|
'There's a miracle from God...'
20/12/2007 14:14 - (SA)
|
|
|
 |
|
| Joshua Dominguez, 12, gets wheeled passed reporters after being discharged from hospital. (Steve Yeater, AP) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Paradise, California - A father and three children who vanished on a Christmas tree-cutting trip in the Northern California mountains were found alive after huddling in a culvert for warmth during three days of heavy snow.
"I'm just amazed how well they did," Lisa Sams said on Wednesday after seeing her children and ex-husband for the first time since they were rescued. "It was like butterflies in my stomach, like if you were going to go on a very first date."
A California Highway Patrol helicopter crew spotted Frederick Dominguez atop a small bridge and landed nearby, sinking into 60cm of snow, flight officer David White said. The family had taken shelter in a culvert beneath the bridge and stomped out the word "help" in the snow, White said.
White said it was the last opportunity for the helicopter, with snow falling heavily as it descended.
"With another storm coming in, they were just happy to get out of there and get home," he said.
The helicopter ferried the family to safety in two trips; Alexis, 15, and Joshua, 12, were taken out of the woods first. Dominguez, 38, smiled at cheering family and friends as he and 18-year-old Christopher emerged from the helicopter a short time later.
The family survived wearing only jeans, sweat shirts and coats and by huddling in a culvert beneath a bridge, sheltered from the outside by twigs and tree branches.
The youngest children were pushed deepest into the shelter, with the father and eldest son blocking the wind, Sams recounted after visiting with them at the hospital.
'I knew that they would pull together'
She said they told of huddling together, telling jokes and singing songs, to pass the time in the first couple days, before beginning to grow scared and depressed in the last 24 hours.
They found water to drink but did not eat snow because their father remembered reading that it could cause hypothermia.
Frederick also had taken off his sweat shirt, torn up the fabric and wrapped it around his children's feet, hoping to stave off frostbite. Alexis' toes were changing colour, Sams said, but Frederick kept rubbing them to try to keep them warm. Colour began to return to the girl's toes in the hospital.
The family - found less than three kilometres from the road - said they got lost by going from pine tree to pine tree, trying to find the perfect Christmas tree, before realising they were lost.
"My daughter goes, 'Mom, you know how we are. We get excited, and we see a tree and then we see another tree,"' Sams said. "They just got lost, and they ended up taking a side road that led them to the opposite direction."
Sams said they told her they did not try to venture from the shelter because they knew their mother was a "worrywart" and would send a search crew.
"I knew that they would pull together," Sams said. "We're a really close family."
All four were talking and drinking hot chocolate while being checked at Feather River Hospital for dehydration, hypothermia and frostbite, treating physician Kurt Bower said. He expected them to be released later in the day.
"I'm surprised how good they are," he said. "There's a miracle from God in there somewhere."
|
