News: Twist to Torres Incident - High Angle rescue

Bir Sur rescue a real cliffhanger
Firefighters responding to blaze find man stuck in gully

By ROBERTA KWOK-
The Salinas Californian

Emergency workers battling a Big Sur blaze rescued a man who spent three days trapped in a gully off Highway 1, after firefighters heard his screams for help, a sheriff's official said Friday.

The team used 600 feet of rope late Thursday night to haul up Steve Borban, 52, who had driven off the highway earlier in the week, said Sgt. Joe Moses of the Monterey County Sheriff's Office.

The fire was contained by 6 p.m. Friday, Pasinato said. Thirteen crews, 33 engines, four helicopters and four water tenders fought the blaze. The only structure destroyed was a water tank.

Firefighters did not hear Borban's screams until five hours into the operation because of equipment noise, said Moses, who was on the search-and-rescue team.

Rescue workers found the man on a 10-foot by-10-foot patch of brush about 400 feet below the highway, the only spot in the gully untouched by fire, Moses said.

"Everything around him was burned," he said. "The rescuers were shocked."

Moses said the rescue took about two hours. The team found his burned car several hundred feet away.

"He was yelling and screaming for three days, and no one heard him," Moses said.

Borban, who lives in Ione, near Sacramento, was taken by ambulance to Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, the Sheriff's Office said.

Borban was listed in fair condition Friday, just "bumped and banged up," said Marlyn Johnson, administrative supervisor at the hospital.

Officers are investigating the cause of the car accident and the possibility that Borban set the fire to get rescued, said Officer Larry Starkey, a spokesman for the California Highway Patrol. Borban has said he had nothing to do with the blaze.

At the time of Borban's rescue, firefighters were in the area to fight a vegetation fire at Torre Canyon, near Partington Ridge Road about five miles south of the community of Big Sur. The fire started at 5:13 p.m. and burned about 20 acres, mostly on the ocean cliffs just west of the highway, said Joe Pasinato, a U.S. Forest Service officer.

Officials are still investigating the cause of the fire, Pasinato said. About 300 people were evacuated from 50 nearby homes during the blaze, Moses said, but allowed to return shortly before 8 a.m. Friday. Highway 1 was closed to traffic for several hours Thursday night, and one Cal Fire employee received minor injuries.

Fair use source: thecalifornian.com