Edhat Staff
Photos: Santa Barbara County Fire Department
Update by Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office
Sacramento Man Attending Party in Isla Vista Falls off Cliff and is Rescued by First Responders
At approximately 11:30 p.m. last night, April 27, 2019, Sheriff’s deputies and UCSB Police officers responded to a report of a cliff fall in the 6700 block of Del Playa Drive. When deputies arrived, they located the 20-year-old male from Sacramento on the beach below with a crowd gathered around him. The young man was visiting Isla Vista and had been attending a party prior to the cliff fall. He reportedly lost his balance on the cliff and slid part of the way down before falling the rest of the way to beach below. Witnesses who saw what happened pulled him out of the surf and to the cove until first responders arrived.
Santa Barbara County Firefighters responded and took over care of the young man. Firefighters performed a high angle rope rescue from the cliff top, packaged the patient and hoisted the patient back up to the top off the cliff where he was loaded and transported to the hospital for further treatment. Law enforcement personnel assisted County Fire with manpower to hoist the patient to the cliff top.
He is expected to survive his injuries. Alcohol is believed to be a factor in this incident.
By edhat staff
A male in his 20’s sustained injuries after falling 40 feet over an Isla Vista cliff early Sunday morning.
Sometime after midnight, Santa Barbara County Firefighters along with Sheriff’s Deputies and UC Police officers, responded to the 6700 block of Del Playa Drive for a report of a fall victim. Upon arrival crews found a male in his 20’s had fallen approximately 40 feet over the cliff into the surf line.
Crews set up a high-angle rope system at the top of the cliff while rescuers descended down the cliff and into the water to locate the victim. He was secured and safely brought to the top of the cliff where an ambulance transported him to Cottage Hospital.
Initial reports state the man was conscious and admitted to drinking before his fall although it’s unclear exactly how he fell over the cliff.
Edhat will update this article with more information as it becomes available.
I’m still amazed the property owners are allowed to rent their high perched student apartments being rapidly gobbled up by the ocean below. How many more kids will take the plunge between now & the end of the school year?
Looks like the section of cliff where he fell has recently collapsed. I wonder if contributed to the fall ?
That’s the rescue point, doesn’t mean he fell from there.
It might not seem like it, but those “kids” are adults responsible for their own actions
This is one of those things that happens over and over again no matter what might as well accept it as part of the community because we will all be here again reading about it again.
0214 – True, BUT, they are always our kids when it comes to parents.
Also, by legal drinking laws in this state, they are not adults.
You could have student housing / apartments located 1/2 mile away from the cliffs and yet every year at least 6 people (college students who presumably passed college entrance exams) will go over the edge.
Let’s face it: kids who get falling down drunk shouldn’t hang (out) near cliffs. Yet these kids think falling off the edge will never happen to them. Not even two days after some of the substantial rains we had here in Santa Barbara, I watched not one but three different groups of young adults (read: old enough to have good sense) climbing back over the cliff boundary fence at Shoreline Park. All groups were smiling and happy after having done their rebel thing and engaged in their trysts or pot-smoking fun or whatever they were doing while sitting atop those eroding cliff edges. Anyone who engages in such behavior invites injury or worse. Sympathy for such lunkheads? I think not.
Young men have been falling off the DP cliffs since I was in diapers. Of course they’re stupidly drunk, but who among us has not been stupid? I hope that fellow is okay – a lesson learned.
Thank you to the people who rescued him and didn’t judge.
Have a nice day, everyone.
I hope he is okay for his and his parents’ sake. Maybe they should build a fence that is 20 feet high with concertina wire on top along all of Isla Vista and UCSB. It would almost certainly save injuries and lives and in the long run save money from deploying expensive emergency teams in the middle of the night.
How ridiculous and simplistic. There is student housing miles from the cliffs but young people will always find a way to experiment with alcohol and drugs and take risks. These incidents happen at landlocked educational campuses and in the military and even in “religious” training places.