After weeks of searching, four children — the sole survivors of a plane crash in the heart of the Amazon rainforest — have been found exhausted, emaciated, but alive in Columbia.
The siblings aged 13, 9, 4 and 1, were found by soldiers, sitting in the back of the plane, which was not as damaged in the incident. The four managed to make it through the ordeal on their own after their mother died several days after a May 1 plane crash, the Washington Post reports:
“Before she died, their mom told them something like, ‘You guys get out of here,’” Ranoque said. The father added that it was difficult to get details from the children, who have not been eating well and are tired from their ordeal.
They are recovering at a military hospital in Bogotá, Colombia’s capital, officials said, and were visited by President Gustavo Petro over the weekend.
“Lesly, Tien, Soleiny and Cristín are doing well, in an extraordinary recovery process that shows the strength and the power that they have,” said Adriana Velásquez Lasprilla, deputy director of the Institute of Family Welfare, Colombia’s child protection agency.
The plane crashed in such thick jungle that it took rescuers two weeks to reach the wreckage. When they did, they found the bodies of three adults and evidence that the children were still alive. Once the children ran through supplies at the crash site they foraged for food in the jungle. At one point, the kids found one of over a hundred emergency packs dropped by the Columbian government, which never stopped looking for the children.
Rescuers worked with native tribes in the forest to follow evidence such as half-eaten fruit and hastily constructed shelters to find the children. It was previously reported that the children were found two weeks ago, but it seems there was confusion between rescuers, native people in the area, and officials.
Now that the kids are officially in custody they are recovering from their ordeal in a military hospital in Bogotá.