Rangers, lifeguards, Park Police officers, and Presidio firefighters responded to several incidents in various locations throughout the park during the last week in July:
July 28 – Lifeguards were dispatched to a call reporting an unresponsive person in the water off Ocean Beach. Lifeguards and rangers were joined by city firefighters in an effort to resuscitate a man found floating in the ocean by a park visitor. These efforts proved unsuccessful, however, and the man was pronounced dead at a local hospital. USPP criminal investigators are conducting an investigation.
July 31 – Park dispatch received a report of a naked, combative man below the Fort Scott overlook. UPSS officers, rangers, lifeguards and Presidio firefighters responded. They subdued the man, then summoned a helicopter to lift him off the beach due to the fact that any other extrication would have to have been over unsafe, steep terrain. A Coast Guard helicopter picked him up and flew him to a waiting Presidio ambulance at the Fort Scott parade ground.
August 1 – A woman and her Labrador retriever were reported stuck on a cliff edge at Fort Funston. Rangers, USPP officers and city firefighters worked together to reach them and bring them to safety. As this rescue was wrapping up, a visitor in Marin Headlands reported finding an unresponsive man in a military bunker. Responders found that the body was in fact a mannequin. Due to the suspicious nature of the call and location, though, a military bomb squad was called to the scene to check things out. While this incident was underway, dispatch received a call from the Marin County Sheriff’s Office reporting that a man had fallen off a cliff ledge along the coastal bluffs in the headlands. A hasty search was begun and the man was found on Black Sands Beach. Rangers determined that he was suffering from a possible fracture to his lower leg and that he was mildly hypothermic. He was flown out by Coast Guard helicopter and taken to an ambulance at Fort Baker
