All four passengers, including two children, survived after their Tesla plummeted down a cliff near California’s “Devil’s Slide” Monday, officials said.
The Tesla appeared to have fallen “hundreds” of feet, according to Brian Pottenger, a battalion chief for Coastside Fire Protection District/Cal Fire. The victims were a 4-year-old girl, 9-year-old boy, and two adults, all of whom miraculously survived. Emergency services quickly dispatched for the successful rescue attempt.
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The damage to the vehicle indicated that the car had flipped and impacted against the cliffside several times before crashing, wheels down, against the rocky shoreline. Rescuers used ropes attached to their fire trucks to rappel down the cliff, and were stunned to discover movement inside the vehicle through the windows.
This morning, a vehicle with 2 adults and 2 minors went over cliff at Devil’s Slide in @sanmateoco. Witnesses saw the accident and called 911. The car plunged hundreds of feet down the cliff and landed on the beach. All four patients were successfully rescued. Watch the video! pic.twitter.com/HUM2SJ56Oy
— CAL FIRE CZU (@CALFIRECZU) January 3, 2023
“We go there all the time for cars over the cliff and they never live. This was an absolute miracle,” Pottenger said, per the Daily Mail. “They were more scared than they were hurt.”
All passengers were awake and aware when rescuers got to them. The doors had been jammed against the cliffside, so rescuers had to cut the car open. The two children were lifted out of the vehicle and up the cliffside, then flown via helicopter to a local hospital. Remarkably, they were said to only have “moderate” injuries.
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The adults’s injuries were much more severe, so they had to be lifted out by helicopter and flown to the hospital.
The reason for the crash is being investigated, officer Mark Andrews of the California Highway Patrol said, but it is not believed that the car was on autopilot when the crash occurred.
