Calgary woman rescued from tree well, revived from near death

Calgary-area woman Christine "Tink" Newman, 24, is recovering in a Vancouver hospital after spending seven hours trapped in a tree well near Squamish, B.C.

Her family says it's a miracle she survived last week's terrifying ordeal.

"It's a pure miracle that she is here," Newman's mother, Ernestine, told the Calgary Sun.

"This is not just a story of people doing above and beyond what any person could do," Ernestine added. "It's a story of teamwork, it's a story of the right people at the right time because we believe God put them there to save our daughter."

Newman set out on a snowshoe hike in Garibaldi Provincial Park last Monday. She spent the night at the rustic Elfin Lakes shelter inside the park.

Around 2 a.m. on Tuesday morning, Newman left the shelter to search for an outhouse and became disoriented in the darkness. Because she didn't take her snowshoes with her, she had to crawl through the deep snow.

She fell into a tree well.

Newman says that crawling is the last thing she remembers.

The next morning, about seven hours later, a group of six people that Newman met the previous day spotted her backpack along the trail. Shortly after, they spotted the top of her head peeking out of the tree well.

"They knew immediately it was Christine's pack, and they started a search," Newman's father, John, told the Province. "Eventually they found her — all they could see was her head."

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The group of strangers, which included a Mountie, a lifeguard and a former search-and-rescue worker, performed CPR on Newman, who showed no vital signs, for more than two hours. To warm her up — Newman's body temperature had dropped to a scary 18°C — they used a sleeping bag, reflective blanket and hand warmers.

"One thing we learned in standard first aid courses, is once you commit to CPR, you have to stick with it," said Eric Urban, one of Newman's rescuers.

"Stopping was out of the question, we just had to keep going. We never had the feeling that it was never not worth it."

Knowing Newman would be air-lifted to safety, they walked in circles in the snow to create a landing pad for a helicopter.

A search-and-rescue team arrived on the ground and helped continue CPR for another two hours before the helicopter arrived. A leading hypothermia expert was in contact with the search-and-rescue team during that time, CBC News reports.

When Newman arrived at the hospital, staff connected her to a machine that warmed her blood before doctors restarted her heart.

"Had she not had the CPR, I can guarantee she wouldn’t have survived this," said Dr. Vinay Dhingra, critical care physician at Vancouver General Hospital. "As she came through, she had no signs of life, CPR was being performed. She got to the operating room and she was able to be warmed and have her heart restarted, and by the next day, her heart had fully recovered."

"We are so grateful to God first and then to all of these wonderful people who sacrificed everything they had to save her life," Ernestine said. "Every single person in this group brought something to the table that helped our daughter survive."

"You know, just finishing watching the Olympics last month ... if I had six gold medals to give out, these would be the people who deserve six gold medals," John told CBC News.

"They ran the marathon and they won, and the result is that a 24-year-old girl named Christine Newman is going to be alive and walking and living a very vibrant life," he said. "She's been given another chance."

Newman told her mother when she woke up, "God wouldn't let me die."

According to Dhingra, Newman has very little of the discolouration usually associated with frostbite and is only complaining of a little numbness in her extremities.

"She is awake. She's alert. She's conscious. She is talking. She had a good lunch today. She is still weak and is able to get into a chair with assist...not quite walking just yet," he said.

Yesterday, the hospital was making plans to release her from intensive care.