Rescuers Pull Woman to Safety From Whidbey Island Cliff Edge

The call came in at 12:30 p.m. on March 21: a woman had gone over the edge of a 150-foot bluff near Harbor View Drive in Langley, caught in a blackberry thicket about 20 feet below the rim. Her husband called emergency services after she slipped from the cliff edge near their home.

Eight personnel from South Whidbey Fire/EMS reached the scene within minutes. Battalion Chief Joe Burbank, among the first to arrive, sized up the situation and initially thought the rescue would be straightforward. The terrain proved otherwise. The same blackberry thicket that kept the woman from plunging further to the base of the cliff blocked every route rescuers took to reach her.

Firefighter and EMT Chris Turner descended from the cliff edge with a rope rescue system. As he worked to get the woman into a harness, she began to slip. The thorns that had broken her fall caught the equipment on "every snag possible," Burbank said, and it took Turner three to five minutes to secure her on that exposed ledge high above the drop below.

"He did a phenomenal job of just saying, 'Hey, I'm here, I've got you,'" Burbank said of Turner. "I don't think he necessarily had that control yet, but he was able to convey it to her that he had control of the situation to calm her down." Once harnessed, Turner guided the distraught woman step by step up the cliff face as the crew above hoisted them both to safety. She was taken into care with minor injuries.

The section of bluff near Harbor View Drive looks out over the kind of scenery that pulls people to Langley's south end: wide water views, dramatic drops, salt air. Those same features have a way of trapping people who underestimate them. Tides cut off beach exits faster than most visitors expect, rain-saturated soil at the cliff edge is deceptive underfoot, and cell coverage drops out across long stretches of south Whidbey's shoreline.

South Whidbey Fire/EMS urges anyone heading toward the bluffs to take four steps before leaving the car: check tide tables before descending to any beach at the base of a cliff; choose footwear with enough grip for wet soil and loose rock; avoid exposed ledges in low light when footing is hardest to read; and carry a communication device capable of reaching dispatch from a coverage gap. The cliff near Harbor View Drive, like dozens of similar perches along Whidbey's coastline, takes seconds to fall from. The rescue on March 21 required eight people, a rope system, and a firefighter who kept his voice steady to bring one woman back from the edge.