4 Children Lost In Alaska During A Blizzard Were Found Alive Huddling Around The 2-Year-Old

February 8, 2020

Four boys who went missing for more than 24 hours during a blizzard in Alaska were found alive and are "doing fine".

Christopher Johnson, 14, Frank Johnson, 8, Ethan Camille, 7, and Trey Camille, 2, left on a snowmachine Sunday afternoon in Nunam Iqua, a community on Alaska's west coast. They were heading for the dump near the community, but a blinding snowstorm had come in, and the children disappeared.

It had been more than 24 hours since they were last seen.

Bryan Simon and his team of search and rescue volunteers left Scammon Bay around 10:30 Monday morning. Snowmaching along the Black River, Simon scanned the white landscape for any minute detail, like he's been trained to do. A hundred yards away, on the highest snowdrift, he saw something he said was suspicious.

"It didn't look like anything. And then as I got kinda closer, I seen movement," Simon told Alaska Public Media. "I couldn't believe my eyes."

At first he thought he only saw one child, but that's because all four children were bundled together. They dug a hole in the snow and huddled themselves inside and positioned themselves in a way so that the 2-year-old wouldn't be as exposed.

"The infant was in there," Simon said. "And the boy laid over the infant, and on his left side, a little older boy covering the draft. And the seven-year-old was laying right above them like he was blocking the wind."

"They were protecting the baby," said Herschel Sundown, Simon's teammate.

The Coast Guard transported the children to Bethel, where three of them were treated for severe hypothermia at the Yukon Kuskokwim Health Corporation. Ethan, the 7-year-old, was transported to Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage.

"The kids are doing fine," a representative with Emmonak Search and Rescue told CNN. "I talked to the grandpa. They were cold and hungry."