Couple’s Rescue After 6 Weeks Without Food

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30091, 27 March 1963, Page 13

Couple’s Rescue After 6 Weeks Without Food

(N.Z. Press Assn—Copyright; WHITEHORSE, Yukon Territory, March 26. A former model and a Californian pilot were recuperating in hospital in Whitehorse today after surviving for seven weeks in Canada’s frozen north, most of the time without food, the Canadian press reported. The two were evacuated from their camp near their wrecked plane yesterday. “I just waftt to go home and get married and have babies,” Miss Helen Klaben, aged 21, told reporters after she and the pilot, Mr Ralph Flores, aged 42—both injured —were flown to Whitehorse. The light plane in which Mr Flores was flying Miss Klaben from Whitehorse to Fort St. John, in British Columbia, crashed 51 days ago into the side of a 4000-foot mountain nearly 300 miles from here. The temperature

was then nearly 31 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.

Gangrenous Leg Miss Klaben suffered a broken left arm and an injured right leg which became gangrenous. Mr Flores fractured a rib and injured a foot. In spite, of the pain, Mr Flores erected a tarpaulin shelter and spent three days trampling out a huge S.O.S. sign in the snow. Their meagre food supply ran out within a week. “After that,” said Miss Klaben, “it was water for breakfast, water for lunch and water for supper.” They tried to catch rabbits but failed. They kept warm in the below zero Arctic conditions with a fire from wood painfully chopped with a hammer and chisel. Read Bible Miss Klaben, who was unable to walk, read a Bible from cover to eover. Occasionally, a plane passed on the other side of their mountain. A search for the missing plane was abandoned after 31 days. Then on Sunday a bush pilot flying supplies in for big-game hunters saw the

sign and then the couple. Rescuers reached them yesterday morning and within hours they were flown out. Initial examination here showed both were also suffering from malnutrition and exposure. Miss Klaben had lost about 301 b and Mr Flores 401 b. Relatives in the United States were astounded and overjoyed at word of their rescue, the Associated Press reported. Mrs Flores said she and their six children had never given up hope.