Pair trapped by snow for three days in camper rescued by National Guard

By Bill Phelan
Ngmo.pao@US.ARMY.MIL

BEVIER, MO. - Soldiers of the Missouri National Guard's 1438th Engineer Company, headquartered in Macon, are credited with rescuing an elderly woman and a teenager trapped by snow in a camping trailer for three days.

The rescue took place in Bevier Feb. 4 in the wake of a winter storm that dumped as much as 24 inches of snow across parts of Missouri.

"We received a phone call at the armory around noon to meet a sheriff's deputy at the campground," said Staff Sgt. Jeremy Maddox, the noncommissioned officer in charge of the mission. "The sheriff didn't think their patrol cars would make it so they asked us to send a Humvee. By the time we got there the campground owner had cleared a path to the woman's trailer and a highway patrolman met us there."

Maddox said the trip from Macon to Bevier, a distance of about six miles, took nearly two hours.

"There was about 18 inches of snow with three-foot drifts," he said. "We plowed through snow that was hood deep."

Authorities said the woman and a teenage girl had been trapped in the trailer for three days without food or water.

"The woman was mighty glad to see us, but then she told us she thought she could drive out of the campground in her late model Oldsmobile Cutlass," Maddox said. "I knew she wouldn't make it."

Within moments of attempting to drive away, the woman's car got stuck prompting Maddox, Staff Sgt. Mark Rush, Sgt. Derek Logsdon, and the state trooper to push her out.

"We pushed her 120 yards up a hill all the way to the main road," Maddox said.

"Even though the campground owner had plowed the road the ice and snow made the mission difficult," added Sgt. Logsdon.

Logsdon, Maddox and Rush were among 600 Missouri National Guard Citizen-Soldiers and Airmen are mobilized to State Emergency Duty through an executive order by Gov. Nixon to work in support of local authorities. In addition to rescuing civilians trapped in homes and vehicles, the Guard also provided transportation to emergency responders throughout the impacted areas.

The 1438th Engineer Company is a multi-role bridge building unit and is part of the 1140th Engineer Battalion, based in Cape Girardeau.
For more information about the Missouri National Guard, please call 1-800-GoGuard or visit www.moguard.com