Tsunami Skydivers glide to San Pedro
Every February Rich Grimm of Tsunami Skydivers packs up a group of adventurers from all over the world and heads to Belize. The expedition lasts about a week and one of the features they engage in is skydiving over La Isla Bonita. News Five was on time to witness a few of the landings today. But while the event has been more than historic, Grimm says the event may soon die a natural death because of a dwindling economy.
Rich Grimm, Pres., Tsunami Skydivers Inc.
“In five years we’ve brought nearly seven hundred people to Belize with us total.”
Marion Ali
“What has it done for us locally in terms of exposure, revenues?”
Rich Grimm
“I spoke with Minister Heredia the other day and we did a tally of what this event has been to Belize. We have brought, including this year, four million Belize dollars over five years into the country. And we don’t just stay in San Pedro, we go nationwide. People are gonna leave here and go tours. We had people go out to Lamanai yesterday, we had people out scuba diving. We’re gonna skydive into the blue hole on Friday and our whole group will be out there scuba diving. We have people going to Cayo, we have people going to Placencia and what happens during our even, this isn’t just about us coming here to skydive. We’ve had two weddings here over the years, we hire local bands. Each night we do a different part night at a different establishment on the island. And we also have people that come down not just to skydive now, people that have been with us on the trip have brought other people here on non-skydiving times throughout the years. So the exposure that Belize gets, this goes with all the skydiving publications, everyone’s videos, when people do a tandem skydive with us they get a video and they are gonna go home and show that to all of their friends.”
Marion Ali
“I understand this is the last year though?”
Rich Grimm
“Well, the problem that we’re encountering now is it costs so much money. We bring our own skydiving airplane from the states and that basically costs us about thirty-five thousand US dollars to bring the airplane down here for the week and to jump. And what’s happening now is it’s becoming more and more expensive to come down here now and the numbers aren’t working out. Actually this year myself and the company that owns the aircraft are probably going to lose money so we have to sit down and examine things. We don’t want it to be the last year but there’s just certain things that are making it not financially feasible for myself and with the economy we have fewer people in our group this year than we’ve had in past years. So it’s really put us—we came close to canceling this year.”
On this trip Grimm said he brought just over sixty skydivers. Normally he said the group is over a hundred. Viewers of Channel Five’s Open Your Eyes will see, William and I skydive in the coming week.
