“I think mommy just started a forest fire,” Amber Pangborn told her brand new baby, after inexpertly trying to send SOS smoke signals from the Plumas National Forest preserve where she had gotten lost in.
The California woman mistakenly entered those dense woods 9-months pregnant and in labor, after turning onto a back road that she thought was “maybe” a shortcut to grandma’s house.
With no gas left in her car though, nor any cell phone service, the new-mom-to-be ended up stranded for days in the wilderness, eventually giving birth there to a bouncing baby girl she named Marissa.
That’s the good news -- the bad news was that, except for the obvious natural snacks a newborn could be contented with, mother and daughter had only three apples and some bottled water between them.
So, in desperation, the clearly resourceful Pangborn set a pile of dried twigs and leaves aflame, hoping someone from civilization would see her little illegal campfire and come and rescue them.
But…
"The fire just went whoosh and shot up the mountainside, Pangborn later told a local reporter for KCRA television. “And I was looking at Marissa, and I was like, 'I think mommy just started a forest fire.'"
First responders to the quarter-acre conflagration spied the pair of Pangborns patiently waiting in their vehicle and transported them out of the forest to a hospital, where they were found to be in good health and released.
It hasn’t been decided yet whether Amber Pangborn will face any criminal charges for the odd incident, but "the baby's beautiful and everything's wonderful," says Marissa’s overjoyed grandparents.
