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 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.
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.
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On Tuesday, a volunteer rescuer using binoculars spotted the
couple's overturned Jeep in a gravel pit about 17 miles 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)
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