Rachel Swan
San Francisco Chronicle
(TNS)
Jan. 2—A Tesla plunged off of a cliff at Devil's Slide in San Mateo County on Monday, falling 250 feet onto rocks and critically injuring the four people inside, ona perilous stretch of highway that for decades has bedeviled engineers and sent drivers lurching over steep escarpments.
When firefighters and paramedics responded to a 911 call at 10:50 a.m. they found two children, ages 9 and 4, and two adults trapped in the vehicle that apparently careened over the road's edge while traveling south on Highway 1, just past the Tom Lantos Tunnels. Witnesses told Cal Fire crews that the car simply veered off the highway and over the dirt shoulder before it plummeted.
The terrifying wreck — and miraculous recovery of the four victims —
was the latest along the winding coastal artery
in Pacifica, which has claimed at least nine lives since Caltrans opened the tunnels in 2013. Travelers have long considered Devil's Slide as treacherous as it is beautiful.
Rescue teams used ropes to rappel down the slope carrying Jaws of Life tools to breach the doors of the wrecked car, where they didn't expect to find anyone alive, said Brian Pottenger, a battalion chief for the Coastside Fire Protection District who served as the incident commander.
"We go down there quite a bit for vehicles off the cliff, and normally they're not alive," he said. But on Monday, rescuers peered through binoculars as they descended the bluff and glimpsed an arm moving in the front window.
"That's how we knew that we had at least one person alive in the vehicle," Pottenger said.
Remarkably, all four people were alive and conscious. Teams were able to extricate them and put the two children on stretchers and using ropes and pulleys to hoist them up to the road. Helicopters later arrived for the two adults, and all four crash victims were transported to hospitals.
As of 3 p.m., efforts were still under way to retrieve the crumpled car, which landed on a jagged outcropping just above the water's edge, California Highway Patrol Officer Mark Andrews said.
Dramatic
video from Cal Fire
showed a helicopter flying in over the choppy waters of the Pacific Ocean to pick up the car's occupants and take them to a landing area, where firefighters and other first responders stood waiting. They had managed to steer a complex operation in spite of gusting wind and rain beating down.
A CHP spokesperson said investigators from the agency do not believe the vehicle was operating in self-driving mode.
Emergency crews warned motorists to expect delays as fire trucks packed the road and rescue teams assessed the wreck.
Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @rachelswan
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