The Sonoma Sheriff’s Office released a video of a nighttime rescue operation of a man who had fallen from a cliff on Easter Sunday near the Alexander Battery at the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
The video, recorded from a helicopter, shows the rescue team using a thermal camera to locate the man, identified as Cody Cretini, and they find him clinging to a gravel rock face about 50 above roaring ocean waters.
During the operation, a tactical flight officer was lowered down to Cretini, who was not wearing shoes, and yelled, “Don’t let go, man. Don’t let go!”, and then secured a rescue harness around Cretini.
As they lift off the rock face, the officer yells, “I got you brother” and within seconds, they return safely to the ground where some firefighters were waiting to assist.
In an interview with Good Morning America, Cretini explained that after he fell, he had been holding onto the rock face for about an hour before the rescue team arrived.
“My muscles were tired, I was cramping, and I knew if I had fallen that it wasn’t going to be good,” he said, adding that when the team arrived, he knew he just had to hold on a little bit longer.
How he got into the situation is the 22-year-old hiker said he decided to take an adventurous shortcut and climb the cliff, but after getting about 40 or 50 feet off trail, he got to a spot where the rocks started to crumble. “Every rock that I grabbed just gets removed from the cliff,” he said.
Shortly after realizing his situation, Cretini’s girlfriend called for help. Although the Southern Marin Fire District was dispatched to the scene, they asked the Sonoma Sheriff’s Office to send its helicopter. Overall, the rescue operation took 30 minutes.