How rescuers managed to find children lost in the jungle for 40 days

For more than a month, the military and indigenous people searched for four children who survived a plane crash in the Amazon jungle of Colombia. A message from their grandmother broadcast, leaflets and survival kits fell into the woods… The operation mobilized over 100 people.

The operation was christened “Hope”. On Friday, four children were found dead in the Amazon jungles of Colombia, after wandering for 40 days after a plane crash.

Leslie, Solini, Tin Noriel and Christine, originally from the Uitoto indigenous community, were pulled from the jungle, airlifted and transported by helicopter to the city of San Jose del Guaviare, and then, on Saturday, flown by medical plane to Bogota. Upon arrival, they were evacuated on stretchers and put on board several ambulances. This good news brings to an end several weeks of searching for help.

The kids’ journey began on May 1, when a small Cessna 206 crashed after the captain reported an engine problem minutes after takeoff. The craft was carrying the pilot, an indigenous chief, and four children, ages 13, 9, and 4, as well as an infant, who was 11 months old at the time, and their mother. Then the search began, bringing together soldiers and indigenous people from the communities near the crash site.

A message was broadcast from their grandmother

The plane was not found until two weeks later. The pilot, the local chief, and the mother of the family were all found dead, but rescue teams discovered nasty fruits in the crash area, giving them hope that the children would survive. More than 100 soldiers were mobilized in the operation, during which they found traces of children’s passage, such as a makeshift shelter made of sticks and branches.

The Air Force joined the operation with three helicopters. On board one such device was a loudspeaker “capable of covering an area of ​​approximately 1,500 metres” broadcasting a message recorded by the children’s grandmother.

In Uitoto language, the woman told her grandchildren that they were wanted and told them to stay put until rescuers could locate them.

Survival kits fell into the jungle

On May 20, the military said it had airdropped about 100 survival kits containing food and water into the jungle. Two days later, the presidency announced that 10,000 leaflets had been dropped from helicopters, in Spanish and in the original language, indicating how to contact the emergency services.

At the end of May, General Pedro Sánchez claimed on W radio that “according to the evidence” collected so far, including the footprint, the children were alive. “If they were dead, it would certainly be easy to find them because they would be motionless,” he added, and the sniffer dogs that had been set free to search for them would “guide us.”

Pedro Sánchez estimated that his units were 100 meters or less from the children, but the rain, vegetation, and swampy terrain made the search difficult.

missing dog

It was carried out with the help of police dogs. This Thursday, one of them also got lost in the vegetation. The army said in a statement that Wilson, a six-year-old Belgian shepherd, “disappeared (…) in the jungles of Caquita and Guaviare (south).” According to the military“One hypothesis” regarding the dog’s disappearance is that “because of the complexity of the terrain, the dampness, and the unfavorable weather conditions, he would have become disoriented.”

Finally, the four children were found on Friday, “a magical day,” as Chief Gustavo Pietro commented. The children “were on their own, they succeeded on their own. It is an example of total survival that will go down in history. Thus these children are today children of peace and children of Colombia,” he congratulated him, praising the “effective coordination between the military and the citizens” during the research.

According to the military, rescuers found the siblings about 5 kilometers west of the crash site. Gustavo Pietro commented, “They are weak. Let the doctors make their predictions.” Rescuers in this “Operation Hope” have traveled, in over a month, nearly 2,656 km in this impenetrable jungle.