PORT ANGELES — A 9-year-old boy survived a 60- to 70-foot fall off a cliff near Fourth and N streets in northwest Port Angeles late today.

Port Angeles Fire Department Lt. Mike Sanders said the boy was taken to Olympic Medical Center with a head injury and neck pain.

The boy, whose identity was not immediately known, was conscious and alert.

“He was talking to us,” Sanders said.

The boy apparently fell from the top of a bluff into a narrow gully above the Nippon Paper Industries USA mill.

Rescue crews were called to the scene about 6 p.m. The boy was taken to the hospital at about 7 p.m.

Port Angeles police closed the residential street near the top of the cliff, where a Port Angeles Fire Department rescue ladder was deployed.

The boy was ultimately carried down the cliff and placed into an ambulance waiting on an access road below.

Sanders said he did not how the boy fell.

About 20 firefighters and other rescue personnel helped get the boy down, Sanders said.