Another Addition To Niagara Falls Survivors Club

It’s an amazing story when you hear about someone plunging over Niagara Falls and surviving. I’m not talking about the daredevils who try to cheat death just to say they could do it – the ones who build various contraptions to cushion their fall. I’m talking about the ones who somehow find themselves floating down the Niagara with the only certainty that they will make the 167-foot plunge to the rocks below without any protection.

If there’s some kind of Falls survivors’ club – it increased by one yesterday when a man was pulled from the gorge and was treated for a nasty gash to his forehead. State Parks Police say yesterday’s survivor had intended to commit suicide, but failed.

There are at least two others who attempted suicide and survived. One of them by the name of Kirk Jones who was found on the rocks below eventually admitted he jumped into the water because he didn’t think life was worth living. He later joined a circus and billed himself the “world’s greatest stuntman,” so there’s really no way of knowing what his true intent was.

Included on that list of survivors is a 7-year old boy who along with his sister was tossed from a boat into the rapids in 1960. The operator of the boat was killed. His sister floated close enough to shore to be rescued, but Roger Woodward was carried over the falls to the rocks below. Somehow he survived and was pulled to safety by the crew of one of the Maid of the Mist boats.

He says for years he and his sister never talked about it, but eventually they did and returned to the Falls to discuss it in a Canadian TV special.

The bodies of about 20 people a year are recovered from the lower Niagara. And since 1901, 16 people have attempted stunts. 11 survived.

SOURCE: thesurvivorsclub.org