Transcripts For KTVU Second Look 20140106 : vimarsana.com

Snow. An unexpectedblizzard stranded three groups of hikers. Four of the lost hikers were from socal in santa cruz county. When they emerged for a joyous reaction with the family, sarah sidner was there. We dropped off. We drove up. Oh my god. Oh my god. Reporter with one declared ascendant from the sheriff, erupted with emotion. Her four family members had been found, alive. Thank you god, thank you. This is the best day of my life. Reporter she could not stop screaming and crying and calling out to family members too far away to know what was happening. Mary, mary. Theyre okay. Mary theyre okay. Theyre fine mary. All of them theyre all fine mary. Mary theyre okay. Reporter schneider and half dozen members of her family had been waiting in the sierra praying and crying, losing hope then gaining it back again since monday. Two father and son teams came out to hike sunday and suddenly a blinding blizzard arrived burying the mountains in about 4 feet of snow. The largetos were the last four people missing in the sierra and rescue teams were on stand by. For three days the weather made it impossible for them to get to the right place until today. We were praying for sun. And all of a sudden we woke up and we came out and it was like someone had answered our prayers. Reporter rescue crews seized the only opportunity theyve had in the past three days to attempt a helicopter rescue. The rescue came at the right time just as the chinook helicopter stepped down to drop off the precious cargo, the blinding fog started to settle in overnight. Good to see you, wheres mary . Shes home, shes home. Shes at home. I knew you were doing the right thing. I said frankie, i hope you were doing the right thing. I was going to go in and get you. Congratulations. Shes the happiest woman. Hes warmer than we are. We had like five beans a day to eat. And slept the whole time. Were so happy. We have to get you some coffee. The whole time i just wanted to eat some food. Thank you guys for your concerns. Are you glad to see everybody here waiting for you. These people, again. Keep walking, keep walking. Keep going. I know. Being in the tent for five or six days and its like where is when are they coming. We thought we filed a permit we did all that. Then a chopper shows up all of a sudden. Reporter stunned, hungry and out of breath. The survivors say they look forward to two things. Their first hot meal in four days and the loving touch of the family they left behind. Reporter chris von marshal hike it is sierra about twice a month. He says the hikers told people exactly where they were going to ensure their survival. They knew being an experienced backpacker, there would be people outlooking for them. Stay in the area that you told people you were going to be. It will increase your chances of being rescued. Reporter but waiting for rescue will not be easy. Stranded without proper gear will still leave them vulnerable. We have hyperthermic situation, that means the body can only go two or three days in this type of scenario. We took these pictures near bridge port after a heavy snowfall three years ago. As we learned then even experienced marine survival experts had trouble making fire without matchless. Without a tent a natural shelter can still keep them alive. Having even a canopy over them and huddled in that canopy can provide them with enough sustainable heat to last through the storm and again get people in there to get to them in time and help them out. Reporter portable gps units, walkie talkies can help them stay in communication. If not the best they can do is stay put and wait for help. She found herself upside down buried in snow. The dramatic story she tells of how she survived. And a bit later, the men who learned to fight on skis. The famous tenth Mountain Division of world war ii. Soon, californians from to salinas to san diego will have equal access to Quality Health insurance. Those who need Financial Assistance will get it. And nobody will be denied because of a preexisting condition. Welcome to a new state of health. Welcome to covered california. We are your Health Insurance marketplace. Enroll today at coveredca. Com. Welcome back to a second look. Tonight stories of survival in the snow. In 2012 a skier ended up buried head down in the snow in the tahoe area. She was trapped for 30 minutes but survived and told her story to ktvus Claudine Wong who showed us dramatic video of the womans rescue. Reporter it was a desperate rescue effort. Every time she moved and every time i actually tried to scoop more snow out she sank deeper. Does anybody have another rope . Reporter this is never before video of crews trying to save the life of christian jacobson. An experienced skier trapped upside down in the snow bank and running out of air. I remember being thankful that it wasnt one of the kid. Thinking that i didnt think this is how it was going to end. Reporter it started on a picture perfect day just two weeks ago. The sun was out and fresh powder blanketed the sierra at tahoe resort. We decided to go maybe 10 or 15 feet off of the trail. Reporter but when eric spots a slight divot in the snow, he hesitates. As i was saying dont go there, she disappeared. All i remember falling. Not like i caught an edge or i was out of control it was just sinking i guess. Reporter a camera shows the incredible situation. Look closely and you can see just the bottoms of kristins skis in that snow bank. Remember she was upside down. Eric is wearing the green sweatshirt and had sunk to his chest trying to dig her out. It was very desperate. I knew what i was doing wasnt helping her but i didnt know what else to do at that point. I could not leave her. Reporter this picture was taken 11 minutes after she went under what seemed like an eternity. Reporter kristin did not know she had fallen into a dry creek. Reporter could you hear anything . No, nothing. Reporter finally equipment and training allowed them to do what eric didnt. Get her air and get her out. I was on my back then i remember the faces of the ski patrollers. And the coach, it seemed like an army of people. Reporter amazingly, kristin survived with just a bruised lung and temporary nerve damage but recovery will take time. You just cant shut the replay off in your head. Its hard to sleep. Kind of right back there. Reporter they have since had tearful reunions with the men responsible for saving her life. She made it for several reasons. This video shows just how close they were to the chair lift which allowed people to hear their calls for help. Even though she was buried for almost 30 minutes the ski patrol got her breathing again. The lesson here is we did everything correctly. We stayed together. Reporter even as they fight the nightmares, even as they hold their children and each other tighter they still love that mountain. But now, the mountain looks different. Because they know the beauty they can see always comes with the dangers they cant. In 1997 an amateur photographer captured dramatic pictures as three of his snow boarding friends raced an avalanche down to the bottom. Reporter rod has spent the last three days replaying this tape. He seeing his friend buzzing up and down. One of the machines is reaching the top when suddenly the snow gives way. One of the snow mobiles is stuck. My heart was pumping twice as erics is. Reporter he urges his Three Friends on as they race to get out of the snows pack. They were skidadling i wish i could have seen their faces. Hes still on it. Reporter jim is the man he calls jack saw. Un quickly turns his machine around and starts down the mountain. The snow started getting around me before i totally got out of his way. He traveled a half mile before he was clear of the avalanche which ended as quickly as it started. It was like were okay. Reporter all three made it out safe but he will never forget that 20foot wall of snow and what it looked like as it beared down on him. Just like a big cloud like a river started on you one that wasnt there before. Is there a lesson to be learned. Check the back country. Check out the soft snow. When we come back, on a second look, they were one of the elite american units of world war ii. Able to climb mountains, ski for miles and live in the freezing cold for days. The legendary tenth Mountain Division. A bit later how to survive an avalanche. Tonight on a second look, danger in the snow. Every winter people flock to the ski slopes all around the world. But for one group of american soldiers in world war ii, skiing was not a sport. It was a means of waging war. In 2001, ktvus Bob Mackenzie brought us the story of the legendary tenth Mountain Division. In their time they were legendary soldiers. As tough as marines, as agile as navy seals and with their own bag of tricks. The men of the tenth Mountain Division could ski, use mountains, use stealth and hit hard and fast. I think it was the best fighting force. It was the only fighting force that i experienced and i cant imagine any fighting force being any better. Reporter 60 years later some of the tenth mountaineers are still around and get together. Sometimes they tell war stories sometimes as a way of exorcising the ghost. Machine gun just decapitated his head. And when we passed him, his brains were just laying out on the ground it was a horrible sight. Reporter in 1939 Adolph Hitler began conquering the nations of western europe one at a time. An army camp the size of a small city sprang up at camp hale, 9,000 feet up in the colorado rockies. In november 1941 the newly formed tenth Mountain Division began to train. Most were college men already skiers or mountain climbers. Athletes by inclination. And many had the naive idea that the training was going to be fun. You had to learn to cope with the altitude first off. When you first got there you tried to run a block and you were just gasping for air. Reporter a typical exercise at camp hail, climbing a 13 Foot Mountain carrying a 1,000 pound pack. Living outdoors in temperatures of 40 below zero. Training was extremely rigorous. So rigorous that really when we got into combat. All kinds of weather conditions and things it was like soup. By the Time Training was done, every man knew how to cover a mountain, how to travel for miles on skis and how to live outdoors in huts. The men found themselves heading to italy where a heavy source of troops was dug into caves and commanded the highest peaks fully protected and able to blast away at anything below. Particularly formittable was reba ridge a series of peaks from where the germans could see an army coming for miles. But the nazi troops were not expecting cat burglars. As darkness fell one evening they began to climb. They had to go up in single file. Sitting ducks if they had been discovered. They climbed through the night and reached the ridge at dawn. By good luck it was a foggy morning and german centuries could not see them. They took the germans by surprise and captured the ridge. Over men in the camp had to fight their way up the hill a foot a a time. We fought that platoon and won and captured them all. And i think that was typical of our unit. We severely wounded the officer and the moral of the german platoon that was following them fell apart. And those who were not killed, were injured, we had as prisonerred. Reporter the camp pushed down into the valley and headed toward the alps. The seasons german unit made them pay for every foot. There was a group of germans coming up. You could fire a single shot or squeeze off 20 round very quickly. And i spotted these soldiers coming up and i know i killed three and it may have been as many as five or six. And you often wonder but it was either them or me and there wasnt really any choice. Reporter the Mountain Division went in advance of much larger American Forces and steer headed the campaign that took italy and forced a german retreat. Of the 14,000 men in the tenth mountain, more than 4,000 were wounded and almost 1,000 were killed. I think both the tenth Mountain Division and the marine corp. And many other units were just outstanding. And i am proud to be one of them. Up next on a second look, if the snow above you gave way, would you know what to do . Expert advise on how to survive an avalanche. Yeah, back in our day, we didnt have uverse high Speed Internet to play and learn online. All we had was that franklin fuzzypants. Ah, the educational toy bear. Remember when the battery went out . [ slow, deep voice ] give me your abcs. All i learned was a new definition of fear. I need some pudding. Yeah, theres one left. [ male announcer ] connect all your wifienabled devices with uverse high Speed Internet. Rethink possible. On a second look tonight were looking at the dangers you can face in the mountains when theyre filled with snow. Julius sandstrom looked at dangers and how you can survive them. Reporter its an Awesome Force of nature and it can kill. This skiers was lucky to survive this avalanche but already this season avalanches have killed 16 north american skiers, snow boarders, hikers and snow mobilers. Its related to a day like today when its storming pretty hard. Weve got 60, 70mile an hour wind over the ridge stop. Reporter in california, the most common type of avalanche is called a slab avalanche. It usually occurs when a slab of new snow thats fallen on top of older snow suddenly breakings lose sends it down at 90 miles per hour. Ironically skiers who get caught in an avalanche most often trigger it themselves. They just want to go to that particular slope. They may ski it 20, 30 times down the avalanche path. They get into this particular day and the snow wont let them do that safely. So they drop into the avalanche path and they trigger an avalanche. Its not just skiers, these dramatic pictures show an avalanche bearing down on three snow mobilers. Snow mobilers account for 1 3 of all avalanche deaths. Machines weigh quite a bit. Up to 1,000, 1,200pound. The weight of them and the riders trigger the avalanche themselves. Reporter several california ski areas take action to control avalanches before they occur. At Alpine Meadows teams use a cannon with four inch shells to blast away heavy snow before it can tumble down on skiers. The war heads are similar to the ones the u. S. Military used to bombard baghdad. This is a fuse assembly. And it is a super quick or point detonation fuse that basically just takes the impact on the nose here and it will set off the war head. Reporter avalanche control teams also mount search and control missions to identify potential avalanches in ski areas and trigger them with dynamite. But avalanches are not confined to ski areas. Few drivers heading into the snowy sierra on highway 50 realize the surrounding peaks are prime avalanche danger zones. 1,000feet above the highway, caltrans chief blaster Bryan Carlton drives a blaster toward egg cosummit. Carlton uses a blaster to trigger avalanches. It uses propane and oxygen blasted out of cannons. The crew fires it remotely using a computer. The next time you hear highway 50 is closed for avalanche control you will know he is on the slope blasting cannons. We cant have snow just falling on people uncontrolled. Reporter but every year avalanches do just that. Bury winter adventuring. 1 3 of victims died before the snow stops sliding. In this avalanche all were rescued. But within minutes many suffocate. The best way to survive is to do swimming motion to propel yourself to the top. You make your final efforts to get one hand in front of your face creating an air pocket then shove one hand toward what you think is the surface. Reporter many outdoor retailers sell beacons such as this one. It enables rescuers to find victims victims underneath the snow. And thats it for this weeks sec look. Im julie haener, thank you for watching. Oh, i wish i could do more. Its just a bunch of old, outofdate clothes. Oh, im sure its great. Three weeks ago, our neighbors, the rands, lost their house and everything they own in a fire. Fortunately, nobody was hurt. And fortunately, theyre friends with wonder woman over here. Im hardly wonder woman. She mobilized the community to donate clothes, furniture, appliances, all to help them start over in their new rental. Which you found them. Im no wonder woman. Randaid was her idea. It wasnt my idea to call it randaid. Okay, fine. Im wonder woman. Terrible tragedy. Theyre our closest friends. We know them. Uh, manny and their son reuben are tight. In fact, i put in one of their closets. Not that it matters, but it was the only structure to survive the fire. Por favor , dont even say that word