| Dangerous Snow |
| It was midnight; everything was silent and the weather outside the room was cold and snowy. I was drinking a cup of warm coffee when I received an emergency call from Tom who was supposed to have a look around the valley. He was scared and I couldn\'t understand anything he said. After a few minutes he calmed down and spoke more clearly. He told me that an avalanche had happened in the mountains and he had heard people scream, " I think there are two or more people stuck under the heavy snow" said Tom. I started to do my job. First, I brought up all the rescue team and prepared the helicopter to reach that area as quickly as we could. We were there in six minutes but we faced a great snowstorm that prevented us starting our search. We couldn\'t start looking for the survivors before five a.m. We had faced many problems by the time we started searching. The first one was that we couldn\'t use our search device because we didn\'t know the distance between the surface and the victim\'s bodies. We were afraid that we would hurt them if we didn\'t work carefully. The second problem was the thick layer of snow that covered the area. We didn\'t know where we should start. All the team did their best to work faster and to cover as large an area as they could; we worked for three days continuously. We started giving up hope; most of us thought that there couldn\'t be any survivors after this long. Suddenly we heard a dog barking from under the ground, and all the team started digging in the same place. We dug for ten meters more until we found a couple of mountain climbers. They were in a dangerous condition, but we felt happy to find them alive. However, there was another problem; the snow layer was so weak that it could drift if we didn\'t pull them out carefully. So an experienced rescuer tied a climbing rope around his waist and went down. Then he tied the rope around the first survivor and we pulled him up, and did the same with the second survivor. With God\'s help we could save these people. We then transferred them to the nearest hospital where they could take appropriate treatment. They were so weak and tired that we were amazed how they could have survived all this time with their dog. Two weeks later we were surprised when we found the survivors had came with their hero dog to see us. They looked well and happy. They thanked us for our help and we had a small party and celebrated for many hours. That was a great experience. We learned that we shouldn\'t give up the hope and we have to face danger to help others. Although the work of the rescue team is full of danger, you feel happy when you succeed in saving people and bringing them to the life again. Deena Mohammed Al Mansoori 5th Oct 2001 |