OTTAWA, Dec 25: A Canadian family was celebrating a Christmas week miracle on Thursday, after the rescue of their wife and mother who had been trapped for three days in the snow.

Donna Molnar, 55, stepped out on Friday for shopping and disappeared as a storm hit the region. A search volunteer and his dog found her on Monday. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) said Molnar, who suffered from hypothermia, is recovering in a hospital in Hamilton, Ontario.

“I’ve told people that I think God reached down and cradled her, until they could find her,” her husband David Molnar said in an interview with the Canadian broadcaster.

“There’s not many other logical explanations,” said Molnar, who spent Christmas Eve at his wife’s side. “It is a great Christmas present. We have to be happy about what we’ve got so far.” Molnar said his wife left home to pick up some baking supplies, just as a massive snowstorm was hitting the region. When she didn’t return by suppertime, he called police.

Donna Molnar was found 72 hours later in a field buried under 60 centimetres of snow in the town of Ancaster, Ontario. It is not clear how or why she had got out of her car and into the field, but rescue worker say she could have become disoriented in the snowstorm.

David Molnar said his wife’s condition has improved from critical to serious and that she is slowly being weaned from heavy sedatives.

“We learned the meaning of despair” during her three-day absence, he said.

With respect to Christmas Day “it’s not going to be ideal”, but it will be “better than we thought it was going to be a day or two ago”, he said.—AFP