My guess is that the reporter added the 30 ft drop to the 26 foot drift to arrive at the 56 ft figure. Not mathematically precise, but good copy, I guess.
(The total distance would be closer to 39 ft... Pythagorean theorem, 26ft for the base, 30ft for the altitude, 39.5 would be the hypotenuse.)
(err, the square root of 1576 is actually 39.69... BAD math teacher! No apple!)