Cloe Fields, 23, and her boyfriend, Christian Zelada, 24, overturned for 90 meters in the Macaco Canyon, in California, in the United States, last Tuesday (13). Without serious injuries and trapped in a place with no phone signal, the two were rescued thanks to the satellite technology of the smartphone they had.
The couple were traveling on a two-lane road at the edge of a steep canyon when a woman pulled up behind them and started honking her horn. Zelada pulled the car aside to let the other one pass and, suddenly, the car they were in was hit by gravel, skidded 180 degrees and fell into the canyon with its wheels facing upwards.
“All we’ve had is bruises on the face, cuts and a little pain in the neck and now a mild concussion,” Fields, who is a video editor, said in an interview on Friday.
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Sgt. John Gilbert said it was a “miracle” the couple survived the plunge into the canyon, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Other drivers who crashed at the scene were not so lucky. “Normally we have fatalities. [uma região] very steep and high,” said Gilbert, who is also Montrose’s search-and-rescue coordinator and attended the crash.
After unbuckling their seat belts and crawling out of the car, Fields and Zelada needed help in a remote canyon with no cell phone reception.
Zelada found Fields’ cell phone about ten meters from the car, with the screen broken. Although there was no signal, the phone detected that there was an accident. The iPhone 14 model smartphone warned to contact emergency services through a new satellite feature.
In places without cellular or Wi-Fi coverage, the service allows users to send emergency messages via satellites hundreds of kilometers above Earth, according to Apple. The phone relays the answers that owners give to a few short questions to a service center, along with the location of the phone.
Fields said her phone instructed her to point it at a satellite and hold it there, which allowed her to call for help. “Frankly, it was weird,” she says, adding that she didn’t know about the feature.
Police received a call around 1:55 pm from Apple’s emergency call center and dispatched the Montrose Search and Rescue team, the Los Angeles County Fire Department and other agencies to the scene.
Gilbert says the call center gave authorities the precise latitude and longitude for Fields and Zelada’s location. He was not aware of anyone else who had called to report the accident. “There was a lot of potential that they could have been out there in the gorge after midnight,” he says.
The couple was rescued by helicopter and taken to a hospital. A spokesperson for the California Highway Patrol said the accident was being investigated and that no additional information was available.
Zelada, who is a sales consultant, says he is not sure how the couple survived. He remembers gripping the steering wheel as the car plunged into the canyon. The young woman says she remembers her boyfriend saying: “We’re fine. We’re fine. We’re fine”, after the fall.
Later, the boy confessed relief to his girlfriend. “We were the 1 in 100 million who make it out of this alive and in one piece.”
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