Couple in Car Survive 300-Foot Fall Into a California Canyon - The New York Times

Cloe Fields and her boyfriend, Christian Zelada, were driving connected a two-lane road astatine the borderline of a steep canyon successful Southern California connected Tuesday when, they said, a pistillate successful a achromatic Mercedes pulled up down them and started honking.

Mr. Zelada said helium had pulled implicit to fto the pistillate pass. Suddenly, the mates said, their Hyundai Elantra deed immoderate gravel, mislaid traction, spun 180 degrees and plunged implicit the edge.

Ms. Fields said the car had smashed into a fewer trees arsenic it careened downward earlier it flipped implicit and landed wheels-up astatine the bottommost of the canyon.

The mates had fallen astir 300 feet, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. And they had survived with nary large injuries.

Sgt. John Gilbert of the Sheriff’s Department said it was a “miracle” that the mates had survived the plunge into Monkey Canyon successful the Angeles National Forest, which was reported by The Los Angeles Times.

When different drivers person fallen into that canyon, “we’re usually dealing with a fatality,” Sergeant Gilbert, the coordinator of the Montrose Search and Rescue Team, which responded to the crash, said successful an interview. “It’s conscionable truthful steep and truthful acold down.”

After unbuckling their seatbelts and crawling retired of the car, Ms. Fields and Mr. Zelada faced their adjacent challenge: calling for assistance successful a distant canyon with nary cellphone reception. It was astir 2 p.m., with temperatures successful the 40s, Sergeant Gilbert said. At night, temperatures successful the canyon driblet into the 30s, helium said.

Mr. Zelada looked for Ms. Fields’s cellphone and recovered it astir 10 yards from their car, with the surface smashed. Even though determination was nary compartment service, the telephone had detected that determination had been a crash, Ms. Fields said. Her iPhone 14 gave her a punctual to interaction exigency services done a caller diagnostic called Emergency SOS via satellite.

In places with nary cellular oregon Wi-Fi coverage, the work allows users to nonstop exigency messages via satellites hundreds of miles supra the Earth, according to Apple. The telephone relays the answers users springiness to a fewer abbreviated questions to an exigency telephone center, on with the user’s location, according to Apple.

Ms. Fields said her telephone had instructed her to constituent it toward a outer and clasp it there, which allowed her to summon help.

“It was honestly strange,” Ms. Fields said, adding that though she is simply a “very techie benignant of a person,” she had not known astir the outer feature.

The Sheriff’s Department said it had received a telephone astatine astir 1:55 p.m. from Apple’s exigency telephone halfway and had dispatched the Montrose Search and Rescue Team, the Los Angeles County Fire Department and different agencies.

Sergeant Gilbert said the telephone halfway had fixed the authorities an close latitude and longitude for Ms. Fields and Mr. Zelada’s location. He said helium was not alert of anyone other who had called to study the crash, “so determination was a precocious imaginable they could person been stuck successful the canyon aft midnight.”

A rescue squad arrived successful a helicopter, hoisted the mates retired of the canyon and took them to a hospital. A spokesperson for the California Highway Patrol said that the clang was nether probe and that nary further accusation was instantly available.

Mr. Zelada, 24, a Honda income consultant, said helium was not definite however the mates had survived. He said helium remembered gripping the steering instrumentality arsenic the car plunged into the canyon, and Ms. Fields said she remembered him saying arsenic the car fell: “We’re OK. We’re OK. We’re OK.”

Later, Mr. Zelada said, helium told Ms. Fields, “We were successful the 1 successful 100 cardinal who get to locomotion distant with our lives and our limbs.”