Janine Levac, who is six months pregnant, got stuck on a country backroad and when she left her car to get help, her dog jumped up and locked her out of the car. She tried a nearby farmhouse but no one was home and it was locked tight. By sheer chance, a pair of snowmobilers went by and spotted her. She'd been outside an hour and was covered in snow and ice when they found her and took her to the next farmhouse, the home of Wesley and Sherrie Schram, who took Janine in, gave her warm clothes and fed her. She's still at their house due to the weather.Chris Sit for The Globe and Mail
On a snowdrifted road east of Sarnia, Ont., Janine Levac raised her hands in a final act of optimism, hoping the snowmobilers might see her red Olympic mittens through the squalls.
She'd been stuck outside for an hour on Monday afternoon, amid the worst winter storm she'd ever seen, after her dog locked her out of her idling car. Ms. Levac, six months pregnant, had left the car to seek help at the only farmhouse close enough to see through the swirling white.
She tried the doors but they were locked. So, as she turned from the house to face the hopeful sound of a snowmobile, she waved - but it passed right by.
What she could not know as the numbness crept up her legs under ice-encrusted jeans, was that the snowmobile's passenger had seen her. And soon enough, the two sledders, Claudette Horton and Christopher Sit, were back to shuttle Ms. Levac to safety.
"I've never been so scared in my life," Ms. Levac, 28, said Tuesday, from the warmth of the next farmhouse down the Churchill Line, where Sherrie and Wesley Schram took her in. "I would have died out there."
As Ms. Levac described her relief and good fortune, police officers, soldiers and Samaritans on snowmobiles were still trying to deliver the same to an estimated 300 people left stranded, some since Monday morning, along Southwestern Ontario's Highway 402 between Sarnia and London. Countless others were marooned on secondary roads.
By midafternoon Tuesday, more than 100 were still awaiting rescue from the 402 by military helicopter and land-based means, as whiteouts and snowdrifts up to three metres high forced plows off the roads in two counties. Others abandoned their cars and sought shelter in homes, businesses, community warming shelters and in vehicles of motorists who still had fuel, food and water to share.
While some complained of a slow emergency response, authorities said they were doing all they could - against the same challenging conditions that had trapped the stranded - to reach those most in need.
"We're battling weather and the weather's changing dramatically," Constable Dennis Harwood of the Ontario Provincial Police said. "You've got zero visibility, whiteout conditions and, at this point, you're not sure what's in front of you. No sense in snowplowing if you can't see."
There was no sense in venturing onto the roads at all, a point police made repeatedly Tuesday amid reports of motorists driving around warning barriers in defiance of closings.
In Ms. Levac's case, she left home Monday morning for what she considered a good reason: to pick up her boyfriend, Steven Jones, who had been plowing snow for 27 hours and "was just exhausted." Partway into the eight-kilometre trip, she lost visibility and hit a 1.5-metre snowbank.
She called Mr. Jones, who tried twice to come to her aid in his plow truck. "The one time he and his boss ended up in the ditch and the second time he and his other co-worker got stranded," she said. They would remain so for 12 hours, until late Monday night, long after Ms. Levac was rescued.
Resigned then to a long wait, she got out of the idling car to clear her windshield of snow. When her year-old husky, Sasha, tried to follow her outside, the dog touched the lock as her door closed, shutting Ms. Levac out.
"I walked to the only house I could see and banged on every single door, and then went to the barns," she said. "I couldn't walk any more because I was tripping and the snow was up past my waist."
Terrified, Ms. Levac went to the farmhouse's front door for another try, when the snowmobile passed. She went to her car and huddled against it as her cellphone kept ringing inside. She tried to smash one of its windows with a chunk of ice, but lacked the strength.
The snowmobilers, meanwhile, were riding together on Ms. Horton's machine to retrieve Mr. Sit's snowmobile from an area farm. As they passed, Ms. Horton didn't see the woman in the red mitts waving, but Mr. Sit did.
"I stopped to wipe my shield off because I couldn't see," said Ms. Horton, an avid snowmobiler who has helped several others since Monday. "[Mr. Sit]tapped me and said, 'Did you see that lady back there?'"
After they picked up Mr. Sit's machine, they rode back and found Ms. Levac. "She saw us and I stopped, and she said, 'You've got to help me.' And I said, 'I'll help you; I'll take you to the first house we can get you into."
The Schrams' house was just 400 metres down the road, but a world away in whiteout conditions. By this point, Ms. Levac "was so cold; her eyes were all iced up … She was just a mess," Ms. Horton said.
When the door opened and the near-frozen woman stepped inside, she could barely sit down, but as she did, "she said, 'I'm six months pregnant,' and I was like, 'Are you freaking kidding me?' " Ms. Horton said.
By Tuesday afternoon, the weather had yet to clear and her boyfriend had yet to reach her, but Ms. Levac sounded none the worse for wear. She and the Schrams had returned to the car and, by breaking the window, rescued Sasha.
"They gave me warm clothes and a nice couch and fed my dog and they fed me," she said, adding that her baby has been active, too. "They're just angels, thank goodness."
Ms. Levac said she looks forward to returning to her new friends' home next summer and using the swimming pool.