Woman falls off of Mount Bonnell

Austin Travis County EMS and the Austin Fire Department responded to Mount Bonnell after they say a woman fell 50- feet from a cliff. ATCEMS says she is in her 40’s.

The Austin Fire Department says the woman was with a group at the scenic lookout at Mount Bonnell when she fell around 7:30.  They say someone in her group called 911. AFD says the brush is what broke her fall. When rescue crews arrived, they launched a search from the ground and from the top of Mount Bonnell. AFD says the woman was caught in the brush and hanging upside down when rescue crews located her.

This is the kind of rescue that AFD and ATCEMS train for together, says AFD Division Chief Palmer Buck, who credits that teamwork for the rescue’s success, and he adds, “it speaks to the training that both the fire and EMS rescue medics do, in the training on a regular basis. The fact that in the middle of a rain storm, in the pitch black night, they were able to anchor their ropes, rapel down, locate the victim in about 5 minutes, secure her while she was hanging upside down, treat her and get her up into the helicopter and off to the hospital in 35 minutes.”

Buck tells Fox 7 the woman was alert when the STAR Flight team hoisted her out of the brush and took her to University Medical Center Brackenridge. ATCEMS says she was taken there with potentially serious injuries.