San Francisco firefighters rushed to Fort Funston early Sunday for an active cliff rescue involving two adults and two dogs stranded off the cliffside. One adult and one dog were brought up safely while crews set up a rope rescue system to reach the remaining pair.
The San Francisco Fire Department shared updates on the unfolding rescue via social media, saying crews had already brought one adult and one dog safely up off the cliff and were in the process of setting up a rope rescue for the others, according to San Francisco Fire Department Media
. The department reported that all four — both adults and both dogs — were okay and without injuries, and asked the public to avoid the area while the operation continued.
A Familiar Hazard Along San Francisco's Southwestern Coast
Fort Funston's cliffs have a long history of trapping hikers, dog owners, and their pets along the park's dramatic but unstable bluff edges. Between 2017 and 2022, San Francisco Fire Department crews were called to the cliffs 165 times, resulting in 97 dedicated rescue operations, according to KQED. Fire officials have emphasized that many of these emergencies begin when a dog slips or strays over the edge and its owner attempts to climb down after it, a decision that often turns one person in danger into two.
The pattern has repeated itself in recent memory. Last October, SFFD firefighters executed a low-angle rope rescue at Fort Funston to retrieve an uninjured 40-pound dog that had slipped 40 feet down the cliff face onto a narrow ledge, per the same account from the fire department's public updates reported by CBS News. Firefighters in that case used drone footage from a nearby police operator to pinpoint the dog's exact location before making the rescue.
SFGATE reported that SFFD rescued an adult and a dog from a Fort Funston cliff. Hoodline has also covered a cliffside dog rescue at the same park in years past, underscoring how often this stretch of coastline tests SFFD's technical rope teams.
Why the Bluffs Keep Crumbling
The danger traces back to the geology beneath hikers' feet. Fort Funston's bluffs rise roughly 200 feet above the Pacific Ocean and are made of fragile, sedimentary Merced Formation sandstone that formed over millions of years along the San Andreas fault zone, according to the National Park Service. That soft, shifting rock has produced dramatic failures before: in January 2023, heavy atmospheric river rainstorms triggered a major bluff collapse that sent a World War II concrete battery bunker tumbling 200 feet down the cliffside onto the beach below, as reported by SFGATE.
Despite the recurring emergencies, neither the National Park Service nor the San Francisco Fire Department plans to install permanent guardrails along the cliff edge, citing the goal of preserving the park's natural state and trusting visitors to heed safety warnings, per KQED's reporting. The park's popularity compounds the risk: Fort Funston is managed by the National Park Service under the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and remains one of the few national park units in the country that permits off-leash dog walking under voice control, drawing heavy daily foot traffic to the cliff edges.
The site's history stretches back well before it became a dog-walking destination. Fort Funston was originally established as a U.S. Army coast defense post equipped with 16-inch guns at Battery Davis, later converted into a Cold War Nike missile site, before it was transferred to public parkland in 1974, according to Clio. Remnants of those military structures remain embedded along the bluffs today, alongside more fragile natural features — the cliffs also house one of only two remaining coastal nesting colonies in California for state-threatened bank swallows, which burrow nesting tunnels into the cliff face each spring, per the National Park Service.
Sunday's rescue adds to a growing list of cliffside emergencies along this stretch of coast, including a Daly City paraglider who was pulled from a cliff after a 90-minute ordeal in August. SFFD has not released further details on the identities of the adults or dogs involved in Sunday's rescue, and continues to urge the public to stay away from unstable cliff edges rather than attempt self-rescues.
