A leisurely drive turns horrific, stranding Angela Hernandez on a beach with no food, no water, and no hope of rescue.
Going to the beach took on a nasty connotation for Angela Hernandez in July 2018 when she suffered a life-threatening accident that saw her spend some less than quality time on the beach.
The date was July 6, 2018, and she was driving leisurely down Highway 1 going from California’s Central Coast to Southern California. It was a nice day that was going to take a wrong turn.
Suddenly, a small animal appeared from nowhere and ran in front of her car. Instinct took over, and she automatically swerved to miss it, the sharp yank on the steering wheel making her lose control and lunge towards the cliff edge. And over it.
And over ledge she went, tumbling noisily 200 feet down to the rocky beach below, a beach that was so isolated and devoid of human life that she would be lucky to be found by anyone any time soon.
When her car came to a stop, she was out cold, knocked unconscious by the brutal bone-jarring crash landing. She came to a while later, only to discover the dire conditions she had been thrust into.
She had suffered fractured ribs, her collar bone was damaged, and she was losing air from her lungs. These were definitely life-threatening injuries and her chances of survival were slim, not a soul in sight to offer any first aid.
Angela regained consciousness to a nightmare scenario, rising seawater lapping around her feet, her seatbelt strapping her tightly to the seat, and all the electric windows wound up, preventing the water from leaking out.
To make matters worse she had fractured her collar bone, painfully fractured several ribs, banged her head brutally, and, more urgently, had air escaping from one of her lungs.
Amazingly, under these dire conditions, she didn’t panic, realizing that a cool head was needed in order to get out of the car before the water hit the roof. Searching under the surface of the water, which was now above her knees, she located the multi-tool kept under the chair and broke the driver-side window.
Somehow, she managed to drag herself out, swim painfully towards the beach, just in time before she passed out.
This was to be just the start of her nightmare.
Her first sight upon waking up, battered, shoeless, clothes and skin ripped and torn, was the sheer, unscalable cliffs surrounding the beach. She could see cars passing by on the road overhead, yet her yells for help went unheard.
She was trapped on a desolate beach that few if any people visited, and no way to call for help.
The seven days that she was stranded saw her get sunburned, hungry with little to nothing to eat, and nearly dehydrated apart from the little water she could collect from the moss growing on the rocks.
It was doubtful whether she could have survived for much longer if two hikers, Chad, and Chelsea Moore, hadn’t stumbled upon her car, started collecting items strewn from the vehicle, and found her bedraggled form between some nearby rocks, to their utter amazement.
Quickly, after offering her water, help was called and she was transported to a nearby hospital after first responders used ropes to haul her up the cliff face, where her injuries, which included a brain hemorrhage and ruptured blood vessels in both eyes, were treated.
It was a credit to Angela Hernandez’s grit and determination that enabled her to survive the ordeal of 7 days under severely harsh conditions, with rescue so tantalizingly close above, yet so soul-destroyingly far away.