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June 10, 2023
Four children have been found alive after surviving a plane crash and spending weeks fending for themselves in Colombia's Amazon jungle.

Colombia's president said the rescue of the siblings, aged 13, nine, four and one, was "a joy for the whole country".

The children's mother and two pilots were killed when their light aircraft crashed in the jungle on 1 May.



The Cessna 206 aircraft the children and their mother had been travelling on before the crash was flying from Araracuara, in Amazonas province, to San José del Guaviare, when it issued a mayday alert due to engine failure.

The bodies of the three adults were found at the crash site by the army, but it appeared that the children had escaped the wreckage and wandered into the rainforest to find help.

The dense jungle where the plane crashed is home to jaguars, snakes and a variety of other predators



The remnants of a makeshift shelter, as well as a pair of scissors and a hair tie, were among the first items to be found during search efforts



Rescuers initially feared the worst, but clues including foot prints gave them hope that the children might still be alive after they left the crash site looking for help.



Wild fruit which appeared to have been bitten into also suggested to search teams that the children might still be alive - and fending for themselves.



Members of the Huitoto indigenous group hoped that the siblings' knowledge of wild fruits would have given them a better chance of surviving in the inhospitable environment.



Indigenous people joined the search and helicopters broadcast a message from the children's grandmother, recorded in the Huitoto language, urging them to stop moving to make them easier to locate.

Pictures from the scene of the rescue showed several adults, some dressed in military fatigues, tending to the children as they sat on tarps in the jungle



The children, who appear gaunt in the photos, were evaluated by doctors before being flown out by the Colombian Air Force on an air ambulance to the Military Transport Air Command in Bogota, the capital, early Saturday morning where they are receiving hospital treatment.

President Gustavo Petro said finding the group was a "magical day", adding: "They were alone, they themselves achieved an example of total survival which will remain in history.

Amazing. There is hope. Good on them.

[bleep] usually do just fine in the jungle.

LOL

Not always.

Remarkable survival for the four.

Thank God they found the children before Paul got there.

OMG!!

How in the hell did they survive without, Game Boys, Tic Tok, Cell Phones, Texting, ect., ect.? memtb

Well, now that you mention it, maybe they didn't, they might have been gamin' and Tic-Tokin' all along the way.

I built this post from three different news stories so I didn't add a link of it's origin.

I left out a photo that at the time I felt was insignificant.

This is the truth, no BS here.

A piece of metal which appeared to be part of a mobile phone was found at another location in the jungle. (LINK)

A remarkable story of survival under incredibly harsh conditions. Talk about perseverance and determination .........

.W.

That 13 year old must have his/her head on straight. What a great job of taking care of three siblings.

I would bet that a large part of their survival can be attributed to them not having a mentality of helplessness being instilled in them.

Absolutely!

My wife and I were just saying the same thing. The 2 older kids kept a 1 year old and 4 year old alive in the Amazon for more than a month! Those youngsters deserve recognition and more….

Those are indigenous kids, they grew up there and are familiar with the jungle.

There is so much to take into consideration it's mind boggling.

The trauma involved with witnessing the demise of their mother.

The efforts it'd take to keep a one year old alive with the bugs and the bullschit let alone keeping him/her fed.

They probably didn't walk away from the plane crash without injury either.

If they made it for 40 days, they'd of probably just kept on makin' it until they eventually showed up somewhere on their own.

not killed & eaten by cannibals or Head Hunters... WTF?...

Wow - beyond amazing - I would love to learn the actual story some day.

Naked and afraid ain’t got jack on these kids!

A miracle for sure.

Amazing! Staying with the plane would have been the thing to do, but I can understand why they did not.

Lots of food in the Amazon if you know how to find/use it. The "rest of the story", is the problem.

I figure I'd be good for about 2 hours....

They didn't locate the wreckage of the plane until two weeks after the crash.
The kids may have stayed near it for some time before they gave up hope of rescue and began walking.

They had fariña, a cassava flour that people eat in the Amazon region that was being transported on the plane for food.
After they ran out of the flour they began to eat fruits and seeds.

The oldest, a 13 year old girl is being praised for her efforts with keeping the 11 month old baby and the others alive.

She said one of the search dogs spent time with them but then became separated.
The military is still looking for the dog, a Belgian Shepherd named Wilson, as of Saturday.

The children were found 3 miles away from the crash site in a small forest clearing with the help of another search dog that located them.

Just a couple update tid bits..

Manuel Ranoque, father of the two youngest children, told reporters outside the hospital Sunday that the oldest of the four surviving children — 13-year-old Lesly Jacobombaire Mucutuy — told him their mother was alive for about four days after the plane crashed on May 1 in the Colombian jungle.

Ranoque said before she died, the mother likely would have told them: "go away," apparently asking them to leave the wreckage site to survive.......

One of the children said they hid in tree trunks to protect themselves in a jungle area filled with snakes, animals and mosquitoes.......

LINK

Sorry, but something just seems "amiss" about this whole thing.