A man spent days trapped in a San Diego cliffside crevice before being freed after a 19-hour rescue effort

Rescuers freed a man trapped from the waist down in a cliffside crevice after a 19-hour effort.

YouTube/SanDiegoFireRescue

• Rescuers freed a man from a cliffside crevice in San Diego on Friday.
• The man said he had been trapped there for days before passersby noticed him.
• The rescue operation took 19 hours.

After a grueling 19-hour operation on a San Diego cliffside, rescuers successfully extricated a man who was trapped from the waist down inside a crevice.

The San Diego Fire Department said in a statement that rescuers were first alerted to the trapped man on Thursday at 3:40 p.m., after two passersby heard noises and called 911. The man told rescuers he had been stuck in the hole for "a couple of days."

The fire department said the crevice's diameter was only approximately 12 to 18 inches in diameter, "which caused extreme difficulty in getting him out."

Adding to the difficulty was the rising tide overnight, which delayed the rescuers' efforts to drill and dig around the man. The statement said a team from the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department that specializes in cave rescues joined the efforts on Friday morning, and began splitting the rocks and removing them from around his legs.

The fire department said rescuers never left his side throughout the operation, and kept him hydrated with an IV of fluids and Gatorade.

"He was talking to rescuers most of the time but there were occasions during the night when he was briefly unconscious," the statement said. 

The man was ultimately freed from the hole on Friday morning around 11 a.m., and was airlifted to street level, and transported by ambulance to a local hospital.

The man's identity and condition weren't immediately clear. The fire department said the man "more than likely suffered injuries from being pinned by heavy rocks and debris for nearly 20 hours."

The department added that it was unclear how the man ended up trapped in the crevice.

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