Don Sweeney
The Charlotte Observer
(TNS)
An iPhone alerted rescuers after a vehicle plunged 400 feet off a cliff on Mount Wilson near Los Angeles, California officials say.
The alert notified rescuers to the crash at 10:51 p.m. Friday, July 21, rescuer Mike Leum wrote on Twitter.
“I believe that if we didn’t have that good location information in a timely manner, he probably would’ve bled out,” Leum told KCAL. “I kept telling him how lucky he was.”
Deputies heard the man shouting after following the alert, according to the station.
The rescue team guided a Los Angeles County Fire Department helicopter to the injured man, Leum wrote. The helicopter airlifted the man, who suffered head injuries, to safety.
The posts did not provide the driver’s medical condition.
Videos posted by Leum showed the helicopter hoisting the injured driver and the man’s smashed vehicle on the ground.
“He was 400 feet down in a canyon with virtually no way out,” Steve Goldsworthy of Montrose Search and Rescue told KCAL. “So, who knows when, or if, we would’ve located him.”
The Montrose Search and Rescue Team of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department retweeted Leum’s posts.
The iPhone 14 comes equipped with crash detection technology that detects severe vehicle crashes and displays an alert that can be tapped to notify authorities, Apple said.
“If you’re unable to respond, your device automatically calls emergency services after a 20-second delay,” Apple said. “If you’ve added emergency contacts, your device sends a message to share your location and let them know that you’ve been in a severe car crash.”
Mount Wilson is about 30 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles.
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