One child has died and another is suffering from hypothermia after being trapped under snow for possible as long as an hour that collapsed on them in Illinois.
A 12-year-old girl did not survive and her friend, age nine, is being treated at a hospital in Arlington Heights,
WGN9 reported.
The girls were playing in a snow tunnel they had dug in church's parking lot when the snow fell on them, Arlington Heights Police Sergeant Charles Buczynski said.
The girls were found shortly before 3pm on Sunday in what police are calling a tragic accident.
The temperature in Arlington Heights was about 14 degrees Fahrenheit at that time, according to the National Weather Service.
First responders were called to Rothem Church around 2.40pm, the Arlington Heights Police Department said.
The parents of the children were inside the church attending service, while the girls played outside.
Authorities said it appeared as if the children had tried to dig a tunnel through a snow bank in the parking lot that had been created by plows.
As they were climbing through it, the make-shift fort is believed to have come crashing down on them.
It's believed the children were stuck under the collapsed snow for up to one hour, but authorities couldn't be sure about that because no one witnessed the collapse, Buczynski told the
Chicago Tribune. That's how much time had passed before the parents checked on them, since they hadn't yet come back inside.
When paramedics arrived, officials said their relatives had already pulled them out from underneath the pile of snow. At that time, the 12-year-old was in cardiac arrest and was not breathing