Labrador woman walks into raging blizzard to find help for her stranded family

The snow was deep, the blizzard was raging, and visibility was low. It was getting dark. They were stuck in the middle of nowhere, trapped in their car on the remote Trans-Labrador Highway. They were running out of gas. No one was coming to help.

Thinking of her brother with special needs in the car beside her, 19-year-old Jada Sampson decided to try and save her family by heading out into the storm on foot.

The car, full of five people, had left earlier that day to make the over 400-kilometre drive from Sampson's nan's house in Port Hope Simpson, along the isolated road connecting southern and central Labrador, to their home in Happy Valley-Goose Bay.

The weather came in hard. It turned into a blizzard Sunday afternoon, eventually ending after dropping about 40 centimetres of snow in total.

Environment Canada had issued a snowfall warning for the area, but the province didn't close the road until well after the family started driving.

Sampson and her family had checked the conditions and the weather reports before leaving, and though there was snow and wind in the forecast, they didn't realize how bad the situation would be until they became stuck, in the middle of the storm, with no cell service and no hope of someone driving by.

They were on Route 10, about 55 kilometres from Happy Valley-Goose Bay. But the family thought they were a lot closer.

"I go to the gym a lot and I like to play a lot of sports, and I go for walks and runs all the time, so I figured if I just put on a pair of dad's rubbers that we had in the vehicle, and put on a couple sweaters and try to walk out so far to get cell service, then I could help," Sampson told CBC Radio's Labrador Morning.

"I walked for four hours in three feet of snow in the snowstorm and I made it 10 kilometres in four hours. That's how bad the storm was," she said.

She didn't know it at the time, but the emergency services app on her smartphone is what would end up saving her life. Sampson had been trying to connect with someone, but didn't think she was getting through.

She was.

The RCMP in Happy Valley-Goose Bay got a stranded motorist report and sent two officers in two separate vehicles into the storm. They hit the same dangerous road conditions as the Sampson family, and called in a local ground search and rescue team. That team then called Grey Rock Mining to ask for help with a snowplow.

The officers — who had also left their vehicles on foot — found Sampson about 45 kilometres from town, covered in snow.

Her muscles were freezing up, and she had lost all hope.