Off-Road Excursion Becomes 3 Men’s Struggle for Survival : Accident: The truck rolled down a desert ravine. One man hiked out to get help for the other two, who were more seriously injured.

It was the day after Rafael Rodriguez had spent nine hours of agony at the bottom of a remote ravine, dehydrated, yelling through cracked lips as he tried to answer searchers calling his name.

Water had never tasted so good.

“That was what my dinner was last night: water,” the 22-year-old Van Nuys man said Monday as he lay in bed at Palmdale Hospital Medical Center, still woozy from surgery. His mother, Nieves Rodriguez, was at his side. “I need a lot of water.”

An afternoon excursion turned into a wilderness nightmare for Rodriguez and two other friends from Van Nuys. Their four-wheel-drive pickup plunged off a dirt road and rolled over for a half-mile downhill, coming to rest upside-down in the thick brush of the mountainous Ritter Ridge area 10 miles east of Palmdale.

Passenger Michael Salentro, 20, suffered cuts and bruises but walked eight miles to summon help. Rodriguez, who is diabetic, and Bief Lott, 20, were too seriously hurt to go with him and spent about nine hours trapped in the ravine before they were rescued by a 30-member search team of Los Angeles County firefighters and Sheriff’s deputies early Monday morning.

Lott, the driver of the truck, was in serious condition Monday with a cervical fracture of the spine after being transferred from Palmdale Hospital Medical Center to County-USC Medical Center.

Rodriguez was in stable condition with a broken leg and sprained ankles and Salentro was treated and released Sunday night.

“Muy valiente, “ Nieves Rodriguez said of Salentro’s dazed trek: Very brave.

And lucky, according to paramedics Mike Murrane and Jim Beeber. They found Rodriguez and Lott about 2 a.m. Monday after following their cries for help through the dark.

“We were surprised that they were alive because of the damage to the truck,” said paramedic Michael Murrane. He said the truck left a swath of debris as it rolled end over end and then side to side down the slope.

Somewhere lost amid the debris was the insulin that Rodriguez must take each day for his diabetes. The knowledge that Rodriguez has diabetes gave special urgency to the search, Murrane said.

“His sugar level was going up,” Murrane said. “It could have been very severe for him because he could have gone into a diabetic coma.”

Rodriguez, who works in administrative services for an insurance firm, said he and his friends go off-road driving each Sunday. Salentro, who works in an automotive shop, told searchers that the truck came around a bend in one of the dirt roads frequented by four-wheel-drive enthusiasts and the road suddenly ended.

“You don’t have to be going very fast for that to happen on one of those lateral dirt roads,” Murrane said. They were not wearing seat belts but were not thrown clear. They climbed out when the truck came to a halt, but Rodriguez and Lott were too seriously injured to leave the scene.

The crash took place about 4:30 p.m. on a day when the temperature exceeded 100 degrees. Rodriguez remembers waking up to extreme pain and thirst.

“I walked downhill a little bit to try and get some water,” Rodriguez said. He found none. “I was hurting. I just couldn’t make it back up.”

Rodriguez said he and Lott, who was lying near the truck, talked occasionally, drifting in and out of consciousness.

Salentro, meanwhile, hiked through two miles of mountains and six miles of flatlands until he came to the California Aqueduct, where a fisherman drove him to Palmdale and he called authorities about 7 p.m.

The search progressed slowly as Salentro tried to remember landmarks in the rugged terrain in order to guide authorities, who used a helicopter and called out to Rodriguez and Lott on loudspeakers.

The two injured men heard the amplified voices and yelled back, but the searchers did not get close enough to hear them until about midnight. It took another hour for deputies and firefighters to make their way into the ravine and remove them in special baskets, Murrane said.

Despite their pain, the injured men were able to joke with the paramedics as the ambulance made its way out of the mountains, Murrane said.

“The fire department was great,” Rodriguez said. “They cheered me up. I was laughing and joking.”