IRWINDALE — A man and woman were lucky to be alive after their car plummeted about 150 feet into an abandoned rock quarry early Saturday, officials said.
The crash was reported about 1:45 a.m. in an old rock quarry just west of the intersection of Cypress Street and Azusa Canyon Road, Los Angeles County Fire Department Capt. Gerald Gonzalez said.
A man and woman appeared to have been traveling west on Cypress Street when their Infiniti sedan continued straight through a T-intersection, plummeting about 150 feet into the quarry below, the captain said.
“It’s pretty amazing that they survived,” he said.
The engine compartment of the sedan took the brunt of the damage, leaving the passenger compartment of the car relatively intact, Gonzalez said.
The man and woman, whose ages were not available Saturday, were hospitalized with serious injuries, he said, but both were expected to survive.
In order to reach the steep drop-off into the quarry, the car had to first break through a metal guard rail and then get over a 4-foot-tall dirt berm.
An El Monte police helicopter first spotted the wreckage, then landed near the smashed car with a paramedic, who began treating the injured man and woman.
Additional rescuers then climbed down into the quarry and used a helicopter to lift the injured man and woman back up to street level, Gonzalez said. They were then rushed to Los Angeles County-USC for treatment.
Firefighters managed to remove the patients through the windows of the car and did not need to cut apart the vehicle to access them, the captain added.
The cause of the crash was being investigated by the Irwindale Police Department.
Because the man and woman had been jostled around in the car in the crash, it was not immediately clear which had been driving, officials said.
