Air Space Saved Girl Trapped in Snow, Silence

Fifteen-year-old Carrie Heimann survived Saturday because of a basketball-sized pocket of air created when she covered her face in desperation as a wall of snow descended on her.

It was the only space she had. Trapped motionless in the snow for more than 90 minutes, she thought she was going to die.

“I just kind of lost track of the time. It was scary. There was no sound. It was complete quiet,” said Carrie, a sophomore at Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, as she rested late Saturday night at her parents’ Santa Ana home.

At the point that she heard rescuers walking above her, then walking away, she gave up hope. But they came back and pulled her out of the snow. The first thing she said to them was, “My feet hurt.”

Carrie, a drill team member at the school, had been buried by an avalanche while hiking with friends on a school outing in Angeles National Forest.

“I just kind of laid there doing nothing. They said I was under there for an hour and a half. I only had a little space in front of me. It was like the size of a basketball.”

Schoolmates and teachers had almost given up hope of finding the curly-haired, slim, 5-foot-5 girl during a frantic search by a team of Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies and rescue workers, aided by about 30 ski patrol members.

“I was just trying to avoid the panic,” said Michael Corrigan, a teacher who organized the outing for members of the school’s band and drill team. “We were just amazed she was OK. It was like a miracle.”

Said Deputy Ben Garnes: “I honestly thought we were going to find her dead.”

Carrie, an avid member of the drill team, and about nine classmates went hiking about 9:30 a.m., some of the students said, despite their teacher’s warning not to stray from their cabins at the Ester Christian Conference Center, where the group was staying for the weekend. As they grew cold and afraid, they started to turn back. Then one of the boys in the lead slipped, apparently setting off the avalanche.

“I hit a patch of snow and next thing I knew, the snow came down and wiped us all down the hill. . . ,” said Aaron Cox, 16. “The snow was up to my neck and I was struggling to keep my head above the snow.”

Not until their legs were buckled under by the snow did some of the students realize they were in an avalanche.

“Basically I was too worried trying to hold on to decide whether I was scared,” said Bowen Goletz, a junior at Mater Dei. “It was just a wall of snow and fortunately I was near a tree and I was able to hold onto it. . . .

“I was able to catch another member of the group,” Goletz continued. “He was basically sliding by and I held out an arm and he grabbed it.”

After the students tried in vain to find Carrie, some stayed behind to dig in the snow while others ran back to the camp to ask Corrigan to call for help. Many of the more than 80 students and 15 chaperones dug frantically with their hands until rescue workers arrived about 20 minutes later.

The rescuers soon responded to the emergency call. They formed a line at either end of the avalanche, which was about 40 feet wide and 300 feet long, and methodically worked their way toward the middle, Corrigan said.

Working in unison they moved slowly, taking one step at time, stopping, sinking long search poles into the snow, and then repeating the procedure again and again. At last, one of the rescue workers called out.

“One at the top hollered ‘We found something! . . . We found her! . . . She’s conscious! . . . She knows her name,’ ” Corrigan said.

The girl was treated for frostbite and released early Saturday evening from Palmdale Hospital Medical Center. She then headed home to Santa Ana with her parents, Patti and Tom Heimann.

Two of the rescuers visited Carrie at the hospital to make sure she was all right, said Patti Heimann.

“The rescue workers said a lot of times, they just have bad news. They just said a lot of times it’s not a real happy ending. . . . At least this one time, they could be happy with us. It turned out all right.”

Staff writer Ellen Yan contributed to this story.