Woman survives 180m car plunge off Chappies
A 43-year-old woman was hospitalised after her car plunged 180 metres off Chapman’s Peak Drive on Easter Monday.
The mountain pass was closed on Wednesday while a towing company recovered the car.
The woman was the only one in the vehicle at the time of the incident.
The fire department was notified at 1.45pm that the vehicle had left the road and gone down a cliff on the Hout Bay side of the toll gate, according to City Fire and Rescue Service spokesman Jermaine Carelse.
The provincial health department’s Emergency Medical Services (EMS), Life Healthcare, the National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI) and Wilderness Search And Rescue (WSAR) were also at the scene.
WSAR spokesman David Nel said a rescue team had navigated steep terrain down to the wreck.
The woman had climbed out of the car but had been unable to walk any further, he said.
“The patient was assessed and treated on scene before being placed into a stretcher. While the team below treated the patient, the rescue teams on the road rigged a technical rope system anchored to one of the City’s fire and rescue vehicles,” said Mr Nel.
“In a coordinated effort, the patient was safely carried back up to the road. The team above slowly hauled the stretcher up to the road using the rope system, while the team below moved the stretcher through the dense vegetation and up the steep slope.
“Once on the road, the patient was moved to a waiting ambulance and transported to hospital. The operation was concluded shortly after 4.20pm.”
In February 2022, photographer Lucy Thomas, 25, was left paralysed from the waist down after her Volkswagen Polo tumbled 100m down Chapman’s Peak Drive before bursting into flames, setting alight the surrounding vegetation (“Fund-raiser for photographer paralysed in Chappies crash,” Sentinel, March 30, 2022).
In March 2021, a 55-year-old woman was killed and her husband seriously injured when their car left Chapman’s Peak Drive.
