Helicopters simultaneously worked two separate incidents in the midnight hour in Malibu today: a small brushfire and a car over a cliff with three people hurt.
First, three people were injured, one critically, after their vehicle ran off Kanan-Dume Road and down a several hundred feet down a steep embankment just after midnight.
The crash was about two miles north of Pacific Coast Highway at 12:10 a.m., Los Angeles County Fire Department Supervisor Robert Diaz said.
“When (search and rescue) team members arrived, they saw the vehicle had launched over 200 feet from the roadway into the canyon and was virtually destroyed,” said Sgt. Diane Hecht of the Sheriff’s Headquarters Bureau. “All three occupants were able to crawl out of the vehicle. Rescue personnel rappelled down to the crash site, loaded the men onto rescue baskets, and hoisted them up the canyon.”
The search and rescue operation took more than 90 minutes, Diaz said.
At 12:30 a.m., helicopters and ground crews were called to a brush fire on a steep hillside near Pacific Coast Highway and Malibu Canyon Road, according to a Los Angeles County Fire dispatcher. The quarter acre blaze was doused by helicopters and declared out at 1:45 a.m.
“There was no ground access,” the fire dispatcher said.
