Pick your poison...get burned or jump off cliff. I can only imagine how this guy felt with his daughter having to make that choice...geezus.

http://news.yahoo.com/2-jump-death-sea-fleeing-spain-fire-063936027.html

thats just terrible.

Jeezus, what a choice to make. What a way to end a vacation. We have our next vacation scheduled up the BWCA border area
with Canada. They have had their share of forest fires in recent years, surely hoping they don`t have any when we are there.
Plenty of lakes to jump into.

I would have jumped to. the thought of being roasted alive, can`t even go there.

Amazing there were any survivors from that height into the water or rocks.

When the flames become close enough, I don't even think it's a choice that people make any more then pulling away touching a hot stove is a choice- once the heat is intense enough, you will jump, it's something that happens at a much more basic level than rational thought.

They may have calculated better to jump before it got too hot but because of being deprived of air, though.

Yeah, remember those poor folks leaping from the WTC on 911...

I know I'd rather jump than burn to death

Or suffocate from the smoke. Of course if you lose your senses after hitting the water it isn't much different. Poor kids, hoping at least their mother makes it.

Most people who die in fires don't actually die burning to death. They die because they suffocate from the smoke. There are of course exceptions to that... This guy and his daughter (May they RIP) probably would of burned to death. WWI aviators carried a gun or jumped in case of fire.

Supposedly, burning to death is one of the most horrible ways to go...
<S>

In their case, it was the intersection of the will to live and the cruel calculus of probability: when the flames got close enough to leave no doubt about the certainty of its perniciousness, they took the one in a million chance of surviving a jump. It paid off for two of them. In other cases, like the World Trade Center jumpers, it was the last act of taking control by choosing the method of your death, as it was for the WWI pilots who carried pistols for that purpose. Burning is a relatively long and exceptionally painful way to die, whereas a jump or a shot to the head is usually instant by comparison.