![]() “We proved the world that we found the plane… we found the children,” he added. Ranoque, the father of the youngest children, said the rescue shows how as an “Indigenous population, we are trained to search” in the middle of the jungle. ![]() ![]() Dozens of volunteers from Indigenous tribes also joined the search. Planes flying over the area fired flares to help search crews on the ground at night, and rescuers used speakers that blasted a message recorded by the siblings’ grandmother telling them to stay in one place.Ĭolombia’s army sent 150 soldiers with dogs into the area, where mist and thick foliage greatly limited visibility. Soldiers on helicopters dropped boxes of food into the jungle, hoping that it would help sustain the children. Two weeks after the crash, on May 16, a search team found the plane in a thick patch of the rainforest and recovered the bodies of the three adults on board, but the small children were nowhere to be found. He said rescue teams had passed within 20 to 50 meters (66 to 164 feet) of where the children were found on a couple of occasions but had missed them. Pedro Sanchez, who was in charge of the rescue efforts, said that the children were found 5 kilometers (3 miles) away from the crash site in a small forest clearing. One of the soldiers held a bottle to the smallest child’s lips. The military on Friday tweeted pictures showing a group of soldiers and volunteers posing with the children, who were wrapped in thermal blankets. The kids are members of the Huitoto Indigenous group.Īfter being rescued on Friday, the children were transported in a helicopter to Bogota and then to the military hospital, where President Gustavo Petro, government and military officials, as well as family members met with the children on Saturday.Īn air force video released Friday showed a helicopter using lines to pull the youngsters up because it couldn’t land in the dense rainforest where they were found. “The only thing that I told the kid (was), ‘when you recover, we will play soccer,” he said.Īuthorities and family members have said the children survived eating cassava flour and seeds, and that some familiarity with the rainforest’s fruits were also key to their survival.
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