Dont even know where to start but just want friends and family of said kiteboarder to know that Chicago's Crew is pullin for him. The Vid is very hard to watch, the shit hit the fan so fast, that pretty much no one in that situition can pull the releases needed to escape that pounding quick enough.

Are best thoughts and wishes are with you.


STF

Chicago Crew

The thoughts, prayers and best wishes of the Pacific Northwest (Seattle) crew are with Kevin as well. We are discussing this incident on our forum and will undoubtedly learn from this as well. Heal up, Kevin!

Update from Miami Herald on line
 

"Kevin Kearney, the Fort Lauderdale kite-surfer tossed into a building by Tropical Storm Fay's winds, is improving and his condition will be updated from critical to serious, said Kathie Capstack, a hospital spokeswoman.
Kearney has been stabilized and is conscious, his mother said Wednesday."

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/weat...ry/649692.html

Great news! Hope he recovers fully.

Can someone get word to Kevin that Chris and Janis out in Utah send our best thoughts and prayers to him, his family and Marley?

update, well wishes, fund
 

Hey gang,

Kevin is recovering very rapidly, and is awake and out of the ICU. He even recognized me and other friends easily. I told him to stay out of the light, and thank goodness he listened for once. :) So, that is good news for all of us. :D


Moving along, keep sending messages with well wishes away, as I am going to forward them to Kevin once he recovers a bit more.

Finally, we are setting up a website for fund donations for Kevin Kearney, Stay posted for the website details / how you can contribute to help with his hospital bills.

So what have we learned about going out in tropical systems? What should we look for and what should we avoid?

Maybe not kite surfing in them would be a start. But hey, to each their own.

It's that time of year again. Hope we have no serious storms and yet this is the time of year for it. Folks in Europe have been racking up lots of severe squall related accidents in just the last month or so. Not a good sign.

Despite possible miraculous properties of your high depower kite, bad things still happen and for many reasons. Best policy is still, to stay well away from squalls. An instructor was lofted about 400 m into a house in Italy a few days ago. Two other guys were lofted at the same time. One managed to Emergency Depower (out of three) while the second guy smashed into a car suffering serious injury. It looks like a frontal boundary with some strong storm clouds (cummulous nimbus) passed over bringing this stuff. Tornados or dust devils may have been seen. Don't need funnel clouds to mess you up kiting, just too much wind which happens frequently in squall lines. These lines come with fronts and are REAL common in tropical systems, as we know so well, I hope. Anyway, storm season is here along with all that violent convection. This year differs by so many storm fatalities in a short time. In the past, some of our systems have brought grief after crossing the Atlantic to Europe. Not sure that is the case this time, yet anyway. Have a care out there.

Videos from the about and from the area of these tragic accidents in Italy appear below:



A TV broadcast in Italian describing the accidents




An amazing video of many kiters apparently riding obliviously in and around the developing waterspout. This continued until three were literally seized from the water and flung inland by this violent weather system. The group indifference to this abundantly obvious hazard is astonishing, almost akin to sheep grazing as the rancher walks along and shoots them at random. Still, the sheep graze on.




A GoPro camera mounted on the helmet of a kiter riding beneath the cloud that spawned the waterspout for an extended period. He even rides towards the large water spout as it develops




Another Italian news broadcast about the accidents

More info at http://www.kiteforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2357684