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Man Survives Trapped For 3 Days After East Bay Cliff Plunge

OAKLAND (CBS 5 / KCBS) -- A driver who plunged off a Berkeley cliff and remained trapped in his car for three days was pulled alive from the wreckage Friday.

The dramatic scene unfolded in the East Bay hills on the southern edge of Oakland's Tilden Park Friday as fire crews worked to pull out the man from his car that had gone off the road and about 200 feet down an embankment.

Oakland Fire Battalion Chief Rober Lipp said it started around 10:30 Friday morning when an East Bay Regional Parks ranger driving on Grizzly Peak Boulevard at South Park Road and spotted something shiny down the embankment.

"The ranger was driving and out of the corner of his eye, he noticed something didn't look right," Lipp said.

He got out of his vehicle and hiked down the hill about 100 feet. There he found a late-model silver sedan, with a 53-year-old man inside.

The man said that he had been trapped in the car for three days after apparently suffering some sort of medical emergency that caused him to drive over the edge of the road.

Lipp said the terrain was very steep and thick with brush - so thick crews used chain saws and other tools to clear a path to bring the man to safety.

After about 45 minutes of assessing the situation, the man was finally placed on a stretcher, and hoisted with ropes up to the street, and into a waiting ambulance.

Lipp said he was taken to Highland Hospital in Oakland with unspecified injuries and was expected to survive.

(Copyright 2011 by CBS San Francisco. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

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