs into the choking smoke

and upstairs to wake his brother.

He was trying to catch his breath and he was crying and shaking,

so I got up and opened the door

and then just loads of smoke just come in my bedroom door.

James realises immediately this is a serious fire.

The heat hit me and I could tell that I couldn't go downstairs

and, like, put it out.

He's right - the boys are on the third floor, 30 feet up.

But the heat and smoke are now so intense,

they can't get out the window.

They're trapped.

I was panicking, I didn't know what to do.

The most frightening moment of my life.

Liam was crying and I opened my window straight away and he just,

like, sat up by the windowsill and I just told him, "Liam,

"It's going to be all right. I'll call 999."

James takes charge of the situation.

He calls 999 on his mobile and is put through to a fire and rescue

emergency call taker.

This is a recording of the call.

BOY CRIES IN BACKGROUND

With his younger brother distraught in the background,

James attempts to keep his cool in the heat.

I was really frightened, trying really hard to stay calm

because I didn't want to worry Liam.

The call handler grasps the seriousness of the situation immediately.

Mereway Fire Station head out.

Firefighter Chris Evans is on board.

On our way to the job, they confirmed there were two children -

makes everyone sort of sit up a bit more.

With the fire engines on their way,

the boys feel the blaze below intensify.

The smoke had got thicker and I could feel the heat through the floor.

I could tell that the fire was getting really big.

The trained call-taker knows what they need to do to stay alive.

Yeah, we put the blanket at the bottom of the door.

It worked, like it didn't get any more smoke.

But with the blaze increasing beneath them,

every second they wait for rescue is agonising for James and Liam.

For Liam's sake, James is still trying to stay calm.

No.

The two fire engines reach the burning house within seven minutes.

A camera on the front of one of the engines shows the crew arriving

at the back of the house. The boys can just be seen leaning out

of James's room at the top of the picture.

Heavy smoke is coming out of their window.

Chris and his fellow firefighters are worried by what they see.

The smoke is what generally kills people

and there was an awful lot of that.

Two firefighters wearing breathing apparatus go to the front of

the house to fight the fire on the ground floor, while,

on the engine's rear camera, Chris can be seen here

taking down the crew's ladder to get to the boys.

But access here, at the back of the house, is difficult.

We have a lot of problems with vehicles, trees in our way.

It was a very congested area.

Still on the line to the call-taker,

the boys frantically watch as the firefighters try to reach them.

But Chris makes short work of that.

The crew then manoeuvre the ladder

up to where James and Liam are anxiously waiting.

The thick smoke is choking them.

Chris goes up the ladder to rescue the boys.

I got to the top of the ladder and spoke

to the younger of the two boys.

He was quite frightened, understandably.

Smoke was coming out around them.

His brother was remarkably calm.

Chris decides to take Liam down first.

He let me go first,

probably because I'm the younger one and I was the more panicky one.

The fire service camera shows Liam in the white top being helped out of

the burning house by Chris.

We were on the third floor, so it was extremely scary.

He was obviously quite shaky when he got onto the ladder.

People do, obviously, have a tendency to panic

and the last thing you want is for someone to jump.

They, like, supported us.

They was behind us, holding on to us,

making sure we don't fall.

Liam's safely down.

With the room getting smokier,

James has had to wait a further tense minute for rescue.

But he's calm to the end.

But as Chris races back up the ladder,

the smoke increases violently, engulfing James.

Cos I couldn't breathe,

I felt really dizzy and I thought I was going to collapse.

James has to turn to face the smoke to get out of the window.

He's got one foot on the ladder, but disorientated, he stumbles.

To stop him from falling,

firefighter Chris reacts quickly and pulls him towards him.

Cos we were quite high up and I wanted to make sure

that he wasn't going to be getting dizzy or falling off the ladder.

It's been 14 minutes since the boys discovered the fire.

Finally, they're both safely out of the burning house.

Yeah, I thought I was extremely lucky to get out there safe.

I don't know what would have happened if Liam didn't wake me up.

With the boys safe, the fire service call mum Sarah at her work

to let her know what's happened.

When I got the phone call, I couldn't really believe

what was happening. When I arrived, I ran to the ambulance and I jumped

in there and Liam started crying, but James was OK.

He was calm as usual.

It was just... Just a relief to get back to them.

She gave us a hug, said, "You're all right."

I told them I loved them.

Physically, Liam has suffered worse from the fire.

He's taken to hospital and given oxygen

to counteract the effects of the smoke.

But, after four hours, he leaves with a clean bill of health.

Fire investigation later reveals all this was caused by a toaster.

We lost everything. My family were safe...

and that's all we really need. Everything else can be replaced.

The family have now moved into a new home.

The two boys both received medals for bravery

and James was commended for his calmness in a crisis.

I honestly don't think either of them realise

how brave they were that day.

To be able to climb out of that window, three storeys down,

on a ladder when your house is on fire -

that's brave.

Coming up - a high-speed collision on the slopes, and a friend's battle

to get an injured snowboarder down the mountain.

The worrying thing, it was his head, I mean, he could have passed out on,

maybe, a 50-foot drop.

In Fethiye, Turkey, paraglider instructor Sam is about to crash-land after

his main canopy collapsed on the way down from 6,000 feet.

I couldn't steer my reserve parachute out of the trouble

that I was heading into, which was a load of rocks.

There was a clearing and some very large cedar trees.

I actually wanted to land in the tree at that point,

cos the rocks didn't look too nice.

But with no steering, it's down to fate.

He's in danger of being impaled by the trees,

or plunging straight through them to the forest floor.

I knew I was going in.

When you're in that kind of thing,

you've got instinct and a gut desire to survive.

I was, like, "Please!"

Sam's camera captures the heart-stopping moment

he plunges into the trees, praying they'll break his fall.

His luck holds - he's caught by the branches of a huge cedar tree.

I landed in the tree 60 foot up, which was another worry.

The first thing I did was check all my body parts to make sure

I hadn't had a strike while I was full of adrenaline,

and you don't feel anything initially.

Then I started looking around to see how securely I was fastened.

My reserve parachute had sort of landed behind me

and the glider had landed in front.

So, I was spread across, like, two trees, really.

Sam is dangling above a 60-foot drop

and can't get out of his harness.

He's not safe and he knows it.

He's in a frightening and precarious position,

but manages to get a phone signal.

His friend at the landing point, Murat Tuzer,

is part of the local rescue team,

but he's more than two hours away over difficult terrain

and Sam might not have that long.

I started slipping, I almost ended up sideways,

almost hanging upside down, staring down 60 foot at the ground.

I thought it was a good time to call my girlfriend and just tell her I

love her because I wasn't too sure how this was going to play out.

3,000 miles away, back in Yorkshire,

Ali takes a call she'll never forget.

The first thing he said to me was, "Hi, I'm OK.

"I'm OK." Which I thought, "Oh, that's a bit of a strange one."

And then he proceeded to sort of,

sort of unravel that he was up this tree.

And she said, "Oh, no. Are you OK?"

And I said, "Yes, I'm OK."

I wasn't, but I didn't want her to worry too much.

I just thought, "I'd like to hear your voice and, you know,

"tell you that I love you."

Which really made me worry, because I thought, "You don't ring someone

"to say that unless you're worried yourself."

And he's usually quite in control, so if he's worried, I'm worried.

Sam rings off to keep his phone clear.

His wait for rescue is agonising.

He's unsure how long the branches can hold his 17½ stone weight

and the temperature is a searing 40 degrees.

So after waiting for an hour and a half and I still hadn't seen anybody

or heard anything, and I'd actually run out of water,

I was starting to worry about my situation from the point of view of

possibly spending the whole night up the tree. And whether they'd

actually find me or not was also starting to be a worry.

Then the radio Sam's carrying crackles into life.

It's his friend Murat with a search party of seven, including paramedics.

I tried to explain that I was on the north side of the mountain,

probably two-thirds of the way down, in a tree

and I think I was at the head of an old, dried up gorge.

So I gave them that information.

And then, I... Eventually, another ten minutes or so,

I could start hearing voices shouting to each other

and that gave me a real sense of hope.

It's another 30 minutes before Murat and the search party find Sam.

First reaction, of course, we're happy we see him and then we're

just looking up the tree and discussing how can we help him,

and then we start climbing up.

Basically, he free-climbed the tree, 60 foot up to me.

They may have found him, but getting Sam down safely is another matter.

He keeps filming.

Because he is not close to the main tree, he's on the branch,

and then far from the tree

in a very tricky place.

He was just, like, a move at the wrong moment and he can fall down.

It was 25 metres and this whole rescue can turn into a big disaster.

Murat needs to attach Sam to the main trunk of the tree with ropes,

so if he does fall suddenly, it will only be a few feet.

He throws Sam a line.

Got it. Yep.

I managed to clip in and he started helping me get through to the

'relative safety of the tree trunk.'

I can come closer to you.

The team rig up a pulley system to lower Sam to the ground...

I've got to try and go this side. Wait - slow, slow.

..but it's not easy.

OK, no problem.

'Pushing myself down the tree was very hard,

'trying to avoid all the branches'

that were spiky.

It's no problem, is it?

And that feeling when I touched the ground was just like...

You know, I could have...

I could have kissed the ground.

No bother.

The team help Sam out of his harness,

give him water and a medic checks him over.

Amazingly, he's escaped with no injuries.

Yo! I'm perfect.

HE SPEAKS TURKISH

And once Sam's off the mountain, his first task is to text Ali.

And a few days later, back in Britain, they're reunited.

Yeah, she was just very pleased to see me, as I was her.

Both know how lucky he's been.

Yeah, I think it shook him up a bit.

I won't count my chickens, but I do think he is calming down a bit.

I consider myself extremely lucky to still be alive after that.

Actually, you know, reliving it, it does send me...

Cold shivers thinking about what...what it could have been like.

The resort of Les Deux Alpes in France.

A group of friends are on their last day of a snowboarding holiday.

Adam films himself,

but his camera's seen something he hasn't -

another snowboarder, coming up behind at 40mph.

The crash takes Adam's feet from under him.

His friends know this is a bad fall.

You think, "Wow, this could be really dangerous."

35-year-old English language teacher Adam lives with his girlfriend

in Portsmouth. They've just had some great news.

My girlfriend and I found out we're expecting our first child.

He's excited by the prospect of being a dad,

but realises the new responsibilities will mean

hanging up his beloved snowboard for a while.

Knowing I've got a kid on the way, it made me realise that, you know,

I really had to make this time count and enjoy it,

cos I might not get to do it for a little while.

For a last holiday with the lads,

he arranges our week-long break in Les Deux Alpes,

one of the most famous resorts in France.

Five of them head off, including best pal Charlie.

I met Adam 11 years ago on a ski season in Austria.

And yeah, he's an all-round nice guy.

They have a great week and decide to make the most of their last day.

The plan for the day was to kind of go to all the spots we'd found

that we really liked off-piste, and our favourite pistes,

and just film it so we had something to document the trip.

Halfway down one of the slopes, Adam decides to attach his camera

to a selfie stick so he can film himself in reverse.

The lads in the group, they just sped off and I sat down and I set up

the camera, and then I went down behind them about a minute after.

So I set off, and then the first thing I knew

about the other person was the moment of impact.

He's barely got going when another snowboarder

comes down behind him at speed - around 40mph.

Adam can't see him and has no time to brace for the collision.

He's sent flying, but the other boarder carries on.

My face was hurting, and I looked down and I saw the blood.

Kind of grabbed my face at first,

like, checking I hadn't knocked out my teeth.

That was the first thing I thought had happened.

At the bottom of the slope,

Adam's friend Charlie realises something is wrong.

Looked behind me and saw Adam had unstrapped his board.

And we could see his face was just covered in blood - just red.

You think, "Wow, this could be really dangerous."

Adam's split his lip and broken his nose.

He photographs his injuries, but they're too gory to show in full.

He's also badly injured his wrist and might have unseen head injuries.

He needs medical attention now.

His friends decide to take Adam down the mountain by chairlift,

but that's dangerous, too.

The worrying thing, it was his head.

I mean, he could have passed out on, maybe, a 50-foot drop.

And if he had passed out,

it would have been quite hard to sort of keep him in,

on the chairlift I guess.

He's, er...not the smallest guy.

Charlie has to prop up his friend all the way.

Adam is treated at the local hospital.

The injuries that I got from this accident - I broke my nose,

I had ten stitches going from outside of my lip into my gum.

And then also broke my wrist and I've now got two metal plates.

It's not been the pre-baby trip Adam envisaged.

Knowing that we had a child coming,

I was being more cautious when I was snowboarding,

so it's just unfortunate that this accident happened.

It's going to be a while before I get back on the slopes,

but I'll definitely be snowboarding again one day.

Three very different stories today and that's all for now.

Join us next time for more extraordinary accounts

from people who've had a close call.