A Long Fall, a Cold, Wet Night--and, at Last, a Rescue

“Sometimes,” said Jerry Myers, “I can’t sleep. So I just go out and ride around.”

Even in the dead of night. Even when it’s pouring ice-cold rain.

Friday was one of those restless nights for Myers, 59, who lives alone in a mobile home on oil-leased land by Grimes Canyon Road, about three miles south of Fillmore.

As the rain slapped his face, the stocky Myers climbed into his ’85 GMC pickup and drove off into the murky night. It was nearly 11 p.m.

Suddenly, as he was bumping along past some oil rigs, his headlights went out. Expecting to find a short circuit, Myers climbed out of the truck cab.

His feet never touched terra firma.

Instead, he found himself falling down a steep 100-foot embankment, bouncing to the bottom like a basketball.

For a while--he doesn’t know how long--he was unconscious, he said. When he awoke, it was still dark, cold and wet. Protecting him from the elements were a light jacket and blue jeans.

So began a 13-hour ordeal for the feisty Myers.

A long, lonely night lay ahead, one which would include an unsuccessful attempt to climb back up the steep canyon wall, and which would climax in a delicate rescue by firefighters who plucked Myers to safety with a specially rigged basket.

“I was weak and shaking from the cold,” Myers said Sunday in Santa Paula Memorial Hospital, where he was recuperating from cuts and bruises and possibly pneumonia.

A hospital spokesman said he was in good condition.

Myers admits that he could have tried to walk out of the ravine rather than attempting to climb straight back up to his truck.

To be sure, he knows the land because he had been a caretaker on the oil tract for more than a dozen years before retiring a few years ago.

“There was another way out,” Myers said. “But it was dark and stuff. That’s the way I should have gone out, but I didn’t.”

So up the muddy, slippery cliff Myers crawled, inch by inch, often losing his grip and sliding backward against the rocks and brush.

His arduous climb was made tougher by the emphysema that made breathing difficult.

“I thought I was going to die,” he said. “I was weak and shaking from the cold. I did a little prayin’.”

Given the land’s remoteness and the fact that it was still dark, there was no use yelling for help, he said. So he kept climbing, trying to rest every few feet on an outcropping of cliff.

By late morning, some oil workers spotted Myers’ truck delicately balanced about halfway over the cliff, an oil pipeline preventing it from crashing into the ravine.

Then they saw Myers. He had dragged himself to about 10 feet from the top and was resting at about a 30-degree angle, said Ventura County firefighter Eddie French, who was summoned from Station 27 in Fillmore.

About the same time, Myers’ longtime friend Dale Wright, 38, arrived.

“I saw a helicopter circling and saw the firetrucks,” said Wright, who lives nearby.

A sheriff’s helicopter had been dispatched to the rescue scene along with two county fire engines and a Fire Department squad car.

“It was a pretty steep cliff with a lot of loose dirt,” French said.

The rescuers decided to rig a wire mesh cage and lower it with hooks and ropes to where Myers was stranded.

“Six guys went down the cliff hanging onto the basket,” French said.

Carefully, they loaded the shivering Myers into the basket and raised him to firm ground.

“I think he survived because of his size,” French said. Myers’ weight is well in excess of 200 pounds, rescue workers said.

“He had a lot of insulation,” French said.

Wright said Myers has a reputation as a rugged individualist, and he didn’t want to go to a hospital after his harrowing rescue.

“He was arguing with the Fire Department,” Wright said. “He was saying, ‘Take me to my house. I’m all right.’ ”

Wright, a foreman at the nearby Rancho Roca Roja ranch, said he took Myers aside and read his buddy the riot act.

“I said a few choice words,” said Wright, who has looked upon Myers as a father figure, according to Wright’s wife, Vicki.

“He is so damned bullheaded,” Dale Wright said.

Finally, Myers gave in and was taken to the Santa Paula hospital.

Myers said he called his son, Douglas Myers, 29, of Agoura, from the hospital to tell him that he was all right. He has two older daughters who live in Texas.

Even Myers had to admit that he had had a narrow escape. On Sunday, he knew where just about every bone in his body was located.

“I feel sore as hell,” he said.