I mean, I have a lot of questions about this as a rock climber… Yeah, it is good that the climber in question didn’t die, and it is certainly admirable that their belayer caught them with no doubt great sacrifice. But the absence of an analysis of what circumstances led to this incident in the first place seems… odd.

Based on the article and a couple other sources I found, the climber apparently took a ~30’ factor 2 fall directly onto the belay. Presumably, falling past the belay changed the belayer’s anticipated direction of force, which put the belay device in the “open” position when the climber fell past. With no assistance from the belay device, the belayer held on for dear life and barely saved the climber at the cost of significant personal injury.

However, rock climbers have well known and practiced techniques for eliminating this scenario.

Most obvious is the use of more advanced belay devices, such as a grigri or gigajul, which will brake the climbers strand when given a significant pull regardless of orientation.

Nearly equally obvious - the use of the “Jesus Draw” or “Jesus Peice”. The protection you place and clip the rope to before you leave the belay. This is placed in order to avoid this exact scenario - if you fall before your first peice of pro, you will simply take a normal (if uncomfortable) leader fall, rather than taking a raucous, awkward fall directly onto your belayer’s harness.

More experienced climbers will point out that in difficult trad climbs, it may be preferred to use an old tube style device, as a competent and practiced belayer can allow rope slip through the device during the catch, reducing peak forces on marginal peices of protection above.

Similarly, some experienced climbers may forgo the Jesus draw if there are no real good peices in their anchor, and they want a fall absorbed by the whole equalized anchor, plus the squish of their partner’s body and potentially their partner’s grit to not get pulled off a ledge, in order to minimize the chances of ripping the belay and killing both people.

However, these are (and I cannot emphasize this enough) extreme edge cases practiced by extremely experienced and bold climbers. These climbers, meanwhile, were climbing an extremely easy route which likely would not challenge even a first-time outdoor climber physically.

Which brings up another technique which could have been used to avoid this situation - don’t fall on easy terrain.

While I would love to be corrected, my guess is that these were a couple inexperienced yahoos who barely escaped with their lives from their lack of prior preparation

Sounds about right, didn’t read what belay device they were using but might be case of expecting to pull down do block would now suddenly have to be pull up to block because like you said missing first piece.