In a harrowing event that turned remarkable, authorities say a man was rescued two days after a Central California car crash left him at the bottom of a cliff.
In a post to social media, California Highway Patrol Coastal Division Air Operation said a call from a local law enforcement agency came in around 8:30 Tuesday morning requesting for a air unit to search for a possible car that had gone off a cliff near the Big Sur area. According to the call, an employee of Post Ranch in Big Sur left work at 11:30 p.m. Sunday but never made it home.
A CHP plane that was already on an other call then altered its route to search for the vehicle. The aircraft found a vehicle that had fallen about 400 feet down a cliff about 20 minutes after the request came in.
Beside the vehicle, a man appeared to be “frantically” waiving a makeshift flag, the CHP said. When rescue units arrived, the man was assessed for moderate injuries.
The man said he was driving home from work on Sunday night when he swerved to avoid a deer on the roadway, causing him to veer off the road completely and roll down a cliff. He said he was ejected out of the car’s sunroof as it rolled hundreds of feet.
He was stuck at the bottom of the cliffside, which contains no trails or visibility from the road, for more than 30 hours.