A woman from Oregon was found alive after crashing her SUV in Big Sur, California. Angela Hernandez survived for seven days in the wreckage of her Jeep Patriot by siphoning water from a nearby creek.
Using the radiator hose of the crashed vehicle, Hernandez was able to siphon water from the creek at the bottom of a rocky oceanside cliff in Big Sur, California. That alone kept her alive for seven days, according to multiple media sources. According to CNN, Hernandez, who is only 23-years-old, was able to walk and talk once found, although she injured her shoulder in the crash. John Thornburg, the public information officer for the sheriff’s office in Monterey County, California confirmed the information.
She was driving from Portland to visit family in Lancaster, in Southern California. One of the last times Hernandez was heard from was when she sent a text message around 10 p.m. July 5. The message said she was tired and stopping to sleep in her car at a grocery store parking lot in Half Moon Bay, in San Mateo County, said a missing person flier.
We are trying to help a family find Angela Hernandez, a 23 year old from the Portland area. She was traveling from Oregon to Southern California to visit family when the family suddenly stopped hearing from her. She was last heard from in HMB and is driving a wht Jeep. More on FB pic.twitter.com/68usKkEK3w
— San Mateo County S.O (@SMCSheriff) July 9, 2018
Hernandez has apparently lost control of her SUV and ran it off Highway 1, the north-south highway that hugs the Pacific coastline. The next morning, July 6 at about 8 a.m., Hernandez once again notified her family she was continuing her drive south.
After that, no more texts were sent. Calls to her cell phone went straight to voicemail. Law enforcement agencies began looking for Hernandez on July 6, after her family had reported that she’d stopped customarily communicating with them. She was both a texter and a frequent user of social media and the lack of communication on both was highly unusual, authorities said. Hernandez’s vehicle had been in Monterey County about 9:30 a.m. on July 6, authorities said, because her license plates and SUV were was captured on a business security camera, according to the San Mateo Sheriff’s Office said on Twitter.
Late Friday, two people from Morro Bay were hiking in Big Sur and noticed the SUV wreckage at the bottom of a cliff, Thornburg said. Chad and Chelsea Moore went back to their campsite and called 911, he said. Multiple agencies then responded to the remote location and brought Hernandez back up to the roadway. She was transported by ambulance to a waiting helicopter, then taken to Twin Cities Community Hospital in Templeton, SFGate.com reported.
Hernandez told the local authorities that she crashed attempting to avoid hitting an animal on the road. “My sister is alive, she’s talking, and she’s still trying to come to understand everything,” Angela’s sister, Isabel Hernandez, wrote on Facebook Saturday morning. “She’s a fighter and she fought this long and she will continue to. It’s not going to be an easy recovery. I hope everyone will have patience for her and her recovery.”
A survival kit tossed under the seat of the car or put in a glove box could have come in handy. If you don’t yet have one for your vehicle, consider getting one, just in case the worst happens. Check out the link below for some of the most popular and best-rated kits you can find.
Does not say what kind of injuries. Able to get to the water but not crawl back up to the road.
“who is only 23-years-old, was able to walk and talk once found, although she injured her shoulder in the crash.”
“only 23” ??
If she was able to walk…. was she just sitting there waiting for someone to come rescue her? Is this some liberal that that thinks that someone else will take care of here instead of her taking care of herself?
No cell signal down over the cliff? Horn on the car didn’t work either?
She lost control by swerving to avoid an animal? Or was it really because she was texting while driving?
And she used a radiator hose to siphon water from a creek? Really??? Ok.
She’ll probably get some movie deal for her brave and heroic tale.
Well. Criticism and second guessing aside, she showed some resourcefulness. Was she a conservative, black, espanic, liberal, jew, white, muslim, gay, streight? Why is this article here? All humans (and most animals) have survival instincts.
Hwy 1 is cliffs down on one side cliffs up on the other in many places, others is just real steep, some thick wooded areas, especially by Big Sur, nce place, stuff can go wrong quick though.
So incredible that she iwas able to survive 7 days without social media.
We don’t have many of the facts yet so I wouldn’t criticize her EXCEPT that antifreeze is mixed with distilled water to make the proper coolant and if one didn’t know that antifreeze is a poison that tastes sweet, well what she did was potentially dangerous. Obviously under the circumstances you would rinse out the radiator hose a lot prior to using it.
Every year there are stories about accidental poisonings affecting pets and humans with antifreeze consumption.
Good for this lady. Another item of note is where will that Sacha Cohen be? Is he here in the USA right now? Making fun of disabled veteran brothers and patriots demands a response to the SOB. There are several of us that wanna “speak” to him.
I dont want to speak, just take pot shots from 1000m to practice
I could live a week just off the loose french fries that have fallen under the seat.
Cliffs along there are high and steep, and lead to the ocean with not much beach. Beaches are patchy and not connected. Even if she could walk, there may have been nowhere to go unless you had technical climbing gear and knew how to use it. You need all fours at minimum. With one arm screwed up, climbing out was likely not an option. Cell service was also unlikely. She was probably a hundred feet below the cliff, with nothing but Pacific Ocean to her other side. Cell service from Hawaii doesn’t reach that Far East.
I used the links provided in the article and went to the news story about it. The pictures there showed how steep it was down to where she was. Lots of ropes were involved. I also looked at the general area with references made in the links and then went to Google maps to view it there. It is rough country but looks like a great place to camp and hike.
Did Mac have a stroke? This read like it was translated to Spanish and back to English
It’s very dangerous road amigos. No barriers. People think anything can fall off edge my friend. She gets free insurance from Obamacare so she will be OK. You try driving that road dogs and you will see man so dangerous.
Could have at least brought along a box of those Kelloggs Honey Smacks to eat, or maybe a McDonalds salad.
It is good she survived, and G*d bless her. Reads like that commercial on TV where the lady dodges a deer and runs into a deep ravine by the road. For anyone who has never been in a life or death survival situation, it sounds a little flaky, but to those of us who have, the reality is a little more than conjecture. It is often hard for people to even think beyond getting some water to drink, or food to eat in these survival situations, because of the trauma and shock of the incident. You are now in a completely different environment than what you’re used to, and you have to learn to deal with it on a quick learning curve. I am very glad she got help, finally.
I can think of similar survival situations where a young college student was improperly dressed in winter and got stuck in an isolated spot, and the young woman lived off of snow melt and a candy bar. Or a young soldier and his wife and baby who foolishly traveled through heavy snow, got stuck, and luckily found a cave and nearly all died from frostbite.
It can happen to anyone. When it does, it’s an opportunity to preach preparedness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW3uP6n7wLI
The Stolpa family survived and so can you especially if you have skills and supplies.
I would have pulled out the spare tire and lit that puppy up. The black smoke would have brought help pronto.
She was found about 50 miles south of the BadAmerican homestead.
I’m thinking that, in the future, she won’t leave home without more supplies.
Glad she made it.
Be safe…..BA.
“Using the radiator hose of the crashed vehicle, Hernandez was able to siphon water from the creek at the bottom of a rocky oceanside cliff in Big Sur, California.”
Not the tastiest, most-sterile water filter, but most prepping probably comes down to thinking on your feet, imho.
As a child, one of the required stories in English class was a short story about two brothers doing free climbing along a mountain. One realized he had made a mistake and had gotten into a precarious spot where he was stuck. He started to panic and his brother talked him through it until he found hand and toe holds to extricate himself.
It deeply affected me, and a mentor in my teen years took me rock climbing and free climbing. I found it exhilarating and I highly reccommend it.
When doing it, if you lose your nerve and look down and get in a bind, you can freeze up your muscles and get incredibly tense and climbing becomes impossible.
Now imagine her situation, and likely no expertise. Now couple this with what being in a severe car wreck. When the air bag deploys and you suffer the jolt, it goes off like a gunshot and your ears are ringing and your head whipped around and the seat belt can slip and pinch your upper deltoid. You are stunned, possibly upside down, and weakend and trying to extricate yourself.
And then trying to climb back up cliffs. Many could not do it unless they had any experience bouldering and chimneying using their quads and gastrocenemius muscles, but instead would try to lift themselves using upper body strength.
Give her a break.
Now is a good opportunity to learn how to rock climb. It’s a very good skill and one I taught my children. And it’s empowering. And y’all need not risk much as climbing gyms are everywhere with great equipment to belay.
Also, the first prepping skill you ought to learn is tapping a sycamore, walnut, hickory, box elder, maple, or birch because if you whittle a spile of some sort, even one that is not hollow, you can catch water from it flowing and that water doesn’t need to be purified. The old school method often used sumac because of the pith which could easily be removed.
Teach BOTH your sons and daughters and your wife because you will not alw
..always going to be around.
Likewise all of your family members should have a lockblade and wood matches and a whistle at all times. A small fanny pack loaded with common gear and an energy bar and a nalgene bottle might save their lives.
The total gear cost might be as little as $30. That is money well spent and then all of them have fall back equipment in case of emergency.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8jeXUSSfHk
Even nine year olds can do this kind of climbing, with lots of care and training, and then this is the foundation to do other more technical climbing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7uITEwr7zk
Even a seven year old girl is doing some minor bouldering as long as both parents are watching vigilantly.
What one person can do, another can do. That is what ancestral skills are all about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aps7j2OuGGc
This shows an eleven year old chimneying by wedging and distributing weight across the crevasse but mostly his legs are doing the work. If he tires, just as any kid will wedge himself in a doorway, then he uses very little strength and can take a breather while studying where future hand and footholds and tiny toe holds are.
Most everyone with a lick of common sense can inch their way up a cliff as long as it is not “sheer” or they have to overcome an overhang. The later takes pure guts and brute upper body strength as they have pull up suddenly or swing to get the successive handhold.