Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 17, 1993 TAG: 9303170061
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
MOUNTAIN HIKERS RESCUED
The last 24 campers from a Michigan prep school who were snowbound in North Carolina's Great Smoky Mountains were winched aboard military helicopters Tuesday after three harrowing days of putting their wilderness survival training to a real-life test.The students cheered and hugged each other as they were reunited at the Air National Guard headquarters in Knoxville, Tenn., with others in their group who walked out of the 800-square-mile national park Tuesday.
Some of the students said at a news conference that although they were surprised by the suddenness of the storm, they were well prepared with tents, food and heating stoves. School officials said all hikers rescued Tuesday were unharmed.
While the Michigan hikers celebrated, authorities from Kentucky to Georgia said they still were getting emergency calls about snowbound people in remote areas.
The death toll from the storm reached at least 213 - mostly from heart attacks related to snow shoveling, automobile accidents and exposure - and insurance industry officials estimated insured damage at upwards of $800 million.
The rescued campers in the North Carolina-Tennessee mountains were the last of a group of 117 teen-agers, teachers and parents from the Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School, a private school in the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills, who set out on a spring break trek a week ago and became snowbound Friday night.
Roy Carson, a school spokesman, said that the 21 students and three faculty members, who had not been expected to walk out of the park until 10 a.m. Tuesday, were "shocked" to discover that they had been objects of an intensive search and the focus of national media attention.
"They didn't understand what it was all about. They came out exactly when they were supposed to."
Park authorities said some of the hikers who had walked out Monday night had slept in vacant structures and others had made their own shelters, using wilderness survival techniques they learned in their Outward Bound program at the school, which teaches self-discipline through overcoming natural hardships.
Robert Miller, a spokesman for the park rangers' rescue command center at Gatlinburg, Tenn., said 17 other hikers still were missing in Great Smoky Mountain National Park late Tuesday.
Keywords:
FATALITY