This is the first in the series One Day in the Life of … of people from all walks of life. If we live to be 80, we have lived around 29,200 days. We get to 10,000 days at the age of 27. So there are plenty of days for all kinds of things to happen. Something spectacular. Something life-changing. Or just a pretty ordinary day that still held something very memorable. This time it is about what happened one day in Amasifuen Gamarra’s life.

[caption id=“attachment_3740” align=“alignleft” width=“279”] Amasifuen Gamarra (photo courtesy of Igor Korotchenko)[/caption]

Sergeant Amasifuen Gamarra, 31, had served in the Peruvian Air Force for eight years.

Parachuting was thus nothing new to him. But one day, on Tuesday May 6th 2014, things went terribly wrong. As he jumped from the plane at the height of 1,500 meters (5000 feet), and was about to open his parachute, he ran out of luck - for the chute malfunctioned. Its webbing got wrapped around his neck, and he soon lost consciousness.

He fell down with a speed that should have killed him. But he landed pretty unharmed - with  just a twisted ankle. How was that possible?

Well, maybe luck caught up with him. Or maybe - as he says - God looked over him. Be it as it may, he was taken to a hospital in Arequipa in Southern Peru, where the staff worked around him, hardly believing the scarcity of his injuries. “We don’t know what cushioned his fall, but he’s alive. It’s a miracle,” said Dr Guillermo Pacheco who treated him. There weren’t even any fractures on him, and Amasifuen Gamarra not only walks today but continues working in the Peruvian military, with occasional jumps as well. For stuff like that don’t happen twice to the same person, right? Most probably not.

Updated 25.6.2018 Sources: ABC - Europe1 - Inquirer - The Telegraph