8 Survive 500-Foot Plunge Down Angeles Forest Cliff : Injuries ‘Critical’ for 5 Teens

Eight teen-agers were injured--five of them critically--before dawn today when their pickup truck skidded off a mountain road in the Angeles National Forest above Sylmar and plunged 500 feet down a cliff, fire officials reported.

“They were probably driving too fast, and it looks like they just missed a curve,” said Los Angeles County fire Capt. Charles Seder, one of the first to reach the scene.

“The truck flew about 50 feet through the air, then hit and rolled, end over end, the rest of the way, 500 feet to the bottom of the hill,” he said. “The kids were thrown out and scattered along the way. I don’t know why they weren’t all killed.”

Seder said other youngsters in a car that had been accompanying the pickup drove to his nearby fire station to report the accident. Seder and his crew responded immediately, calling in assistance that included two mountain search-and-rescue crews and a Los Angeles police helicopter equipped with a searchlight to illuminate the scene.

‘Very, Very Steep’

“It was very, very steep, and it took a lot of work to get them all out,” Seder said. “None of them could walk, so we had to use ropes and stretchers.

“They had facial and head injuries, broken bones and internal injuries,” the fire captain said. “Four of them were coherent, but two were incoherent and the other two were unconscious. Five of them were critical, the others not so bad.”

Officials said the teen-agers--six boys and two girls, ranging in age from 13 to 17--were transported by ambulance and helicopter to three area hospitals--Holy Cross Hospital in Mission Hills, Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital in Valencia and Northridge Hospital Medical Center in Northridge.

Hospital officials said that because of their ages and at the wishes of their parents, the identities of the teen-agers, the precise nature of their injuries and their conditions would not be released.

Seder said the teen-agers apparently were just out for a drive--at about 2:30 a.m.--when the compact pickup, carrying three in the cab and five in the open bed, toppled off the Santa Clara Truck Trail, a paved fire road that runs west along a forest ridge from Little Tujunga Road. The accident occurred about three miles west of Pacoima Reservoir.

“There’s no evidence that drinking was involved,” Seder said. “There’s a beautiful view from up there. I guess they were just up there, fooling around, and they missed that curve.”