And #022319CR1 UPDATE WE HAVE ONE VICTIM TRAPPED UNDER THIS SLIDE, Search K9 Teams from @SFFDPio @SSFFire pic.twitter.com/ZmP4LJA4xF — SAN FRANCISCO FIRE DEPARTMENT (@SFFDPIO) February 23, 2019 EMBED >More News Videos Fire officials announced that they are suspending their search operations and are moving this to a recovery operation. EMBED >More News Videos Lt. Jonathan Baxter with the San Francisco Fire Department provides an update on the rescue operation on the beach at Fort Funston. EMBED >More News Videos Sky Map 7 is showing the distance the landslide fell at Fort Funston that injured one woman and trapping another. Google Map of Fort Funston where a partial slide is covering the beach. KGO #022319CR1 ADULT FEMALE OVER CLIFF ACTIVE CLIFF RESCUE FT FUNSTON AVOID AREA pic.twitter.com/iGEHF5aAHH — SAN FRANCISCO FIRE DEPARTMENT (@SFFDPIO) February 22, 2019 UPDATE VICTIM LOCATED BEING EVALUATED BY MEDICS NOT LIFE THREATENING THIS IS REPORTED AS A PARTIAL SLIDE AT OR NEAR THE CLIFF https://t.co/izSgGAdcdS — SAN FRANCISCO FIRE DEPARTMENT (@SFFDPIO) February 22, 2019 SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- According to the San Francisco Fire Department, they have suspended recovery efforts for the night and will start again 8 a.m. Saturday morning.Sky7 was over a landslide as emergency crews dug through the massive pile of sand searching for the trapped woman.According to Fire officials, they received a call at 2:30 p.m. Friday for a cliff rescue. When crews arrived they met a group of people frantically trying to dig someone out they said was trapped by the slide.Witness told officials that they saw two women walking a dog about halfway up the cliff when the slide happened. One woman and a dog were rescued-- both suffered non-life threatening injuries.Lt. Jonathan Baxter, with the San Francisco Fire Department, said they are also looking into the possibility that the woman was pushed into the ocean, but they are confident that she did not go into the water.There were 60 firefighters on scene as well as search dogs and cadaver dogs. Bystanders also came to help with rescue efforts. A man who was on his way home, Jaxier Haro, grabbed his shovel and headed down to Fort Funston after getting a notification about the landslide.The slide is covering the beach and responders are right up against the water.Fort Funston is right off Skyline Boulevard, west of Lake Merced.According to the USGS, there have been rockslides in the past in this area. One in 1989 and another between 2002 and 2010<doc-sep>A woman and a dog were rescued and another woman remained trapped Friday night after the edge of a cliff at Fort Funston in San Francisco collapsed on top of them, burying one victim under tons of dirt, fire officials said. What had been a frantic search for the buried victim turned into a grim recovery effort with cadaver dogs as night fell and remaining hope of finding the woman alive all but vanished. By nightfall, the tide picked up, rushing into the crews’ “operational area” on the shore, officials said. The slide, reported at 2:38 p.m., rolled over the women, who bystanders said were walking and climbing halfway up the 80-foot-tall cliff when it gave way. One of the women was swept off the cliff and buried, said Lt. Jonathan Baxter of the San Francisco Fire Department. “We had two adults with one canine that were trapped underneath there,” Baxter said. “Bystanders were able to rescue one of those victims and the canine. Our firefighters are working diligently in an effort to locate the second adult victim, which is reported to be a female.” The women were last seen on the cliffside with their hands on the dirt wall when a giant chunk of the sandy earth broke loose off Skyline Boulevard near John Muir Drive, he said. “Our crews were confronted with a group of individuals frantically and aggressively digging out what they said was a person trapped” under several tons of dirt, he said. He compared the dirt mound to the size of a big rig truck and trailer. The woman and the dog were partway up the cliff when they were rescued, he said, but the other woman — only identified Friday night as being in her 20s — was nowhere to be found. The rescued woman, who was not identified, was taken to a local hospital, where she was being treated for non-life-threatening injuries, officials said. About 60 firefighters dug frantically with shovels and their hands, rescue workers with metal detectors walked the area and three rescue dog teams scoured the mound of dirt for signs of life as darkness approached and the tide began to roll in on the shoreline. Police tried pinging the woman’s cell phone, and the search dogs even followed a couple of promising scents amid the sand, but nothing came of it, Baxter said. Paramedics specializing in response to traumatic events when victims may suffer from injuries by being crushed waited nearby to help, he said. Helicopters circled above the area for hours, and more than a dozen visitors snaked through trails and clutched the leashes of their dogs as the search continued on the shore. Golden Gate National Recreation Area park rangers, who help oversee the Fort Funston area, were also on scene. The rescuers were called off more than three hours after the cliff collapsed. Baxter described the expressions of the rescue workers snaking back down the trails to the main road to reporters as being sadly frustrated. “It’s not in our DNA to give up. I don’t believe we’ve given up,” he said. “I believe we’ve factually looked at what we have in front of us … and we’ve had to leave from a rescue operation to a recovery operation.” Cadaver dogs were brought in Friday night to search for the woman’s body. “The likelihood that this is going to be a survivable incident is very unlikely,” Baxter said. Fire officials notified the woman’s family that recovery efforts were under way Friday night, he said. Baxter said he does not know what caused the cliff to collapse, but pointed out signs warning visitors to stay away from the unstable cliffside. Pedestrians walking along the trails to the cliffside are met with several signs stating, “Danger Hazardous Cliffs,” “STAY BACK FROM EDGE,” and “People and dogs have been injured falling from these cliffs.” On a visitor’s map located near Skyline Boulevard, park officials warn that the coastal bluffs are unsafe because the sand and rocks are “constantly eroding and are loose.” “They are very dangerous,” Baxter said. “At this time, it would be speculative for me to say these individuals were actually off of the beaten path or not, and we’re not going to go there.” Officers with the U.S. Park Police secured the scene on Friday night and were expected to remain overnight and into Saturday morning. Fort Funston is expected to remain open to the public, except for area where the cliff collapsed, officials said. Lauren Hernández and Peter Fimrite are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: lauren.hernandez@sfchronicle.com, pfimrite@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @LaurenPorFavor, @pfimrite<doc-sep>
A woman was rescued and another person remained missing beneath a massive mound of sand and dirt after a cliff collapsed at Fort Funston in San Francisco Friday afternoon, fire officials said. After searching for the missing woman for three hours, officials said the effort turned from a rescue to a recovery effort. Late Friday evening, rescuers suspended their search. The San Francisco Fire Department first received reports that a cliffside had collapsed in the area around 2:40 p.m., according to Mindy Talmadge, an SFFD spokeswoman. Two people were walking along the beach with a dog when the cliff came down. MORE NEWS: Student arrested after stabbing at Bay Area high school By 3:11 p.m., one woman had been excavated from the scene and medics were evaluating her for injuries, which were not deemed to be life-threatening. The fire department characterized the incident as a "partial slide at, or near the cliff." Shortly after 5 p.m., Talmadge indicated that time may have run out for the trapped person. "There are air pockets, there might be a little bit of time, but with the weight of the sand, there's a great likelihood that there's some very serious crush injuries," she said in an interview with KTVU. "It's not likely that we would be able to find somebody alive under that." Firefighters were able to make contact with the since-rescued woman and help her to safety when they first arrived at the scene. At the time of the rescue, the tide was further in, and the woman who was rescued was partially in the water, according to Talmadge. ALSO: NASA investigating meteor-like object seen above the Bay Area Crews could be seen working to dig at the dirt from the collapsed cliff before eventually pausing their digging to let a search and rescue dog do its work scanning the rubble. "We have a search and rescue dog on the scene and another on the way," said Talmadge. "The animals that the fire department has are live search, so they're searching for a live body." She added that another search animal was on the way from South San Francisco, but it wasn't immediately clear if that animal was a live search dog or a cadaver dog. The two people were walking on the beach when the cliff collapsed. The rescued woman has been able to offer some guidance to rescuers as to the possible location of the trapped person. "We definitely need to move quickly," said Talmadge. "The only direction right now is from the individual that was with the person who's trapped. I believe that was why they were focusing on that particular area." The rescue effort posed a danger for the rescuers, as well, and fire personnel on the scene were working to monitor the hillside as the crews continued to dig. "It is a bit of the precarious situation," said Talmadge, "because we don't know how stable the hillside is right there."