Cloe Fields, 23, and her boyfriend, Christian Zelada, 24, flipped 300 feet in California’s Monkey Canyon in the USA, last Tuesday (13). With no serious injuries and trapped in a place with no phone signal, the two were rescued thanks to technology via satellite from their smartphone.
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. O smartphone do modelo iPhone 14 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 the 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 holding him there, which allowed him to call for help. “Frankly, it was weird,” he says, adding that he wasn’t aware of the feature.
Police received a call around 1:55 pm from Apple’s emergency call center and dispatched the search and rescue team from Montrose County Fire Department. The Angels and other agencies to the site.
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 Highway Patrol California said the accident was being investigated and that no further 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.”
Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves
