SAN DIEGO — Dramatic video from San Diego Fire-Rescue reveals how difficult and dangerous this rescue was, showing the hands of the man who was trapped up to two, possibly three days, inside a cave along the cliffside in Ocean Beach.
Just before 11 a.m. Friday, and after a nearly 20-hour rescue operation, a ladder truck hoisted him up to safety.
“To get him out and have him smiling and moving off to the hospital, it’s a good day.”
But a good outcome was not guaranteed.
It all started just after 3:30 p.m. Thursday.
Kris Correa and Cole Stickley say they were nearby playing music with friends when they heard the trapped man yelling for help. They found him and called 911.
“He was really freaked out, he was really panicked. When the lifeguard arrived, he was really pleading with us not to leave him before the lifeguard actually started talking to him, trying to help him out. Other than that he said he’d been down for three days, said he was walking and he slipped down there.”
“Kind of terrifying. You don’t really know what to do when that moment arises.”
Lifeguards and fire crews arrived and were barely able to reach the man who was stuck in an extremely narrow spot.
“The space was literally that big that the individual was in for 15 feet down both directions as we went through.”
“Hold onto me… try to shimmy to your right.”
“Waist down it was crushed all with rock and debris, so as he fell and as he slid down through that hole about 15 to 20 feet, all that compressed around him. And of course when you’re trying to climb out everything starts coming again, and it just slowly compressed everything in on his body and the rock moved in around it too.”
At first, rescuers could only see the man’s fingers from the top and his ankle from the bottom.
They worked through the night, chipping away at the rocks, but had to stop because of rain and the rising tide, which created concerns the man could drown.
“We were worried last night on it filling up top, so we had drilled a hole through the bottom to let the water run through if it had to.”
San Diego Fire-Rescue Deputy Chief Dan Eddy said the focus shifted to keeping the man heated and hydrated. “We inserted our medic on the top to give him an IV. Our medic had to go face first, be lowered down into it, and apply an IV into his hand hanging from the top. So that’s how tight it was on the inside for them to do that. And brought in the heater too because he started losing a lot of consciousness through the night.”
Early Friday morning, a cave rescue team from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department arrived and carried out what’s called micro-blasting, which chipped away at the rock and freed the man’s legs.
“Once we relieved the pressure off his right leg, that was the most smile I saw in his face because he could feel that we were finally getting him out this morning.”
A crowd looked on as the rescue played out, applauding as the man was lifted and loaded into an ambulance.
Fire officials say it’s unclear what the man was trying to do when he fell and got stuck.
“He was very happy to be out, injured of course, it’s a long ordeal, but he did a great job with us and worked with us.”
We’re told the man was taken to the UCSD Medical Center with serious injuries. His name has not been released.
Fire officials say the goal was to get the man out by 1 p.m. Friday afternoon because of the tide coming back in. They then moved up the target time to 11 a.m. because of possible rain making things more difficult.
They say, had someone not heard this guy and much more time had passed, this would have had a much different outcome.