A man who crashed his truck spent five days trapped in a ravine in Southern California until a passerby heard him screaming for help last week.
The Kern County Fire Department responded to Comanche Point Road, outside of Bakersfield, on the morning of Sept. 2 after a caller reported an injured man was at the bottom of a 100-foot cliff. The man “had been immobilized at the bottom of the ravine since Tuesday, August 29th.”
His “badly damaged” pickup truck was also at the bottom of the ravine, the department said.
The department put together a “rope rescue system” to lower four firefighters into the ravine. Firefighters then secured the man into a basket before carefully raising him to safety.
He was then flown to a nearby hospital, according to the Kern County Fire Department.
The driver, Calvin Smith, identified himself in an interview with KTLA on Wednesday and said his truck went down an embankment.
He told the news station he had suffered a broken back and ribs, unable to move before help arrived.
“I kept asking God, saying, ‘Please don’t let me die out here,” Smith told KTLA. “It was ice cold at night and burning hot during the daytime.”
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