On Monday, March 31, at 6:16 PM, four Companies of Los Angeles Firefighters, two LAFD Rescue Ambulances, one Urban Search and Rescue Unit, one Hazardous Materials Team, two Helicopters, three Fireboats, one EMS Battalion Captain and one Battalion Chief Officer Command Team, a total of 50 Los Angeles Fire Department personnel under the direction of Battalion Chief Robert Willcox, responded to a Cliff Rescue on the rugged Pacific shoreline near Point Fermin Park in San Pedro, within 100 yards of where a woman was found dead four days earlier.
Summoned by a Los Angeles Port Police boat crew at the scene, Firefighters responded by land, air and sea to discover an adult male civilian at the base of the sheer and rocky cliffs at the southernmost point of Los Angeles.
A Firefighter/Diver from the first arriving fireboat swam to the rapid assistance of Port Police Officers in providing medical aid to the severely injured man, who appeared to be 25 years of age.
With rising tide and pending darkness, land-based Firefighters maneuvered a steep trail to the shoreline to join in caring for the unconscious man, who had obvious spinal injuries and a leg fracture.
Undaunted by the cresting waves nearby, rescuers physically stabilized the man and placed him in a litter basket before he was hoisted aboard an LAFD helicopter for the four-minute air ambulance flight to the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, where he arrived in critical condition.
No other injuries were reported.
The circumstances surrounding the man’s apparent fall remain under active investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department.