PORTLAND, Ore. — A Portland woman shared harrowing details about her fight for survival after her car plummeted over a California cliff.
On Sunday night, 23-year-old Angela Hernandez published an account of her ordeal, along with photos, in a lengthy post on her Facebook page.
She was traveling from Oregon to southern California on July 6 to visit her sister, Isabel. Hernandez was driving near the Bay Area when she said she swerved after an animal stepped into the road. Her car plummeted 250 feet down a cliff, into the ocean.
Hernandez said she woke up and felt water rising over her knees. She broke a window to escape her car.
"Every bone in my body hurt," she wrote. "The only thing racing through my mind was my sister, Isabel. So I started screaming her name. Eventually, I was able to break out of my car and jump into the ocean."
Stranded on the shore for a week, Hernandez said she used a radiator hose from her car to collect fresh water to stay hydrated where she found some water dripping from a huge patch of moss.
"The next few days kind of became a blur," she wrote . "I'd walk up and down the beach in search of another human being. I'd climb on rocks to avoid the sharp sand and walk along the shore to avoid the hot rocks. I found a high spot I was able to climb up to. ... I could see cars driving across the cliff and felt like if I could yell just loud enough, than one could hear or see me."
Two hikers walking on the beach found her car and Hernandez on July 13.
"I saw a woman walking across the shore," Hernandez wrote. "I thought she was a dream."
A rescue team put Hernandez in a stretcher and were able to carry her up a trail to the top of the cliff, where she was loaded into a helicopter and flown to a hospital. On her Facebook post, she wrote that she suffered a brain hemorrhage, four broken ribs, broken collarbone, a collapse lung, ruptured blood vessels in both eyes and sunburns on her hands, feet and face.
"But, at the end of the day, none of that matters. I feel like I have everything I've ever wanted. I'm sitting her in the hospital, laughing with my sister until she makes broken bones hurt," she wrote. "I've met some of the most beautiful human beings that I think I'll ever meet in my entire life.
"I've experienced something so unique and terrifying," she wrote, "that i can't imagine that there isn't a bigger purpose for me in this life."
Her sister, Isabel, started a Gofundme page to help pay for Hernandez's recovery.
"Angela is an amazing, amazing young woman," said Monterey County Sheriff Steve Bernal. "For her to survive seven days, with the injuries she had, is amazing. ... Most people wouldn't have lasted that long, but she was a fighter and she had the will to live."