A WOMAN survived after plummeting from a rural viaduct - and then dialled 999 for help.
If she had not had a phone with her firefighters feel she would have died where she lay seriously injured.
The woman, thought to be in her late 20s, had been walking along the viaduct close to Denby Dale railway station when she fell from it at around 11.30am yesterday .
She plummeted about 40ft before hitting a banking and ending up in undergrowth out of sight of passersby.
She made one call for help picked up by a 999 controller and give some indication where she was.
But her mobile phone then went dead so Skelmanthorpe firefighters struggled to find her.
Watch Manager Richard Meakin said: "We spent around 30 minutes trying to find her. We kept trying to call her mobile phone number, but it had gone dead.
"In the end we were shouting and eventually got a reply and we discovered her not far from Denby Dale railway station.
"She was lucky to be alive.
"If she had not made that initial call with her mobile phone she would never have been found.
"Where she was, she was tucked away out of sight.
"We think she had been there about an hour when we found her."
The woman had suffered cuts and grazes to her head along with other injuries.
Firefighters used a line rescue technique to help get a spineboard stretcher with the woman on it off the banking to the ambulance.
A Yorkshire Ambulance Trust spokesman said: "We received a 999 call at 11.19am this morning to a point near Denby Dale railway station.
"There was a report of a woman in her 20s having fallen from the viaduct.
"We sent an ambulance and a community paramedic from Skelmanthorpe surgery.
"The patient was treated for back injruies. She was immobilised on a spinal board and then taken to the Royal Infirmary by ambulance. She has serious injuries but they are not life threatening".
