Dog trapped in hot car takes matters into its own paws

Max, an 11-year-old Chocolate Lab, belongs to Donna Gardner of Macungie, PA.

n a steamy summer day when Donna accidentally left him in the car, Max needed to send out an S.O.S.

He didn't bark.

He honked the car's horn.

"He did it twice...two times," Donna said.

That's because the first time Donna looked out, she didn't notice anything, so Max laid on the horn again.

"I'm thinking 'Who is blowing the horn out there,'" Donna said. "I went out on the porch this time and there is Max sitting in the front seat of my car. Well, obviously it was him that blew the horn."

Max's life-saving stunt has made him a celebrity of sorts, but Donna says at the time it was pretty scary.

Max had been in the car for about an hour and it was 90-degrees outside.

"I was hysterical. I could not call the vet, my daughter had to call the vet because I couldn't talk," Donna said. "I was crying. I just couldn't believe I did that to him."

After getting Max water and cooling him off with wet towels, Donna rushed him to her vet, Dr. Nancy Soares, whose office had gotten the emergency call and was ready for anything.

"His cooling mechanism, which the only one dogs have really is panting, was pretty severe," Dr. Soares of Macungie Animal Hospital said.

Dr. Soares says Donna did all the right things and Max did not need much medical care. Still, she says Max is a lucky dog.

Dr. Soares says even with the windows rolled down on a 72-degree day, the car temperature can hit 100 to 120-degrees in just 10 minutes.

"The mortality rate in dogs that suffer heat exhaustion is about 50-percent. It's a pretty high number," Dr. Soares said. "Lucky for Max, he saved his own life."

Donna says she doesn't know where Max learned to honk the horn.

She says she is not a honker, but obviously she is very glad he figured it out.

Black parents give birth to white baby

http://www.postzambia.com/post-read_article.php?articleId=11908
THE stunned black dad of a newborn, white, baby girl declared last week - "I'm sure she's my kid ... I just don't know why she's blonde."
British Nmachi Ihegboro has amazed genetics experts who say the little girl is not an albino.

Dad Ben, 44, a customer services adviser, admitted: "We both just sat there after the birth staring at her."

Mum Angela, 35, of Woolwich, South London, beamed as she said: "She's beautiful - a miracle baby."

Ben explained how he was so shocked when Nmachi was born, he even joked: "Is she mine?"
He added: "Actually, the first thing I did was look at her and say, 'What the flip?'"
But as the baby's older brother and sister - both black - crowded round the "little miracle" at their home in South London, Ben declared: "Of course she's mine."

Blue-eyed blonde Nmachi, whose name means "Beauty of God" in the Nigerian couple's homeland, has baffled genetics experts because neither Ben nor wife Angela have any mixed-race family history.
Pale genes skipping generations before cropping up again could have explained the baby's appearance.

Ben also stressed: "My wife is true to me. Even if she hadn't been, the baby still wouldn't look like that.
"We both just sat there after the birth staring at her for ages - not saying anything."
Doctors at Queen Mary's Hospital in Sidcup - where Angela, from nearby Woolwich, gave birth - have told the parents Nmachi is definitely no albino.

Ben, who came to Britain with his wife five years ago and works for South Eastern Trains, said: "She doesn't look like an albino child anyway - not like the ones I've seen back in Nigeria or in books. She just looks like a healthy white baby."
He went on: "My mum is a black Nigerian although she has a bit fairer skin than mine.
"But we don't know of any white ancestry. We wondered if it was a genetic twist.
"But even then, what is with the long curly blonde hair?"

Professor Bryan Sykes, head of Human Genetics at Oxford University and Britain's leading expert, yesterday called the birth "extraordinary".
He said: "In mixed race humans, the lighter variant of skin tone may come out in a child - and this can sometimes be startlingly different to the skin of the parents.
"This might be the case where there is a lot of genetic mixing, as in Afro-Caribbean populations. But in Nigeria there is little mixing."

Rome to rule whether St. Louis woman's cure was a miracle

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/article_791b3e0d-352c-5ac1-aa61-6233a606c579.html
Rachel Lozano didn't die of cancer as the doctors predicted, and she says it's a miracle.

Not a miracle like a last-minute goal or winning the lottery. The real deal: the work of God through the intercession of a saint.

Other Roman Catholics in St. Louis believe, too, and on Friday, the St. Louis Archdiocese officially wrapped up its investigation into the claimed miracle with a prayer service to mark the occasion. Boxes of testimony generated by the investigative tribunal — about 3,000 pages — will be sent to Rome, where the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints will examine the evidence.

Lozano said she doesn't really have to wait. She already knows the answer to how her cancer was cured, and "medicine can't explain it.

"There's just a peacefulness inside me," she said, "whether the church declares it a miracle or not."

She attributes her remarkable recovery to the French priest Blessed William Joseph Chaminade, who lived from 1761 to 1850. If her case is indeed deemed a miracle, the pope could one day canonize Chaminade as a saint.

"I just feel elated to be part of the process," Lozano said Friday before the prayer service.

One miracle has already been attributed to Chaminade's intercession, the curing of a Argentine woman's lung cancer in 1991. The Vatican deemed that a miracle in 1998. Based on that miracle, Pope John Paul II in 2000 beatified Chaminade, a step toward canonization.

Lozano attended Chaminade's beatification in Rome, and that was the foundation of her miraculous recovery, she and others say.

"She was not feeling well at all," said the Rev. James Tobin, the pastor at Lozano's church, Our Lady of the Pillar, who went with her to Rome. "She began entrusting her health to the intercession of Blessed Chaminade."

Lozano had survived several bouts with cancer, and even underwent a stem cell transplant, but in 2002, doctors found a tumor growing near her heart, lungs and spine.

The news from doctors was all bad: Surgery would kill her. So would the cancer, in weeks or months, depending on which organ the cancer struck first. No one had survived a recurrence of this cancer after a stem cell transplant.

But she lived weeks, months, a year. Scans showed her tumor, which she named Spanky, wasn't growing as expected.

Eventually a surgeon removed the tumor and found it was dead.

"It was pretty astounding," her oncologist told the Post-Dispatch last year.

The Marianists order of Catholic brothers and priests found Lozano's case compelling and presented her story to the archdiocese as a miracle attributable to Chaminade, the order's founder. An archdiocese tribunal investigated, interviewing Lozano, her family, her doctors, and Tobin, among others.

The tribunal doesn't make a judgment, just gathers evidence. But Monsignor John Shamleffer, judicial vicar who served on the tribunal, said God picked up where doctors couldn't succeed.

"I believe in God's ability to do things we can't do," he said. "I have no reason to believe this is not a miracle."

The tribunal's evidence is now headed to the Vatican. No one knows when a ruling might come from Rome.

"We don't know the end of this process," Brother Michael McAward, secretary general of the Society of Mary, said Friday night. "It may end in the canonization of Father Chaminade. But what we do know is Rachel has been blessed by God with a cure."

Alsip police officer describes robbery, 'guardian angel' neighbor

By Steve Schmadeke, Tribune reporter

2:01 PM CDT, July 2, 2010

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Taking cover from the gunfire against a low brick wall, Alsip police Officer Mark Miller watched dazed as brick particles sent flying by the bullets hit his face in what seemed like slow motion.

Less than a minute had passed since Miller chased an armed robbery suspect outside of an Alsip Aldi store on June 26, 2007, and into a residential neighborhood near the library. Children were out riding their bikes and, down the street, playing in a Little League baseball game.

He had been saved already by an Alsip woman who, on her backyard deck handing out Popsicles, shouted a warning — "He's got a gun, he's going to shoot you" — before suspect James Sevier could ambush Miller near a garage.

Now the magazine in his Glock service weapon was empty. As Miller reloaded, Sevier snuck up behind him, pointed a revolver at his head and said, "You're dead, Copper."

Then he pulled the trigger.

"I looked down the barrel of his gun from 4 feet away," Miller said. "It's only by the grace of God that he missed."

It was the type of crime that attracts little publicity — no one was killed, only $2,440 was stolen and the flying bullets damaged property not people. But Miller agreed to share his story, hoping to bring attention to the dangerous work suburban police sometimes do and what he saw as a case of the criminal justice system working as it should.

It was nearly 80 degrees outside when Sevier, then 42, walked into the Aldi store, 12050 S. Pulaski Road, wearing a black hooded sweatshirt around 7 p.m. The Bowen High School dropout asked two employees where the manager was, records show.

When they didn't answer, he pulled out a gun and said, "Do you guys think this is a (expletive) joke?"

This wasn't Sevier's first armed robbery. The Chicago man was sentenced to 20 years in 1984 for a series of armed robberies. During his time in prison, he was certified in "stress and anger management," but the training didn't appear to help much.

The father of four was on parole on federal drug charges when he walked into the south suburban store with a .38-caliber revolver, records show. He came from a religious family but had taken a different path. On his left arm are tattoos of both praying hands and barbed wire, records show.

As Sevier approached with a gun, the manager hit a silent alarm and ran. Sevier caught him outside the store and forced him back inside at gunpoint, taking cash from a safe, drawers and even the manager's pockets before fleeing through a back door near the loading dock.

That's where Miller, then 41, saw him. He had just returned to work after eating dinner with his wife and two children, then 3 and 1, when the armed robbery call came in.

"He looks at me; I yell, 'Police!' and like a jackrabbit, away he goes," Miller said. Sevier didn't run to his getaway car.

"This guy came loaded for bear," Miller said, noting that residents told police Sevier walked through the neighborhood earlier that day. "He went to that backyard intentionally, waiting for me, to ambush me."

Yvonne Shepard, 46, was supposed to meet her family that night for her father's birthday dinner at her favorite restaurant, but at the last minute she decided not to go. Instead, she was on her deck serving Popsicles to her young daughter and several neighborhood kids when she saw a man with a gun.

"I've been saying since the day it happened — this was all God's plan. We were all placed there at just the right time," said Shepard, a worker at the Nabisco plant in Chicago.

Shepard's cousin, a Chicago police detective, had been shot in the stomach while trying to arrest a murder suspect years ago, she said. And she didn't want the children to see someone killed.

She saw Sevier with his gun in the air about to ambush Miller, who was holding his gun at his side, at her neighbor's garage. So she screamed the warning.

Both men froze, and Sevier turned to look at Shepard for an instant — just long enough for Miller to run for cover. "(I was thinking) what the hell are you looking at me for?" Shepard said.

"Fortunately I had a guardian angel in Yvonne Shepard," Miller said. "She could've just simply grabbed her kids and ran.

"Had she not said something, I would've taken it to the back of my head. It's because of her that I was able to go home that night and see my kids again."

Shepard doesn't feel like a hero. "It was just my big mouth," she said.

Sevier stuck his gun around the garage wall and fired, with Miller returning fire. Alsip Officers James Portincaso and James Tyszko ran toward the gunfire as Shepard led the children to cover in her basement.

Portincaso ordered Sevier to the ground. The robbery suspect started to go down — then yelled, "(Expletive) you, cop!" and opened fire, striking the ground next to Portincaso. Sevier then opened fire at Miller, who was already out of bullets.

Miller kept his eyes on the spot where he thought Sevier was hiding as he reloaded. He was wrong — and says Sevier likely would have killed him if he hadn't first shouted, "You're dead, Copper," giving Miller an instant to duck through an open gate along the brick wall.

"I run into the backyard, I turn around," Miller said. "I'm thinking this is the OK Corral. It's going to be who hits who first. I've got no cover now."

Instead, Sevier decided to run east toward the getaway car — a white 1997 Chrysler Cirrus sedan parked at 119th Street and Pulaski. After a short pursuit, the car crashed into a Merrionette Park squad car in a Jewel parking lot.

Investigators found nearly 30 rounds had been fired during the incident. All five rounds in Sevier's Taurus revolver were spent, but investigators were not sure how many times he actually fired.

There was one bullet in Shepard's pool and two in her home, including one that was stuck near a chair where she had been sitting seconds before the shooting started.

Around 1 a.m. that night, Shepard's husband told her there was an officer at the door. It was Miller.

"We just hugged," Shepard said. "He said, 'Thank you so much; my name is Mark.' We talked and then we cried. He was a new dad. It was really an emotional moment."

At one point during the nearly three years it took to bring the case to trial, defense attorneys made an offer: Sevier would plead guilty to the armed robbery in exchange for the attempted murder charges being dropped, Miller said. Prosecutors took the offer to the three officers who had been under fire.

"I said, 'No way,'" Miller said. "I know how the system works; if he gets 25 (years) … he'll be out in six. This guy is going to kill somebody — he's not going to stop."

But Miller questioned the wisdom of his decision in March. After a three-day trial, jurors deliberated for less than two hours before reaching a verdict.

He and other Alsip police officers nervously returned to Judge Joseph Hynes' courtroom in Markham to hear the outcome.

When Miller heard jurors reached a not guilty verdict for the attempted murder of Portincaso, he felt "instantly sick … like I got kicked in the you-know-where."

The feeling lifted after jurors returned guilty verdicts for armed robbery and the attempted murder of Miller. He said Sevier turned to his attorney and shrugged.

"It was a joke to him; that's all it was," Miller said.

Judge Hynes had seen enough. The Bible college correspondence classes Sevier had been taking since his arrest didn't outweigh his years of criminal activity.

Last month, Hynes handed down a 110-year sentence.

"I feel that society is a lot safer now without him out on the street," Miller said.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/southsouthwest/ct-met-0702-alsip-cop-survival-20100702,0,2716620,print.story

Toddler who survives 3-story fall 'might be the luckiest kid in the world'

18-month-old Jeremiah Holt managed to survive a 25-foot fall from a window in his family's South Austin neighborhood home.

Joanne Stanley has only one explanation for how 18-month-old Jeremiah Holt managed to survive a fall from a third-floor window in his family's South Austin neighborhood home.

"It's like God had an angel over him," Stanley, a neighbor of Jeremiah's family, said outside the boy's apartment building in the 5400 block of West Augusta Boulevard.

Sometime Wednesday morning, as other family members slept, Jeremiah tumbled from the window onto a patch of rain-muddied grass, bordered by a concrete walk and just a few inches from a gray concrete brick.

"This kid might be the luckiest kid in the world," said Marcel Bright, a spokesman for Stroger Hospital, where Jeremiah was taken after his fall. Early tests indicated the boy didn't break any bones or suffer any other of the injuries that might be expected from a fall of more than 25 feet.

"He's moving around like an 18-month-old kid," Bright said.

The boy was being kept for observation overnight, but could be released as early as Thursday, Bright said.

Outside Jeremiah's building, his pacifier still lay in the mud along with several mangled slats from the blinds that broke off and came down with him.

Neighbors who gathered at the scene couldn't help but think about what might have happened had the boy not hit the muddy patch of grass.

"He's blessed," said Gaberiel Valentine.

Valentine found Jeremiah face down outside the apartment building about 11 a.m. Wednesday. The boy was conscious, but moaning and sprawled at an awkward angle, she said.

At the same time inside Jeremiah's apartment, his family was panicking after discovering the child was missing.

Having slept in late on his day off, the boy's stepgrandfather woke the entire household when he found that the child was not beside him, said Preeterraneika Lewis, the boy's aunt.

Lucky Clover Found On UK Impaled Crash Survivor

Medics found a four-leaf clover stuck to the back of a young driver who survived a crash in Northumberland which left him speared through the chest by a fence post, it has been revealed.

Raymond Curry, 20, was on his way to work when his Vauxhall Corsa overturned and rolled through a fence into a field near his home in Cramlington on June 13.

He was flown to hospital still impaled by the piece of wood, which by chance had missed all his vital organs. Two other posts had pierced his wrecked hatchback, but missed him by inches.

An air freshener inside the car somehow ended up inside his wounds, and was later removed. It was at hospital that the lucky clover leaf was found on his back.

Mr Curry was recovering at home after having surgery to remove the stake, and earlier told the Evening Chronicle newspaper after the crash that he felt incredible pain and believed he was going to die. "I know how lucky I am to be alive," he told the newspaper. "I'd never even seen a four-leaf clover until this happened, so it was good timing, I suppose."

Paramedic Jane Peacock, from the Great North Air Ambulance, was one of the team who treated Mr Curry, who was driving to work at Argos in Alnwick, Northumberland. She said: "By God, he is a very lucky lad. It gave me a good chuckle when I heard afterwards about the four-leaf clover.

"On the scene he was stable but you do not know what is happening internally. I am delighted he has done so well. He was such a nice young lad. I'm chuffed to bits he was fine and there was nothing massively serious underlying once he was operated on."

She said some of the post was cut away by a fire crew so he could fit in the helicopter. "The fence post had impaled him. He was absolutely remarkable as he was fully conscious. My heart went out to his parents it must have been quite scary to see him like that."

The paramedic said he even remembered to thank her when he was dropped off at hospital in Newcastle. "I don't think I would have been that polite," she said.

Teen Rescued in flood waters

The torrential downpour shattered an 80 year old OK city record. It was more than double the normal amount the city receives in the entire month of June.

Dawson told CNN's "American Morning" that she helped the woman get to a line of trees and then set off -- swimming -- to find help.

Then Dawson got into trouble herself, surrounded by the rapidly rising, dangerously fast-moving water. The woman she had helped was rescued, but Dawson disappeared amid the muddy water and thick trees, and rescuers launched a frantic search for her.

Dawson told reporters, "I started shaking really bad while I was swimming and I thought I was to pass out and I thought I was going to die."

The first group of rescuers to reach her tipped over their boat and were stranded alongside Dawson.

Minutes later, a second boat came along, taking Dawson and the other three men to safety.

When her first rescue boat sunk, Dawson said she remembers thinking, "'Wow, this is just my luck.' I kind of -- first I kind of thought I sunk it, but I didn't. It was the current."

Dawson said there are parts of the event that she can't recall now.

"I remember a lot of it, but there are parts that I don't even remember happening," she said. "Like I didn't remember going underneath the water. And I did."

As for next time, Dawson said she's not likely to jump in again.

2 years old, 3 bullets

http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20100613/NEWS01/106130002/1008/NEWS01/Erica+Hughes+|+A+Louisville+miracle+meets+her+rescuers

Just 27 days ago, police detectives Rich Wilson and Thomas Barth carried a bleeding 2-year-old Erica Hughes from the Wilson Avenue home where her mother lay dead.

Erica had been shot three times, with one bullet entering her head and leaving through her cheek. Another entered her shoulder, and the third her leg.

She was so badly wounded that two other police officers quickly put Erica in the back seat of their cruiser, tended by two firefighter EMTs, and sped down Broadway to the hospital while other officers blocked traffic.

Just 27 days ago, police detectives Rich Wilson and Thomas Barth carried a bleeding 2-year-old Erica Hughes from the Wilson Avenue home where her mother lay dead.

Erica had been shot three times, with one bullet entering her head and leaving through her cheek. Another entered her shoulder, and the third her leg.

She was so badly wounded that two other police officers quickly put Erica in the back seat of their cruiser, tended by two firefighter EMTs, and sped down Broadway to the hospital while other officers blocked traffic.

Related

• Erica Hughes | Louisville woman killed, tot hurt in shooting
• Erica Hughes | Louisville officers recall ride that may have saved toddler's life

Yesterday, the much-healed toddler showed the two detectives her lollipop ring — and wouldn't share it. She was released from Frazier Rehab Institute early yesterday, and the detectives and firefighters who helped save her life met her before she went before TV cameras yesterday evening.

The rescuers marveled at Erica's recovery, which has left her dancing to the tunes she sings and reaching for toys and candy. "I want to go bye-bye," she said.

"It's a miracle," said Sgt. Chad Greathouse with Louisville Fire & Rescue. "I'm thrilled to see her like this." He and firefighter Benjamin Vardeman were the EMTs who held Erica in the back seat of the speeding police car.

It's a memory the firefighters, both fathers, say will stay with them forever.

"With outcomes like this, that's what it's all about," said Wilson, one of the detectives.

"Twenty-seven days ago, there's just no way. Only by God," said Officer Steven Kelsey, who along with his partner, Officer Larry Riley, drove Erica to the hospital.

Erica's mother, Earon Harper, 42, was killed in the May 18 shooting at 1784 Wilson Ave. Louisville Metro Police continue to look for suspects, and no arrests have been made.

Since the shooting, Erica has had surgery and treatment at Kosair Children's Hospital, then went to Frazier.

Her grandparents, Harold and Judith Harper, who have been awarded temporary custody of her, couldn't thank the officers enough for what they had done. The Harpers credit the quick thinking of those rescue workers with saving Erica's life.

The road to recovery isn't over.

Erica has lost sight in her right eye completely. She now wears small, wire-rimmed glasses and will make regular visits to the hospital for more speech and physical therapy.

Still, her grandparents say, she's shown amazing progress.

They said she spent her first day home running around, dancing and playing.

The Harpers also will care for Erica's infant sister, Ebreona.

The girls' father, Nathanial Hughes, had asked for custody and plans to remain a part of his daughter's recovery.

Earon Harper had two other children, 13-year-old Eric Anthony and 17-year-old Ebony Harper. The Harpers are seeking custody of Ebony. Eric will stay with his father.

Judith and Harold Harper say their home got much more active with Erica's return. But they wouldn't have it any other way.

"We're just thrilled to death to get her home," Harold Harper said.

Driver was wearing his seatbelt at time of crash

HAMBURG, N.Y. (WIVB) - News 4 is learning more about a 17 year old's brush with death this weekend when his SUV dove over a cliff in Hamburg.

Officials told News 4 that Michael Davison was wearing a seat belt at the time of the crash. Police say the teen was not texting, or on his phone. They also say drugs and alcohol were not a factor.

Officials say, 17-year-old Michael Davison swerved to avoid hitting an animal before he plummeted off a steep cliff into a creek. It happened early Sunday morning, on Lakeview Road in Hamburg. Emergency responders say the boy was sitting on the roof of his white Land Rover SUV when they arrived.

The rescue took several hours. Many tools were used to lift the boy up safely. Officials and residents living nearby are shocked he walked away with only minor injuries.

"It's about a 90 foot drop, a pretty treacherous cliff, has a lot of trees on it a lot of brush," said David O'Brien, Village of Hamburg Fire Chief. "No bad injuries actually, the car hit straight down and what happened is the airbags actually saved him and ejected him out of the car."

"It's amazing that someone lived through that and that's what I hear that the kids fine and that's amazing, its a miracle," said a resident.

Police told News 4 this was the first time an accident like this happened. Some neighbors say the road can be very dangerous.

Toddler ejected out of car over 20 foot wall.

"I thought when I went out there that he would be dead." Those the words of Bob Blount, of Pompano Beach, Fla,. about a baby who somehow managed to not only live through a harrowing car crash, but with only a few scrapes. According to authorities, 18-month-old Jacob Mentor's mother was driving on Interstate-95 when she swerved to avoid a tire in the road. The flipped other several times, throwing Jacob from the vehicle, which landed at a 45-degree angle against a nearly 20-foot high sound barrier wall. Jacob somehow flew over the wall, landing in Blount's backyard. He was crying and conscious when paramedics arrived, says the Sun Sentinel newspaper. His injuries didn't appear serious, local fire and rescue officials told the newspaper. "It was nothing short of a miracle," Sheriff Fire Rescue spokesman Mike Jachles remarked to the Sun Sentinel. There are conflicting reports about whether Jacob was strapped in and if so, with what, and how effectively. His sister, 3, was strapped in and wasn't hurt, police say, adding that his mother suffered only a leg injury. "I actually saw him land on the ground," Blount, 75, told "Early Show on Saturday Morning" co-anchor Chris Wragge. "He bounced once, flipped over onto his back and landed again." Blount's wife, Jan Blount, also 75, called it "totally unbelievable. Unbelievable." "I went with my husband to make sure that there was a child and I saw his eyes open," Jan continued. "And he was whimpering. So I knew that I had to rush back to the house and call 911, but at least I could tell them he's alive." "We've lived in this house for ten years," Jan told Wragge, "and I can measure the type of accident by the sounds I hear. This was the most violent that we had ever heard. It even shook a picture on our wall. So I knew immediately this was a violent crash. I was getting up to go to the phone until I heard my husband say a child flew over the wall. I couldn't believe it."

'Child' survives as 100 feared dead in Libya plane crash

One person -- believed to be a 10-year-old boy -- survived a passenger plane crash in Libya that was feared to have killed more than 100 people, an official said Wednesday.
The boy was undergoing surgery at a hospital in the Libyan capital of Tripoli after the Afriqiyah Airways plane that left Johannesburg crashed as it neared the end of its flight.
The Dutch Foreign ministry said it had a representative at the hospital waiting to identify the boy, believed to be a Dutch national. He apparently suffered bone injuries.
The plane was carrying 93 passengers and 11 crew members when it crashed while trying to land at the Tripoli International Airport.

Camden 1-year-old lucky after two story fall

http://www.wistv.com/Global/story.asp?S=12406579

According to Camden Police Lieutenant Herbert Frazier, around 3:30 p.m. Thursday, the child squeezed through the bars on the patio of an apartment and fell.Lonidier says she was watching as Kellen disappeared from view, and she heard silence. Kellen fell on his back on the concrete below.

"He cried immediately so, I knew he'd be ok," said Lonidier.

His only injury was a bruise on the back of his head. Doctors deemed him completely healthy after a full-body CAT scan and other tests.

Woman Resucitated After Heart Stopped for 45 Mins

http://www.emsresponder.com/web/online/Top-EMS-News/Woman-Resucitated-After-Heart-Stopped-for-45-Mins/1$11890

Her condition became so bad she and her son Justin, 13, needed to move into her parents' home in north Waterloo. That move would be her first stroke of luck.

The second came on the night of Aug. 30, when Kristine, Justin and parents Howard and Maggie were watching The Stone of Destiny. Kristine was too tired to finish the film and went to bed. Luckily, Justin followed her, with plans to tuck her in. Kristine barely made it to her room before she collapsed on the bed. Her heart had stopped. Justin shouted for help.

That brings us to her third stroke of luck. About 35 years ago, her mother had taken CPR lessons when Kristine was learning to swim. She never needed to use those lessons. Until now.

Maggie burst in and immediately began recalling those CPR instructions that had been buried deep in the recesses of her brain.

As Howard called 911, she frantically worked to bring her daughter back to life. Kristine was already turning blue.

"Justin was saying ‘Mom! Come back! Come back!' " Maggie said.

Paramedics and firefighters soon came, and began using a defibrillator to shock her heart into showing some movement on their monitor. They applied the device 11 times. For the family downstairs, it felt like hours. When they finally carried Dyck out of the house on a stretcher, the paramedics had found a weak pulse. But her heart had stopped for a full 45 minutes, and the chances of anyone recovering from that are never good.

An ambulance rushed her to Grand River Hospital, where a team of emergency room doctors surrounded her bed. Around midnight, one of them pulled Justin, Maggie and Howard into a little room. They braced for the worse.

"I remember thinking this is the kind of place where they tell relatives someone has died," Maggie said.

Instead, they explained their plan. They would immerse Kristine, still in a deep coma, in ice. They wanted to drop her body temperature from 37 C to 32 C to reduce swelling in her brain and slow all neurological activity. Brain damage is a very real danger for anyone whose heart has stopped that long, and the doctors saw no other choice.

Justin sat there, trying to absorb what they were telling him. Earlier that month, his estranged father had died, and he lost the chance to get to know him. Now, barely a teenager, he was facing the prospect of losing his mother, too.

The doctors began pumping Kristine's body full of drugs. One would induce paralysis, because without it she would shiver in the ice, and that would increase blood flow to her brain. The other would wipe her memory of this brutal procedure, to reduce her trauma.

"As they're telling you this, you feel kind of numb," Howard said, remembering that sleepless first night in hospital. "It just doesn't sink in."

The following day, the doctors slowly raised Kristine's body temperature. Three days later, they started easing off on the drugs that kept her in a coma. Remarkably, though still unconscious, she started responding to doctors' instructions. They said wiggle your toes, and she wiggled her toes. A week after she arrived in hospital, she began breathing on her own.

But Kristine's recovery was not close to over.

"That week was hard because I didn't know if I was going to say another word to her," Justin said. "And I knew if she did make it, it was still possible she'd kind of forget everyone."

He had a feeling, though, that his mother recognized him. It was something in the way she looked at him as he held her hand.

In the coming weeks, after batteries of tests, doctors finally found what had caused Kristine's illness. She had a tumour the size of a mandarin orange on one of her parathyroid glands at the back of her throat. It was parathyroid cancer - an extremely rare, and difficult to diagnose, disease. The tumour was affecting her glands' ability to regulate calcium in the body, which eventually caused her heart to stop.

Kristine spent nine weeks in hospital. It was a long, blurry stretch of operations at three different hospitals. They removed her tumour - an extremely delicate task, especially for a singer who so prizes her vocal chords. Kristine had been singing for most of her life. Her father was conductor of the choir she sang in.

The doctors dealt with her pancreatitis, which she developed while sick. She was heavily medicated with morphine to treat her pain. She remembers very little of what happened during this period.

Her parents, meanwhile, spent most of this time by Kristine's side, amazed at this recovery that doctors called a miracle. They didn't need to cook much. Waves and waves of food kept showing up on their doorstep from worried friends. Their phone rang steadily, emails of support poured in.

In early November, Kristine spent her first night outside of a hospital since summertime. Her parents looked after her "like a newborn baby," Maggie said. Her scars were beginning to heal, she was getting her energy back. She felt fresh air on her face, something she had longed for all those weeks when she stared out the hospital window. She would learn how to eat on her own again, and slowly, gingerly, get back to a good place.

But Kristine tried not to overthink what she had been through, or why she had survived, with no brain damage, when so many others would not.

"I don't question it too much," she said. "It happened. And it's all good now."

11 days trapped in Haiti

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/haiti/7063228/Haiti-earthquake-survivor-tells-of-11-day-burial-ordeal.html

For Emmanuel Buteau, the moment when he realised that he was not a ghost but still a living human being came when he heard his mother crying out for him.

Trapped for 11 days under the rubble of his Haitian home, he had listened to people above saying there was no chance anyone underneath could have survived so long. Delirious from lack of water, his mind began playing tricks on him, and soon he concluded they must be right. He was dead, he reasoned, and the voice inside him that said otherwise was simply his own ghost.

Then, some time on Friday evening, the voices outside became nearer again - and this time were joined by that of his mother, Marie Yolène Bois de Fer, 46.

"I could hear her voice and then she heard my voice too," said Mr Buteau, who was dragged out from the rubble by an Israeli rescue team. "That's when I believed I may be saved after all. I shouted out "Mama, mama, mama, I'm alive!"

Mr Buteau, who was recovering in a hospital bed last night, now counts himself as the luckiest of all the 130-plus people to be extracted alive from the debris of Haiti's earthquake. He may also be among the last. Rescuers, who described Mr Buteau's case as a "miracle", believe that it is highly unlikely that many more will have survived.

However, there was a new flurry of activity last night as reports swept Port au Prince that six more people had been heard alive in the rubble of a hotel. Rescuers confirmed that they could hear the sound of faint tapping, but did not know how many people were buried underneath.

In an hour-long interview yesterday with The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Buteau, a tailor, recounted his extraordinary ordeal and his amazing rescue. He ended up drinking his own urine, he said, but sang hymns to keep his spirits up.

He was at home alone in the family's three storey house in one of Port-au-Prince's poorest areas when the earthquake struck. "I had just removed my clothes to take a bath, then I heard a huge noise. The house was dancing, it was shaking and then it all came falling down," he said.

"I was knocked to the ground. It was completely dark all around. I believe I lost consciousness."

He said when he came to, perhaps a day or two later, he was in pitch darkness, unable to see anything. He was partially trapped under a bed, with collapsed debris around him, and he was lying on his left side.

"I lost hope, I thought I was dead, I really thought maybe I was a ghost, It was black all around. I was confused. Was I alive or not? Anyhow I was resigned to dying. I prayed to God."

A regular churchgoer, he sang an inspirational song about how God saved one of His apostles by sending an eagle to bring him water and food. But neither his singing, nor his shouts for help within his tomb-like confinement appeared to create much hope in the outside world.

"I was calling people but my voiced bounced back," he said. "I could hear them but they could not hear me. Every time I called them they did not respond so I became discouraged. That's when I started to believe I might be a ghost. I could not understand how I could hear them, but they couldn't hear me."

The arrival of the rescue team was partly down to the efforts of his mother, a street vendor who had been living in a refugee camp opposite Port-au-Prince's wrecked presidential palace. She returned to the shattered apartment building on Friday, and was astonished when she heard her son's distant voice. "At that moment, I knew it was possible to save him," she said.

She began frantically alerting everyone she could find – police officers, journalists, aid workers – ans soon help arrived. After cutting through rubble, pieces of furniture, one of the Israelis was finally able to touch his hand. He was eventually dragged out on a blanket looking emaciated, dazed and covered in dust. Rescuers later said that his appearance was so cadaverous that his mother initially thought he had died.

"I pulled him out and he weighed like nothing because he was so thin," said Major Zohar Moshe, 47, an engineer who led the Israeli rescue unit. "Then he was free."

Mr Buteau was then rushed to a nearby Israeli Defence Force field hospital, where his mother and sister were sat at his bedside yesterday. Rescuers said the furniture in his room had collapsed around him in such a way as to protect him from serious injury, and that he may have found water at some point to allow him to survive.

"When I came out, there were a lot of people there, they were all cheering," Mr Buteau added, with a smile. "It was like a big party and my mother was hysterical. She was making a lot of noise, embracing me, hugging me, kissing me all the time. She had been talking about me in the past, as though I was dead."

"While I was trapped I was always thinking about my mother and asked God to protect her. She's getting old and I wondered who is going to take care of her if I am gone. So thank God I'm still here, so I can continue to look after her."

Dr Anat Engel, one of the doctors who treated Mr Buteau said: "It is a miracle. It is amazing that he is still alive. It made us all very happy to see this."

The Haitian government declared the search and rescue phase of the relief operation officially over yesterday. As medical and organisations continued their work, emergency foreign rescue teams began to return home.

Among them were many of the 62 British experts who helped pulled four alive from the rubble, including a two-year-old toddler called Mia trapped for three days in debris.

Onlookers broke into applause as members of the UK International Search and Rescue Team emerged at Gatwick Airport. Search and rescue experts from nine fire brigades took part, along with medics and volunteers.

Dad Credits 'Hand of God' for Wife and Baby's Miraculous Revival

http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jan/10010403.html

A Colorado family's brush with tragedy Christmas Eve transformed into a dramatic celebration of the gift of life when a father says he witnessed his wife and newborn child revive after both appeared to die in the midst of delivery.
Mike Hermanstorfer, 37, said there was no sign anything was wrong as his 33-year-old wife Tracy was being prepped to give birth to her son Coltyn, the couple's third child, the morning of Christmas Eve. Hermanstorfer was holding his wife's hand as she lay back in her bed, saying she felt tired.
Moments later, doctors discovered that Tracy had stopped breathing and lost a pulse. Hospital staff rushed to revive her with chest compressions and a breathing tube, but eventually told Hermanstorfer that their best efforts had failed.
"I was holding her hand when we realized she was gone," Hermanstorfer said. "My entire life just rolled out."
Doctors quickly delivered Coltyn by caesarean section, but he appeared lifeless as he was given to his father. After a few agonizing minutes of doctors trying to revive the baby, the father says he saw his son begin to stir in his arms, and soon learned that his wife had also miraculously revived.
"My legs went out from underneath me," he recalled Tuesday. "I had everything in the world taken from me, and in an hour and a half I had everything given to me."
Dr. Stephanie Martin, a maternal fetal medicine specialist who was called in for the ordeal at Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs, said that Tracy's malady, and her recovery, were both mysteries. "We did a thorough evaluation and can't find anything that explains why this happened," she said.
"[Tracy] had no signs of life. No heartbeat, no blood pressure, she wasn't breathing," said Martin. "The baby was, it was basically limp, with a very slow heart rate."
Tracy, whose heart began beating as she was being rushed to surgery, says she remembers nothing in between suddenly feeling sleepy and waking up after the ordeal. "I just felt like I was asleep," she said.
While medical science was left without an explanation, Mr. Hermanstorfer credited "the hand of God" for making a miracle of a near tragedy.
"We are both believers ... but this right here, even a nonbeliever - you explain to me how this happened. There is no other explanation," he said.
"Wherever I can get the help, I'll take it," said Martin, when asked about divine intervention

Belen’s ‘Miracle Window’ is still a mystery

Belen’s ‘Miracle Window’ is still a mystery

Written by News-Bulletin Staff

Saturday, 12 December 2009 06:00

(La Historia del Rio Abajo is a regular column about Valencia County history written by members of the Valencia County Historical Society. This month's article is based on information gathered from contemporary newspaper accounts and from interviews with John B. and Connie Baca, Becky Baca, the late Joseph Philip Baca, Bob Garley and Lydia Pino. This month's author is a professor of history at the University of New Mexico-Valencia Campus and president of the Valencia County Historical Society. Opinions expressed in this and all columns of La Historia del Rio Abajo are the author's alone, and not necessarily those of the Valencia County Historical Society or any other group or individual.) Ramon Baca y Chavez and his family were well known and well respected in Belen in the 1920s. Don Ramon had served as the community's justice of the peace and police judge for many years. Judge Baca and his wife, Eulalia Castillo Baca, had raised seven fine children and were active members of Our Lady of Belen Catholic Church. One of their five daughters, Maria Lucia, had become a nun, serving at Loretto College in El Paso. Always eager to improve their well kept home on Gilbert Avenue off South Main Street, the Bacas had bought a new windowpane from the Becker Dalies store in December 1926. Measuring 20 inches by 32 inches, the window had cost only $1.15, or roughly $13.50 in today's money. Sixty three-year-old Ramon and 59-year-old Eulalia had not noticed anything unusual when they had installed their new window. But that had all changed on June 1, 1927. On that Friday morning, Eulalia had returned from attending daily mass and was cleaning her backyard when she glanced up at her east-facing attic window. To her surprise, an image of Christ ascending into heaven was clearly evident in the window in colors of soft blue, green, red and brown. Eulalia called Don Ramon to come see the breathtaking vision. Devout Catholics, the couple was sure they were witnessing a miracle, especially because the image of Christ had appeared in their window shortly after the Lenten season had ended. Word of the miracle window soon spread through Belen and beyond. Men, women and children flocked to the Bacas' home to see the image for themselves. By June 27, the Belen News reported, "Thousands of people from different parts of the state have motored to Belen to see the strange apparition." Many more visitors came by the Bacas' house during the Belen fiestas later that summer. Believers prayed at the window, asking for special blessings for all those who had traveled from far and wide to attend the famous fiestas. The Bacas' window became so well known that the Southwestern Indian Detours Co. made it a special destination by 1928. The Detours offered Santa Fe Railway passengers opportunities to interrupt their train travel to take excursions by car to local attractions, including Indian pueblos and Spanish mission ruins. Driven to Belen from Albuquerque, Detour passengers stood in awe at the Bacas' humble dwelling (located just north of the China King restaurant today). The Southwestern Indian Detours may have profited from the miracle window, but the Baca family never did. Many people offered to buy the window, and a showman promised the Bacas thousands of dollars if they would allow him to build a fence around the family's property and sell tickets for the chance to see the image. But the Bacas never considered selling tickets, souvenirs or refreshments, although these commercial ventures may well have made them rich. Instead, the Bacas graciously displayed their window at all hours of the day. Like custodians of a sacred shrine, they believed that it was their religious duty to share their miracle and their faith with others. Many priests and nuns had joined the crowds of reverent visitors. In fact, so many visitors arrived to see the image that the Bacas began to board up the window at night, for fear that someone might hurl a stone or otherwise damage the miracle left in their care. Visitors soon realized that the image of Christ could only be seen in daylight, and could not be seen from the attic's interior. Located about 12 feet above ground level, the image could be viewed from any angle in the yard below. Some said that if they gazed long enough, they could see the Christ figure's arms move. Observers saw as many as three images in the Bacas' window. Visiting the site on July 1, 1927, Jim Whittington of Santa Fe reported that when he stood below the window he could see "a figure of the Christ child seated in a chair with a basket of roses nearby. Standing further from the window the figure of Christ, the man, could be seen. Standing still further away the figure of Christ's mother is clearly outlined." Of course there were skeptics among those who came to see the window. Doubting Thomases wanted to examine the window from inside the house to see if the strange phenomenon was caused by light reflecting off an image on the attic's wall. No such image was found in the vacant attic. In fact, a black cloth was placed over the window's interior surface, but rather than eliminating the image, the dark background just made it clearer. Others wondered if the image was a reflection of an object in the surrounding area. After careful scrutiny, no such object was discovered. Despite Eulalia Baca's objections, glass experts arrived from Albuquerque to test the window, cleaning it inside and out with various chemicals, acids and even gasoline. But nothing altered or affected the image. According to another theory, advanced by a Santa Fe newspaper, "pictures may have been put in the glass by some process similar to that used in making stained glass windows and through an error this picture glass was sent to Belen." Countless visitors attempted to photograph the apparition from the Bacas' yard or roof. A movie company even tried to film the scene for a newsreel to be shown in movie theatres. But not even the most sophisticated cameras could capture the image. Once developed, pictures and movies always came out blurred. Over the years, only one person ever photographed the window successfully. Using a simple, low-cost camera, Fernando Gabaldon of Albuquerque had accomplished what all others had failed to do. A poor invalid, Gabaldon made his unique photograph into postcards, and asked Judge Baca to sell them to visitors for 25 cents each. The judge agreed, giving all the proceeds to the image's only successful photographer. Like many others, Fernando Gabaldon had come to see the Bacas' window in hopes that a miracle might cure his illness. Some visitors were cured, although others, including Gabaldon, were not. The window was never known as a healing site like the legendary Santuario in Chimayó or other holy sites in New Mexico or the world. With time, the image was said to have faded, and the number of visitors declined. The Great Depression of the 1930s limited travel for many would-be pilgrims from beyond Belen. The Bacas brought the miracle window with them when they moved to a house on Dalies Avenue. Tragically, the window cracked in the move, but the pane was not shattered and the image of Christ was untouched. Many considered the window's survival a miracle in itself. The Bacas installed the glass in the second floor window of their new home so that visitors could still see it from the street below. When Don Ramon and Eulalia died in 1950 and 1951, respectively, their daughters, Ana Maria and Beatrice, continued to live in the house and display the famous image of Christ. Meanwhile, the house on Gilbert Avenue was sold to Bob Garley in 1967. After water damaged the property in the terrible flood of 1969, the Garleys remodeled the building and have lived there ever since. Until a local historian came by on a recent Saturday morning, no one had ever asked them about the miracle window. The only unusual phenomena the family has experienced are when Bob's daughter, Lydia Pino, and other relatives sometimes hear strange knocking on doors and inexplicable footsteps on the staircase. Many Belen residents still remember seeing the miracle window at its Dalies Avenue location. Some recall uttering prayers of devotion as they passed by, especially if they had loved ones in the military during times of war. Some prayed as they walked to class in the old high school several blocks away, especially when they faced final exams or other personal challenges. The miracle window was moved for a third time when Ana Maria and Beatrice moved to Albuquerque, and put the glass into storage in the early 1970s. In the mid-1980s Phil Baca, Ramon and Eulalia's grandson, brought the window to his home in Longmont, Colo., for safekeeping. Leaders of the Valencia Country Historical Society learned of the window's long history, discovered its location in Colorado and helped negotiate its return to the Rio Abajo in 1999. As generous as ever, the Baca family lent the window to the historical society, which kept the priceless item in a vault in the local Wells Fargo bank until its recent move to an equally safe place in town. The Valencia County Historical Society displayed the miracle window at a large reception in the Wells Fargo bank building on February 27, 2000. Anthony Baca presented a brief history of his grandparents' window and led the singing of "De Colores," a song he called a "reflection of the colors and visions that have been seen in this window" for more than 70 years. For many, Belen's greatest mystery remains a mystery. What a New Mexico Magazine author wrote in June 1941 remains true today: "To date, no one has given a satisfactory (scientific) explanation concerning the vision." For others, Belen's greatest miracle remains a miracle. The image may have faded with time, but the faith it inspired in thousands remains as strong and as lasting as ever. (The Valencia County Historical Society will display the Miracle Window at the Harvey House Museum through the month of December during regular museum hours, starting on Sunday, Dec. 13, from 1 to 3 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.)

Man Survives Being Impaled By Tree

It's an incredible tale of survival about a man, a tree and what happened to make the two become one. There is good luck, there are miracles and what happened to Jack Wier proves they are not the same thing.

Jack and his wife Julie raise alpacas on their farm in Fairview Heights. On a spring day in 2007, Jack experienced something astounding, only 16 acres from their house. He had been using a Bobcat to clear some trees when he hit a large cottonwood that hit back.

A broken limb came flying in under the roll bar, spearing Jack through the belly with a piece of wood 20 feet long and six inches thick.

"I've always had a pretty high tolerance for pain. I had no pain, I had none," Wier said.

Still, he knew the situation was desperate. That's when Jack remembered the military mantra he relied on during his 38 years in the army.

"You define the problem...you identify alternatives... you accumulate relevant information... and then you make a decision. My problem was I got this tree in me," explained the tree accident victim.

Jack also had another problem. His leg was so swollen that he could not get into his pants pocket to reach his cell phone. So, as they say in the Army, he identified an alternative.

Julie explained "When this came in it ripped his pants and so he could see the pocket of the jeans because his pants were ripped...."

"And so with that aerial, I started pushing it to make a hole, and fortunately after about five minutes I was able to make a hole, pulled the cell phone out and got on the phone and I'm telling you by the grace of God she answered on the first ring," Jack added.

The challenge for the rescue team was to carefully remove Jack from the bobcat, without removing the limb from jack. "They cut it at about eight feet with a chain saw and they determined they couldn't get an eight foot tree into the helicopter," Julie laughed.

So they cut it to three feet and flew him to St. Louis University Hospital. Dr. Carl Freeman, also a military man with experience as a battlefield surgeon, led the team of doctors who took the tree limb out of Jack.

The first step was to determine which organs had been damaged. The jaw-dropping answer was none. Dr. Freeman explained "It literally just slid along them, went right along them and slid along them and pushed them out of the way."

Julie continued to explain "The doctor came out and he said we removed the tree. We don't hear this everyday and then she said and it missed every major organ...and she chuckled... and our oldest son said doctor what do you call that..." Jack added "She said... a miracle."

The limb missed Jack's spine by 5/16 of an inch, about the thickness of a pencil.

Jack has always believed in miracles. He also believes his statue of the Virgin Mary, a family heirloom which happens to sit just a few feet from the scene of the accident, had something to do with his survival.

This is not the first time the Wier's have been touched by a miracle. In 1983, Julie was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease and told she had six months to live, but her cancer went into remission.

"When you have a terrible experience something very tragic... horrible that happens in your life it is there to prepare you for the next horrible tragic thing that is going to happen in your life because it is not an if, it's a when," Julie said.

You might think people who have been through what they have been through would want to distance themselves from that awful day. The Wier's choose to embrace it. Their son Dominic wrote a song about his family's miracles. The song says "An old tree nearly took his life... he was gone almost saw the light, but God granted us a miracle and he survived..."

Speaking of seeing the light, on Jack's desk, there now sits a lamp his son-in-law made from pieces of the tree that almost killed jack.

At the St. Louis Zoo, you'll find two of the Wier's alpacas, named for the surgeons who saved Jack's life, Doc Andrus and Doc Freeman.

The keepsake that means the most however, is the simplest of them all. A large section of the limb left behind from the rescue. They keep it on their patio and it is a weathering reminder of how both luck and miracles saved a branch on the Wier family tree.

Miracle' emerges from house fire

The last thing Thibodaux Volunteer firefighter Taylor Richard expected to find when he entered a fire-ravaged home on Parkside Drive Friday was a miracle.

But a miracle was waiting for him in the master bedroom's closet, in the form of a tiny Yorkshire terrier that was initially presumed dead.

More than an hour after the fire started, Richard emerged with Prissy, a 7-year-old mini-yorkie, under his right arm, causing the home's residents to burst into tears of joy and his fellow firefighters to clap in unison.

“That made my day,” the house's owner Billy Kirkland said to no one in particular, as Richard handed the dog to Kirkland's wife, Edith.

Witnessing the reaction of those around him made Richard “real happy,” he said. The 21-year-old added he was glad he could bring the Kirkland family some joy on a day filled with sadness.

Thibodaux fire officials said an unattended pot on a lit stove sparked the blaze sometime after 3:30 p.m. at 629 Parkside Drive, near the back of the Thibodaux Country Club.

The initial kitchen fire made its way into the home's attic where it continued to spread, eventually causing much of the upstairs area to collapse. Smoke carried hundreds of feet in the air, attracting the curious. They walked to the street's end to find out what the commotion was on their generally commotion-free street.

Thibodaux firemen eventually put out the fire around two hours after it started with help from the department's ladder truck.

Fire Chief Mike Naquin said the light-blue wooden house was a “total loss” due to the extensive fire and smoke damage it sustained. Items in closet's and drawers on the first floor were likely salvageable, though, because it appeared the fire mostly existed in the attic. A black Ford Focus in the house's driveway appeared to have minimal damage.

“That's our life savings,” Billy Kirkland said of the house, which his family moved into in September 2005. “Everything I had went into this house. There's going to be things lost that we can't ever replace.”

Kirkland's 20-year-old daughter, Kellie Kirkland, was the only person inside the house when the fire started.

She said she was cooking on the stove with a pot of grease, with a candle next to it. She left the room for a moment, and when she returned the stove was on fire.

She ran out the house at the sight of smoke. And in the chaos that ensued she did not have time to grab Prissy.

“It's just a miracle that she is still alive amidst all the other stuff,” said Kellie Kirkland, the 20-year-old daughter of Billy Kirkland. “We can rebuild the house but we'll never get another dog like her.”

Her father agreed.

“I'm just overjoyed. It's a dog but it's a life,” he said. He pointed to the smoldering house and added, “This can be replaced.”

Amazing footage of miracle escape

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,26218271-421,00.html

A security video camera has captured shocking footage of a train running over a baby in a pram.

CCTV footage obtained by the Herald Sun shows the pram rolling away from the baby’s mother, tipping onto the tracks and being hit by the train.

Witnesses fearing the worst were stunned when the six-month-boy was hauled from the tracks with little more than a bump on his head.

The near-miss happened at Ashburton station, south-east of Melbourne, as a city-bound train pulled into the station just after 4pm yesterday.

The baby was strapped into a three-wheeler pram that rolled forward and toppled on to the tracks.

The pram was carried 30m as the desperate driver tried to pull up the 250 tonne train. It ploughed into the pram at about 35km/h, dragging the child along beneath the front carriage

Witnesses watched in horror, fearing the baby had no hope.

But he was safely back in his mother's arms when ambulance officers arrived minutes later.

Ambulance Victoria intensive care paramedic Jon Wright said the distraught baby bounced back with just a bump to the side of the head.

"Apparently he needed a feed and a nap," he said.

The near-tragedy follows a spate of dangerous incidents involving prams on Melbourne's rail network.

It came just days after Connex and Kidsafe warned parents to be more vigilant, particularly when using popular three-wheel prams.

Mr Wright said the narrow escape showed how careful parents have to be.

"Luckily he was strapped into his pram at the time, which probably saved his life. I think the child's extremely lucky," he said.

"Fortunately the train was slowing as it pulled into the station," Mr Wright said.

"It's a good learning point for parents to ensure that children are securely strapped into whatever transport medium they're in, be that a car seat or a pram."

The baby was taken to the Royal Children's Hospital and released last night.

A police spokeswoman described the escape as amazing.

"This could have been so much worse. We're very thankful," she said.

The accident forced trains to be suspended on the Alamein line, causing major delays to travellers.

Spokesman John Rees said Connex was investigating how the pram rolled off the platform on to the tracks.

Mr Rees said the driver would be offered counselling.

"We are grateful this has not ended in a fatality," he said.

Woman impaled by 8-inch tree limb, survives‏

A scenic drive quickly turned into a nightmare for an Idaho woman when she was impaled through her neck by a large tree limb.Michelle Childers, 20, and her husband were driving along the Lochsa River in the Idaho wilderness earlier this month when the freak accident happened.Childers says they had driven down a dead-end road and were on their way back when a limb from a spruce tree came out of nowhere and crashed through the passenger window.She says all she remembers is feeling a pressure in her neck and asking husband where the limb was."He was freaking out and he goes, it's in your neck," she said.The branch was 8-inches long and rammed itself through to her shoulder.Childers says the couple said their goodbyes, just in case.After about an hour of driving, the couple reached a lodge near the Idaho/Montana border, where a nurse arranged for her to be flown to a hospital for treatment.The tree limb was removed during a 6-hour surgery.Childers is recovering at home.

Ferry survivor in Philippines rescued after 30 hours alone at sea

For 30 hours, Lita Casumlum bobbed in the churning seas. Buoyed by her life jacket, guzzling seawater, her face scorched by a relentless sun, she forced herself to concentrate on her husband and son as she prayed to be rescued.

Her pleas were answered Monday as a Philippines air force helicopter plucked the 39-year-old homemaker to safety -- a day after the Super Ferry 9 sank off the southern coast.

Military gunboats and aircraft swarmed the area along with cargo ships, rescuing all but a handful of the more than 1,000 passengers. Nine are confirmed dead; after Casumlum's rescue, just one is still missing.

"I just prayed and prayed hard that some ships or fishing boats or the navy would rescue me, but there was none," she said Tuesday from her hospital bed. "No ships until I saw the helicopter." Officials called it a miracle that they spotted her orange life vest bobbing in the water about 15 nautical miles from where the ferry sank.

"She was like a dot in the vast blue ocean," said air force Maj. Antonio Mandaue.

The ferry, built in Japan in 1986, left General Santos in the southern Philippines on Saturday, en route to Iloilo City in the central part of the archipelago. Pepito Casumlum, a 40-year-old carpenter, said he was riding below deck with his wife, 7-year-old son and a nephew when they heard a tremendous thud.

The order to abandon ship sent panicked passengers to the railings, where many jumped into the water. Parents lowered children into life rafts. In the madness, Lita Casumlum was separated from her family.

"The sea was so cold. Everything is cold at night and it was so hot during the day," she recalled. "I was hungry and drank seawater only."

Hundreds of survivors were rescued, including Pepito, his son and nephew. But it wasn't until about 1:15 p.m. Monday that a pilot spotted Casumlum.

"I thought she was dead -- she was badly burned by the sun, her face was swollen and she looked bad," Mandaue said. Then she moved.

Rescuers found two small crabs inside her pockets. The crabs had cut her legs, but Casumlum was too cold to feel the pain, officials said.

The miracle of Libby Claire

LAKE WYLIE, S.C. Libby Claire McGarity toddled down the aisle at River Hills Community Church last Sunday to a standing ovation.

Libby Claire, 31 inches tall and 21 months old, began clapping, too. Her mother and father, who is a minister at the church, lifted her up when they got to the sanctuary. Libby Claire rested her hands on the lectern the way she had seen her daddy do it, looked out at the congregation and said:

“Hi!”

Matt and Elizabeth McGarity never imagined five weeks ago they would return to their church in celebration. They feared it would be for Libby Claire's funeral.

She fell from a loft at a beach house in Longboat Key, Fla., on July 10, taking the impact on the front of her skull and brain. Doctors at All Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg, where she was airlifted, warned Matt and Elizabeth to prepare for the worst. Her skull had cut an artery in her brain. She had lost so much blood and her heart was so weak, they would operate without anesthesia.

This is going to be very risky, Matt remembers one doctor saying. If she dies on the operating table….

Matt heard nothing else the doctor said, only those words: If she dies on the operating table….

Matt and Elizabeth prayed. They prayed God would guide the surgeon's hands. They prayed God would strengthen Libby Claire's body, hold her when they couldn't and whisper words of comfort.

Once during surgery, and once after, they said, Libby Claire nearly died. The swelling in her brain was so severe, doctors put her into a coma.

“You find yourself staring over her bed,” Matt said, “staring at her, watching the numbers.”

And wondering: Would she ever wake?

A test of faith

A week before the accident, before they drove south to Florida for vacation with their four children, before all their lives changed, Matt had preached the Sunday morning sermon at River Hills Community Church. He spoke from Matthew 7:24, about a wise man who built his house on a rock foundation.

Storms, Matt preached, will come to test the foundations of our lives and will reveal whether a person's faith is built on rock or on sand.

Libby Claire's accident was the first real test of Matt's and Elizabeth's faith. Matt is 31. Elizabeth is 29 and expecting their fifth child. They both grew up in Charlotte and have been married 10 years.

“I always felt that if something traumatic happened to my children, I would falter and question God and wonder how this could happen to an innocent child,” Elizabeth said. “But it really has amazed me, the presence of God literally uplifting us. It has changed our faith and made it deeper.”

Every morning in the hospital, they chose a different Bible verse. Psalm 121:7-8. Joshua 1-9. Psalm 91.

Back home, friends and strangers prayed for Libby Claire. The Rev. Bruce Jones, senior pastor at River Hills Community Church, said the accident united parishioners in a way nothing else has. If you drive through Fort Mill and Clover, S.C., the pink ribbons you'll see on mailboxes and front porches are for Libby Claire. Around the world, people discovered her Web site and prayed.

Learning to receive

In the weeks following the accident, Matt and Elizabeth learned how to receive rather than give.

“We hope that no one ever has to go through a traumatic experience like this,” Elizabeth said, “but I wish that everyone could feel the outpouring of love.”

The accident made them aware on a deeper, more intimate level what parents go through when a child is hurt. Matt has often given blood, but now when he gives it he will think of the 11 strangers who donated the 11 pints of blood that kept Libby Claire alive. He said he will always put money in the collection box to support the Ronald McDonald houses where families can stay when they have a child in an out-of-town hospital.

And when Matt and Elizabeth minister to families, they said, they will better understand the pain.

“We know how the ambulance ride feels, how the medevac feels, how the surgery feels, how the waiting feels,” Elizabeth said. “We have a whole new heart for people with sick and injured children.”

Counting the days

The sixth day after surgery, doctors began slowly lifting Libby Claire from her coma.

On the ninth day, Elizabeth and Matt got to hold her, still so medicated she didn't seem like their little girl.

The neurosurgeon delivered good news on the 10th day: Libby Claire was pulling through. He didn't expect lingering problems. Matt said the surgeon told them she would have withdrawal symptoms and struggle to learn how to sit up, move and talk again. It might take a year. She would need one more surgery, to replace a piece of skull removed when her brain became so swollen.

A medevac plane flew them on the 15th day, July 24, to Levine Children's Hospital in Charlotte.

On the 18th day, Libby Claire smiled.

The next morning, she smiled with her whole body: She shrugged her shoulders, squinted her eyes and opened her mouth in a wide grin.

On July 30, the 21st day, Matt and Elizabeth took her home.

The return of Libby Claire

Each day since, a different piece of Libby Claire emerged, surprising Matt and Elizabeth and confounding her caregivers. Her eyes sparkled. She walked. She climbed onto her plastic push-car. The next day, she rode around on it. Thursday, she ran for the first time.

“I've talked about miracles in life, and there's no other way to explain this,” Matt said. “Oftentimes we seem to always look for the supernatural. I think God also works miracles through his people, through medicine, and it's not always that flash of lightning. Sometimes we underestimate what a miracle truly is. I think we need to stop and see the miracles that happen every day.”

As Matt and Elizabeth held Libby Claire aloft last Sunday before the congregation, Matt declared:

“Behold a miracle!”

The Ashley Smith case

On March 11, 2005 Brian Nichols killed several people during an escape from custody at Atlanta’s Fulton County Courthouse. He ultimately forced his way into Ashley Smith's apartment. In an unexpected move, after more than 7 hours of being held hostage, Nichols allowed her to leave her complex upon her claim to visit her daughter. Smith took the opportunity to dial local authorities who summoned the Gwinnett County, Georgia, S.W.A.T. team, who eventually arrested him upon an uneventful surrender.

During her ordeal, Smith read to Nichols from the Bible and from Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life. She also cooked him pancakes and gave him crystal methamphetamine, an illegal stimulant, from her personal supply, although she maintains that she did not use the drug along with him. Smith later revealed "that she had been struggling with a methamphetamine addiction when she was taken hostage, and the drug problem had even led to time spent in a psychiatric hospital and the loss of custody of her 5-year-old daughter."^[3] Smith said the last time she used crystal meth "was 36 hours before Nichols held a gun to her and entered her home. Nichols wanted her to use the drug with him, but she refused.” Smith also revealed that she had “a five-inch scar down the center of her torso — the aftermath of a car wreck caused by drug-induced psychosis. She says she let go of the steering wheel when she heard a voice saying, ‘Let go and let God.’