Boys Rescued After Being Buried in Snow for Hours

A snow fort nearly became a snow tomb for two boys in Newburgh, New York, yesterday. Police say the cousins, ages 9 and 11, were playing in a parking lot across the street from their apartment complex when a snow plow buried them in a mound of snow; they were trapped there for at least four hours, reports NBC New York. A frantic search began when the boys weren't home by 10pm, and they were finally found under more than 6 feet of snow at 2am after a police officer spotted a small shovel partially sticking out of the snow mound. The boys were both conscious. They were hospitalized for exposure and are now in good condition.

Police say the plow driver was on the other side of the mound and wouldn't have seen the boys. They were unable to move their arms and legs while trapped, but a dome of air helped them survive in what relatives are calling a Thanksgiving miracle, CBS reports. "All I see was the feet," says a neighbor who helped dig the boys out. "When I got over there, the little boy's feet was hanging out of the thing, and he was shaking, and his mother was like, 'It's all right, he's there, he's there. He was like, 'Mommy, mommy.'" (A woman trapped in a snowbank during last week's freak storm in Buffalo wrote farewell notes to her daughters.)