Woman swerves off cliff and survives 7 days trapped on beach

Angela Hernandez does not remember much about the accident — plummeting down an oceanside cliff in central California.

She does not remember hitting her head, fracturing ribs and her collar bone or losing air from one of her lungs. But the 23-year-old from Portland, Ore., does remember waking up trapped in her SUV in the Pacific Ocean and the seven days she fought to survive. The account comes from Facebook, where a user matching Ms. Hernandez’s name posted pictures of the accident, and her injuries and recollections.

Ms. Hernandez wrote on Facebook over the weekend that she was driving July 6 through the Big Sur area on her way to Southern California when she saw a small animal on the highway and swerved to miss it. She veered off the edge of a cliff, police said, and crashed about 200 feet below, where the ocean meets a largely isolated, rocky beach.

“The only thing I really remember after that was waking up,” she wrote. “I was stillin my car and I could feel water rising over my knees. My head hurt and when I touched it, I found blood on my hands.”

She said she broke the driver-side window, jumped into the water and swam until she reached the shore.

The next several days, Ms. Hernandez searched the shore for help. She survived, she said, using a hose from her car to catch water dripping from moss on rocks.

Up above, authorities were searching for Ms. Hernandez. Down below, Ms. Hernandez was there. She said she spent her days watching cars on the road — but no one seemed to see her or hear her.

Then on Friday, hikers Chad and Chelsea Moore were spotted by Ms. Hernandez. Ms. Moore ran “to go find help while the man stayed with me and gave me fresh water,” Ms. Hernandez said.

Hours later, first responders recovered the sunburned, hungry, dehydrated and injured Ms. Hernandez.