Angela Hernandez – 7 days alone on a beach
Time stranded: 7 days
Distance traveled: Under 1 mile
Terrain types: Beach
Deaths: 0
Situation ended: Found by hikers
Location: Big Sur, Southern California
The majority of the time someone finds themselves in a survival situation, it normally happens in the middle of nowhere, such as a huge jungle or some remote frozen plain in the Arctic Circle. But imagine being stranded somewhere so close to rescue for a whole week without being able to reach it, well that’s exactly what happened to Angela Hernandez.
One day in July of 2018, Angela was driving along Highway 1 in the region known as “Big Sur” in southern California when an animal ran into the road just in front of her car. She swerved to avoid it and in doing so managed to drive off the edge of the road and tumble down a 200-foot cliff, landing on the narrow beach below.
The reason Big Spur is so popular is due to its rugged and remote landscape, being a favorite spot for hikers and campers. The only problem is that there are a lot of cliffs and the land is very steep in parts, making the beach run for miles at a time with no breaks back onto land.
At what point she blacked out and how long she was unconscious remains unknown, but when she woke up the amount of injuries she had would have been enough to kill most people. She had several broken bones including her collar bone and a few ribs, one of which managed to puncture and collapse one of her lungs. After getting rescued and reaching a hospital she also found out she had a brain hemorrhage which helped cause the ruptured blood vessels in both eyes.
As well as the injuries from the fall there was now seawater up to her knees, but instead of panic she took action and broke the window with a multi-tool, climbing out and swimming back to dry land where she passed out for a few hours. When she woke up again the first thing she did was call for help, as cars were constantly going along the highway she was on, but due to the 200-foot tall cliff none of them could hear her.
She detached a hose from her car and used it to collect some water dripping down from moss growing on the bottom of the cliffs, and after a quick drink started to walk along the beach hoping to reach someone soon.
For someone in good shape, it wouldn’t take more than a day to reach help, or a building to stay in until help came, but with so many broken bones and a collapsed lung, Angela could barely cover a quarter of a mile per day. She called for help whenever she had the strength to do so but Highway 1 rarely had people walking down it as it was so remote, and the cars simply couldn’t hear her.
On the 7th day after the crash, a group of hikers were walking along the beach looking for good fishing spots when they came across her wrecked car. Seeing that it still had belongings in it and didn’t appear to have been found before, they walked along the beach looking for whoever was in it, and soon enough they came across Angela.
She was resting on some rocks at the back of the beach and could barely move. They gave her some water and called the authorities who abseiled down the cliff and evacuated her to the hospital. She was severely malnourished and had she been out there for one more day she would have certainly died, with her condition surprising the attending doctors who found it amazing she had survived as long as she did.