Rescuers Free Dog Trapped in Car That Crashed Into the Surf Off PCH

The driver got out with one dog; crews carried the second up from rocks near Deer Creek Road, north of Malibu.

Firefighters and lifeguards climbed down the rocks below Pacific Coast Highway north of Malibu on Saturday to free a dog trapped in a wrecked car. The car had left the road near Deer Creek Road and come to rest in the surf, with the ocean washing in around it.

The driver got out without help and carried one of two dogs out of the wreck. The second was still inside when crews from the Ventura County Fire Department and California State Parks reached the car, pulled the dog loose and hauled it back up to the highway, KTLA reported. Neither dog looked hurt, fire officials said. One person went to a hospital with minor injuries and was in stable condition.

In the video KTLA posted, the car is crumpled and sitting half in the water while waves roll past it, and rescuers pick their way across the wet rocks to reach it. The fire department's own photos show how it ended: both dogs together again on the bluff, the Pacific below them.

Deer Creek Road is on Ventura County's piece of the coast, north of Leo Carrillo State Beach. Five agencies answered the call, from Federal Fire Ventura County to Gold Coast Ambulance, before the scene was turned over to the California Highway Patrol. The CHP is investigating what sent the car off the road.

The wreck happened north of the stretch of highway Malibu is trying to slow down. The city's 10 speed cameras, spread along 21 miles of PCH, are set to start issuing warnings in November to anyone clocked at 11 mph or faster above the posted limit, LAist reported. The warnings run 60 days, and fines follow. A test in September recorded about 100,000 speeding violations in under 10 days, and the city says crashes on its part of the highway have killed more than 60 people since 2010.

It wasn't the only crash on PCH that day. On Saturday, a Nobu employee was killed in Malibu when a juvenile driver crashed into his parked car on PCH, LAist reported.

The Deer Creek intersection has put a car in the ocean before. At about 1:40 a.m. on Feb. 1, 2021, a car went off PCH there and ended up on its roof in the surf with its driver pinned inside. One person died, CBS Los Angeles reported.

And this isn't the first dog this coast has given back. In January 2018, a driver was killed when a car plunged off a cliff into the ocean near Mugu Rock, the Associated Press reported. The dog inside, Jake, came out alive. Photos showed him swaddled in blankets, and witnesses to the crash were still caring for him the next morning.

Source: ktla.com, retrieved October 4, 2026. Other sources: laist.com, cbsnews.com, nbclosangeles.com.