How a family missing in Nevada survived two frigid nights

How did two adults and four children survive the below-zero temperatures in the Nevada mountains? Rescuers say they did the right things: Stayed with their car, started a fire, and had food and water with them.

A couple and four young children missing in frigid weather since they went on an outing to play in the snow on Sunday were found alive in a remote mountain range in Nevada on Tuesday huddled in their overturned vehicle, a sheriff's dispatch supervisor said.

The couple had taken their two children and the woman's niece and nephew, who range in age from 3 to 10, to an abandoned mining camp in the Seven Troughs range of northwestern Nevada, Pershing County dispatch supervisor Sheila Reitz said.

The six were found in good condition and were treated for exposure and dehydration at the Pershing General Hospital in Lovelock, Nevada, said Patty Bianchi, chief executive officer of the facility. They did not have frostbite, she said.

A doctor at the hospital told reporters the six family members were doing "remarkably well" considering their ordeal.

"They did a lot of things right by staying with the vehicle, and they did have food and water available with them, and as soon as the vehicle suffered this slow rollover accident, the father jumped into action," Dr. Douglas Vacek added.

He "knew that they had to stay warm, and the first thing he did was build a fire and he was able to keep that fire going the entire time while they were out."

They also told hospital staff they brought stones heated in the fire into the vehicle to stay warm, Bianchi said. They put the heated stones in the spare tire.

Reitz identified the adults as James Glanton, 34, and Christina McIntee, 25. The children were identified as Shelby Schlag-Fitzpatrick, 10, Tate McIntee, 4, and Evan and Chloe Glanton, ages 5 and 3.

When the group did not return home, a wide-scale rescue operation was launched, backed by helicopters and airplanes. Fears grew for their fate, with unseasonably cold temperatures plunging to minus 21 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 29 Celsius) on Sunday night and remaining well below freezing the following night.

On Tuesday, a volunteer rescuer using binoculars spotted the couple's overturned Jeep in a gravel pit about 17 miles (27 km) from the town of Lovelock, said Paul Burke, search and rescue coordinator for the state of Nevada.

Rescuers, who narrowed the search area in part by tracking cellphone signals, credited the group's survival in large part to the family hunkering down together instead of setting out in search of help.

"Everybody is looking at this like it's a miracle," said Gail Powell, spokeswoman for the Nevada Division of Emergency Management. "They were savvy enough to figure out what to do to stay alive but everybody was quite concerned because temperatures hovered so low."

It remained unclear when the six people might be able to leave the hospital, Bianchi said. (Additional reporting by Jonathan Kaminsky in Olympia, Washington, and Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles,; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Cynthia Johnston, Leslie Adler, Berenard Orr and Mohammad Zargham)

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to How a family missing in Nevada survived two frigid nights
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2013/1211/How-a-family-missing-in-Nevada-survived-two-frigid-nights
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe