Rescuers reveal first words of four children lost in Amazon for 40 days after plane crash
The four Indigenous children rescued from the Amazon rainforest after being lost for 40 days have shared more information about how they survived. See photos, video.
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The four Indigenous children rescued after wandering the Colombian Amazon for 40 days are recovering and in “high spirits”, welfare officials said, even drawing a picture thought to depict a missing army search dog.
Siblings Lesly, Soleiny, Tien Noriel and Cristin - aged 13, nine, five and one, respectively - were receiving treatment at a military hospital in Bogota after they were found hungry and dehydrated last Friday, having survived a plane crash more than five weeks earlier.
Their mother died in the aftermath of the crash, which killed the two other adults they were traveling with.
By Monday, the rescued children were “in high spirits,” Adriana Velasquez of the Colombian Family Welfare Institute said in a video sent to media.
“They have been coloring, drawing. They love to talk,” she added. The army released a drawing attributed to the children that depicts Wilson, a rescue dog that went missing during the search.
“The dog was with them, he would leave and come back again... but then he disappeared,” said Narciso Mucutuy, the children’s grandfather, in a video released by the Ministry of Defense.
The army said on Saturday it would keep looking for Wilson, a six-year-old Belgian shepherd who was key to finding some of the items left behind by the children in the jungle.
“No one is left behind,” the army said in a tweet including a video of the dog. While alone, the children survived in part by eating a three-pound package of cassava flour found in the plane wreckage, as well as fruit from the jungle.
The older siblings had been fighting fevers, while Tien Noriel was being monitored for a possible reaction to something he ate.
Tien Noriel was too weak to walk by the time rescuers found the four after covering more than 2,600 kilometers of jungle, only to discover them about five kilometers from the wreck of the small plane.
The youngest of the siblings remains in intensive care, “for closer monitoring due to her age,” said Caceres, adding that all four had been catching up on lost sleep.
The children are expected to remain in hospital for another two to three weeks. The family welfare agency will keep the siblings under its guardianship until a custody dispute between their relatives is resolved.
CHILDREN’S FIRST WORDS AFTER 40 DAYS LOST
“I’m hungry” and “my mum is dead” were the first words uttered by the four children missing for 40 days in the Colombian jungle when they were found, members of the rescue group said in a televised interview.
After wandering alone for more than a month, the Huitoto indigenous children – ages 13, nine, five, and one – were rescued and flown out of the Amazon on Friday, and were recovering two days later in a military hospital in the capital Bogota.
Interviewed on public broadcast channel RTVC on Sunday local time, members of the initial group to find the kids, themselves members of the indigenous population, recounted the first moments after meeting the children.
“The eldest daughter, Lesly, with the little one in her arms, ran towards me. Lesly said: ‘I’m hungry,’” said Nicolas Ordonez Gomes, one of the search and rescue crew.
“One of the two boys was lying down. He got up and said to me: ‘My mum is dead.’”
“We immediately followed up with positive words, saying that we were friends, that we were sent by the family, the father, the uncle. That we were family!” Ordonez Gomes added.
In a video showing the children soon after they were found, the kids seemed to be emaciated from their time spent in the wilderness.
Their rescuers are seen singing, smoking tobacco – a plant considered sacred among many jungle residents – and celebrating.
Miracles do happen! https://t.co/kV4Pn6XeTH
— Martina Navratilova (@Martina) June 10, 2023
MOTHER DIED FOUR DAYS AFTER PLANE CRASH
The four children had been lost in the jungle since May 1, when the Cessna 206 in which they were travelling crashed.
The pilot had reported engine problems only minutes after taking off from a deep Amazon area known as Araracuara on the 350km journey to the town of San Jose del Guaviare.
The bodies of the pilot, the children’s mother and another adult were all found at the crash site, where the plane sat almost vertical in the trees.
The children’s father, speaking to the press outside the hospital, said that his wife had been severely injured in the May 1 crash, but that she did not die until four days later, her children beside her.
“The one thing that (13-year-old Lesly) has cleared up for me is that, in fact, her mother was alive for four days,” Manuel Miller Ranoque told reporters.
“Before she died, their mum told them something like, ‘You guys get out of here. You guys are going to see the kind of man your dad is, and he’s going to show you the same kind of great love that I have shown you.’”
Magdalena Mucutuy, the children’s mother, was an indigenous leader. It was in part down to the local knowledge of the children and indigenous adults involved in the search alongside Colombian troops that the youths were ultimately found alive despite the threats of jaguars and snakes, and relentless downpours which may have prevented them from hearing possible calls from search parties.
“The survival of the children is a sign of the knowledge and relationship with the natural environment that is taught starting in the mother’s womb,” according to the National Organisation of indigenous Peoples of Colombia.
KIDS SURVIVED ON SEEDS, FRUITS, ROOTS
The children ate seeds, fruits, roots and plants that they identified as edible from their upbringing in the Amazon region, Luis Acosta of the National indigenous Organisation of Colombia told AFP.
Defence Minister Ivan Velasquez, who visited them in the hospital with President Gustavo Petro, said they were recovering, but could not yet eat solid food.
The youngest two children, now five and one, spent their birthdays in the jungle, as Lesly, the oldest at just 13, guided them through the ordeal.
“It is thanks to her, her courage and her leadership, that the three others were able to survive, with her care, her knowledge of the jungle,” Velasquez said.
General Pedro Sanchez, who led the search operation, credited indigenous people involved in the rescue effort with finding the children.
“We found the children: miracle, miracle, miracle!” he told reporters.
Army chief Helder Giraldo said rescuers had covered more than 2600km to locate the children.
“Something that seemed impossible was achieved,” Giraldo said on Twitter.
In addition to the jaguars, snakes and other predators, the area is also home to armed drug smuggling groups.
Petro touted the success as a “meeting of indigenous and military knowledge” that had demonstrated a “different path towards a new Colombia.”
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Originally published as Rescuers reveal first words of four children lost in Amazon for 40 days after plane crash
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