FORT LEE, N.J. (WCBS 880) -- A photographer plunged from the towering cliffs of New Jersey's Palisades on Friday morning—and survived.
The man climbed over a fence at a Palisades Parkway Mobil service area on the border of Fort Lee and Englewood Cliffs around 8 a.m. and went onto a rocky ledge overlooking the George Washington Bridge.
As the man was taking photos of the sunrise over the Hudson River, he lost his footing and went over the edge.
Fort Lee Fire Battalion Chief John Klein said the man was “out on the edge of the cliffs, looking to take some pictures. And unfortunately, he must have slipped and fell, fell down about 40 feet or so.”
The chief said the man was very fortunate to have landed in the crevice instead of plunging hundreds of feet to the ground below.
“Luckily it bottomed out,” Klein said. “There’s trees and brush and everything down in there between the two crevices that had built up, so he landed in there. Otherwise, it’s about 250 feet to the ground.”
Firefighters lowered themselves down, put the man in a safety harness and hoisted him up.
“We sent two rappelers down on ropes,” Klein said. “The individual was put in a safety harness and he was hauled back up with the rappelers.”
The man was in pain but not seriously injured. He could walk and talk during the rescue and was taken away on a stretcher.
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Klein said there’s a lesson to be learned: don’t climb the fences that line the steep cliffs of the Palisades.
“There’s fencing along the Palisades, pretty much the entire length that overlooks the river,” he said. “The fencing’s there for a reason.”
The rescue happened not far away from an overturn crash that killed four people and injured eight more on the Palisades Parkway on Friday morning.
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