Worker Killed in 400-Foot Fall Down Mountain Face After Safety Line Breaks

A 30-year-old San Fernando man, working to clear brush from a sheer mountain face next to the Pacoima Dam, plunged 400 feet to his death Tuesday when the safety line used to secure him snapped, authorities said.

Co-workers watched helplessly as the rope holding Mario Sanchez snagged on a sharp rock and then broke, sending him hurtling down a steep slope. Sanchez died instantly, apparently from severe head trauma, sheriff’s deputies said.

A flood-control maintenance worker, Sanchez was part of a five-member crew dispatched by the county Public Works Department to clear the mountain face of brush in preparation for a process in which an embankment is sprayed with concrete for stabilization. The crew had been working at Pacoima Dam, about five miles north of San Fernando, for about two weeks, according to a spokeswoman at the department’s Alhambra headquarters.

On Tuesday about 9:10 a.m., the 6-foot-2, 250-pound Sanchez lost his footing on the slope and initially fell about five feet, Sheriff’s Deputy Donald Wyman said. “He tried to get up again, and the rope snagged on a rock and snapped.�

The victim reportedly plummeted 100 feet and struck the mountainside before tumbling another 300 feet.

Fellow workers dialed 911, prompting the sheriff’s station to send out a helicopter crew and a search and rescue team.

The team worked for an hour to recover Sanchez’s body, which lay halfway up the mountain abutting the dam. To reach the site, rescue workers were forced to climb to the top of the dam, walk across it and then rappel down the slope.

Sanchez was a Cuban native who immigrated to the United States in 1968 but retained his Cuban citizenship.

Ralph Sanchez of Northridge, the victim’s brother who sped to the scene of the accident, described his brother--the youngest of five siblings--as a strapping man whose main passion was spending time with his wife and two young daughters.

Sanchez, 35, said his brother had no experience climbing mountains either recreationally or in connection with his job. But a spokeswoman for the Public Works Department said the younger Sanchez, who had worked for the department for about a year, would have received the proper training before joining the crew.

The accident is being investigated by the Sheriff’s Department as well as by Cal/OSHA, which looks into all work-related accidents involving a fatality.