Happy Ending

[PHXPhlyer]

Missing children found after 40 days in Amazon survived like ‘children of the jungle,’ Colombian president says

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/09/americas ... index.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/4-ch ... -rcna88677
NBC link has pics.

Four young children have been found alive after more than a month wandering the Amazon where they survived like “children of the jungle,” according to Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro.

“Their learning from indigenous families and their learning of living in the jungle has saved them,” Petro told reporters on Friday, after announcing on Twitter that they had been found after having been missing for 40 days.

Petro said the children were all together when they were found, adding they had demonstrated an example of “total survival that will be remembered in history.”

“They are children of the jungle and now they are children of Colombia,” he added.

Revealing their discovery earlier in the day, the Colombian president had tweeted an image that seems to show search crews treating the children in a forest clearing, along with the words: “A joy for the whole country!”

The children, who appear gaunt in the photos, are being evaluated by doctors and will be taken to the town of San Jose del Guaviare. They are expected to receive further treatment at either Bogota, the capital, or Villavicencio, a bigger city.

Petro said the children were weak, needed food and would have their mental status assessed. “Let the doctors make their assessment and we will know,” he added.

Stranded after plane crash
Lesly Jacobombaire Mucutuy, age 13, Soleiny Jacobombaire Mucutuy, 9, Tien Ranoque Mucutuy, 4, and infant Cristin Ranoque Mucutuy were stranded in the jungle on May 1, the only survivors of a deadly plane crash.

Their mother, Magdalena Mucutuy Valencia, was killed in the crash along with two other adult passengers: pilot Hernando Murcia Morales and Yarupari indigenous leader Herman Mendoza Hernández.

The children’s subsequent disappearance into the deep forest galvanized a massive military-led search operation involving over a hundred Colombian special forces troops and over 70 indigenous scouts combing the area.

For weeks, the search turned up only tantalizing clues, including footprints, a dirty diaper and a bottle. Family members said the oldest child had some experience in the forest, but hopes waned as the weeks went on.

At some point during their ordeal, they’d had to defend themselves from a dog, Petro said.

He called the children’s survival a “gift to life” and an indication that they were “cared for by the jungle.”

The Colombian president said he spoke with the grandfather of the children who said that their survival was in the hands of the jungle which ultimately chose to return them.

‘The miracle came’
Indigenous leader Lucho Acosta, the coordinator of indigenous scouts, credited the “extra effort” of search and rescue teams and local authorities to find the children in a statement on Friday.

“They all added a little effort so that this Operation Hope could be successful, and we can hope the kids will emerge alive and stronger than before. We have been hoping together with the strength of our ancestors, and our strength prevailed,” he said.

“We never stopped looking for them until the miracle came,” the Colombian Defense Ministry tweeted.

During a press conference Friday evening, Petro said he hoped to speak with the children on Saturday.

“The most important thing now is what the doctors say, they have been lost for 40 days, their health condition must have been stressed. We need to check their mental state too,” he said.

Petro, who was previously forced to backtrack after mistakenly tweeting that they had been found last month, described the children’s 40-day saga as “a remarkable testament of survival.”

PP

[Karearea]

^ A remarkable conclusion. Good that they have grandparents to look after them; I imagine the children will need quite a bit of support for their physical and emotional well-being for the future.
Well done the searchers.

[FD2]

What an amazingly happy ending.

[OneHungLow]

Colombian ‘miracle’ children found alive 40 days after Amazon jungle plane crash

Malnourished and covered in insect bites, four Indigenous children were rescued alive from the Colombian Amazon on Friday afternoon, 40 days after the plane they were travelling in crashed into the jungle.

In a remarkable feat of resilience, the children survived heavy storms in one of the most inhospitable parts of the country, home to predatory animals and armed groups.

“They’ve given us an example of total survival that will go down in history,” said Colombian president Gustavo Petro, calling it “A joy for the whole country!”

The four siblings, aged 13, nine, four plus an 11-month-old baby, were from the Huitoto Indigenous community. Although malnourished, none of the children were in serious condition, even the youngest child, who spent his first birthday in the jungle.

It is thought they survived by eating food survival kits airdropped into the jungle by the search team but the education they received from their grandmother may also have been vital, said John Moreno, an Indigenous leader from nearby Vaupes.

“This is a virgin forest, thick and dangerous ... and they would have used the knowledge they gained in the community, the ancestral knowledge, in order to survive,” he told local media outlet Cambio.

The children have since been transported to the town of San Jose de Guaviare for health checks and psychological assessments.

The four siblings were aboard a Cessna 206 flying from the town of San Jose de Guaviare to Araracuara, in Amazonas province on the morning of 1 May when its pilot issued a mayday alert due to engine failure.

Two weeks later the aircraft was found, nose planted deep in the jungle floor in the province of Caquetá, 175km south of San Jose de Guaviare. Three adult bodies, including that of the children’s 33-year-old mother, were discovered at the site, but no sign of the children.


In the days that followed a glimmer of hope emerged. Around 500 metres from the crash site, search teams found footprints, chewed fruits and used nappies. The rescue effort, named Operation Hope, was quickly ramped up, eventually encompassing 150 soldiers and 200 volunteers from local Indigenous communities as well as a team of 10 Belgian shepherd dogs, covering an area of over 323 sq km (125 sq miles). The search continues for Wilson, one of the dogs, which disappeared during the operation.

The search team conducted multiple sweeps from the air, attaching a long-range speaker to a helicopter on which they played a message from the children’s grandmother, in the Huitoto language, telling them the search was underway and to stay where they were.

The children were on the move, however – they were found with their feet wrapped in strips of cloth – and this complicated the search. Initial hopes of finding the children alive were rapidly diminishing. The search team came across abandoned camps of rebel groups and some of the search team withdrew due to the end of a ceasefire with another group in the region. The number of flights were scaled back and the combined command post in San Jose de Guaviare disbanded.

Two days before their discovery, Brigadier General Pedro Sanchez said he still believed the children were alive and that the difficulty finding them was due to their movement through the forest. “This isn’t a needle in a haystack, it’s a tiny flea in a rug, because they keep moving,” he told local press, “but if, God forbid, they were dead we would have already have found them, because they would be still.”

Around 5pm on Friday, the army radio crackled with shouts of “Miracle! Miracle! Miracle! Miracle!” A group of 10 soldiers and eight Indigenous volunteers had discovered a fresh set of tracks and followed them to where the children were in a clearing.

On Friday, the military tweeted pictures showing a group of soldiers and volunteers posing with the children, who were wrapped in thermal blankets. One of the soldiers held a bottle to the smallest child’s lips. “The union of our efforts made this possible” Colombia’s military command tweeted.

Rumours initially emerged about the children’s whereabouts on 18 May, when Petro tweeted that the children had been found. He then deleted the message, claiming he had been misinformed by a government agency.

On Friday, after confirming the children had been rescued, the president said that for a while he had believed the children were rescued by one of the nomadic tribes that still roam the remote swathe of the jungle where the plane fell and have little contact with authorities.

But Petro added that the children were first found by one of the rescue dogs that soldiers took into the jungle. He said that he hoped to meet the children on Saturday.

“The jungle saved them” Petro said. “They are children of the jungle, and now they are also children of Colombia.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/ ... lane-crash

[PHXPhlyer]

New details reveal how 4 kids stayed alive for 40 days after plane crash in Colombia's jungle
After a plane crash in the Amazon jungle, 4 kids were able to stay alive for over a month until rescue crews were able to find them.

https://www.12news.com/article/news/nat ... c563edb089

BOGOTA, Colombia — Four Indigenous children survived an Amazon plane crash that killed three adults and then braved the jungle for 40 days before being found alive by Colombian soldiers, bringing a happy ending to a search-and-rescue saga that captivated a nation and forced the usually opposing military and Indigenous people to work together.

Cassava flour and some familiarity with the rainforest's fruits were key to the children's extraordinary survival in an area where snakes, mosquitoes and other animals abound. The members of the Huitoto people, aged 13, 9 and 4 years and 11 months, are expected to remain for a minimum of two weeks at a hospital receiving treatment after their rescue Friday.

Family members, President Gustavo Petro as well as government and military officials met the children Saturday at the hospital in Bogota, the capital. Defense Minister Iván Velásquez told reporters the children were being rehydrated and cannot eat food yet.

“But in general, the condition of the children is acceptable,” Velásquez said. They were travelling with their mother from the Amazonian village of Araracuara to San Jose del Guaviare when the plane crashed in the early hours of May 1.

The Cessna single-engine propeller plane was carrying three adults and the four children when the pilot declared an emergency due to an engine failure. The small aircraft fell off the radar a short time later and a search for survivors began.

“When the plane crashed, they took out (of the wreckage) a fariña, and with that, they survived,” the children’s uncle, Fidencio Valencia told reporters outside the hospital. Fariña is a cassava flour that people eat in the Amazon region.

“After the fariña ran out, they began to eat seeds,” Valencia said.

Timing was in the children's favor. Astrid Cáceres, head of the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare, said the youngsters were also able to eat fruit because “the jungle was in harvest.”

An 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 military on Friday tweeted pictures showing a group of soldiers and volunteers posing with the children, who were wrapped in thermal blankets. One of the soldiers held a bottle to the smallest child’s lips.

Gen. 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. 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.

“The minors were already very weak,” Sanchez said. “And surely their strength was only enough to breathe or reach a small fruit to feed themselves or drink a drop of water in the jungle.”

Petro called the children an “example of survival” and predicted their saga “will remain in history.”

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.

Sensing that they could be alive, Colombia’s army stepped up the hunt and flew 150 soldiers with dogs into the area, where mist and thick foliage greatly limited visibility. Dozens of volunteers from Indigenous tribes also joined the search.

Soldiers on helicopters dropped boxes of food into the jungle, hoping that it would help sustain the children. 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.

The announcement of their rescue came shortly after President Gustavo Petro signed a cease-fire with representatives of the National Liberation Army rebel group. In line with his government's messaging highlighting his efforts to end internal conflicts, he stressed the joint work of the military and Indigenous communities to find the children.

“The meeting of knowledge: indigenous and military,” he tweeted. "Here is a different path for Colombia: I believe that this is the true path of Peace."

Damaris Mucutuy, an aunt of the children, told a radio station that “the children are fine” despite being dehydrated and with insect bites. She added that the children had been offered mental health services.

Cáceres told reporters officials agreed with the children's relatives to allow for “spiritual work” at the jungle and the hospital “ if there was no immediate emergency action” needed. She said musicians and musical instruments relevant to the children's culture will be allowed in the hospital.

Officials praised the courage of eldest of the children, a girl, who they said had some knowledge of how to survive in the rainforest and led the children through the ordeal.

Before their rescue, rumors swirled about their whereabouts. So much so, that on May 18, Petro tweeted that the children had been found. He then deleted the message, claiming he had been misinformed by a government agency.

The children told officials they spent some time with the dog, but it then went missing. That was a rescue dog that soldiers took into the jungle. The military was still looking for the dog, a Belgian Shepherd named Wilson, as of Saturday.

Petro said that for a while he had believed the children were rescued by one of the nomadic tribes that still roam the remote area where the plane fell and have little contact with authorities.

As the search progressed, soldiers found small clues that led them to believe the children were still alive, including a pair of footprints, a baby bottle, diapers and pieces of fruit that looked like they had been bitten by humans.

“The jungle saved them,” Petro said. “They are children of the jungle, and now they are also children of Colombia.”

PP

[OneHungLow]

Pretty heartbreaking story...

The mother of the four young Colombian siblings who managed to survive for almost six weeks in the Amazon jungle clung to life for four days after their plane crashed before telling her children to leave her in the hope of improving their chances of being rescued.

Details of the woman’s final days came as further information emerged about the children’s astonishing feat of endurance.

Their father, Manuel Ranoque, told reporters on Sunday that his wife, Magdalena Mucutuy, had survived the crash but perished four days later.

“My daughter has told me that their mother was alive for four days,” said Ranoque.

“Before she died, she said to them: ‘Maybe you should go. 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.’”

The children – aged 13, nine, four and 11 months – were travelling with their mother from the Amazonian village of Araracuara to San José del Guaviare when their Cessna plane crashed after the pilot reported engine failure in the early hours of 1 May.

A military sniffer dog found the siblings, who are members of the Huitoto Indigenous community, on Friday after they had spent more than a month in an area where snakes, mosquitoes and other animals abound.

The children’s great-uncle, Fidencio Valencia, said the siblings had survived by eating fariña, or cassava flour, and by using their knowledge of the rainforest’s fruits.

“When the plane crashed, they took fariña [from the wreckage], and with that they survived,” he told reporters outside the hospital, where they are expected to remain for a minimum of two weeks.

“After the fariña ran out, they began to eat seeds,” Valencia added. The children appear to owe their lives to the eldest sibling, Lesly, who kept them safe and nourished by using the knowledge of the rainforest her mother had passed on to her.

The timing of their ordeal was also in the children’s favour. Astrid Cáceres, the head of the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare, said the youngsters had been able to eat fruit because “the jungle was in harvest”.

Valencia, who visited the children in the Bogotá hospital where they are recuperating, said they were “shattered but in good hands and it’s great they’re alive”.

He added: “We were in the darkness, but now dawn has broken and I have seen the light.”

Damaris Mucutuy, an aunt of the children, told a radio station that “the children are fine” despite being dehydrated and having insect bites. She said they had also been offered mental health support.

A search team found the plane on 16 May in a thick patch of the rainforest and recovered the bodies of the three adults on board but the children were nowhere to be found.

Sensing they could be alive, Colombia’s army stepped up the hunt and flew 150 soldiers with dogs into the area, where mist and thick foliage greatly limited visibility. Dozens of Indigenous volunteers also joined the search.

Soldiers in helicopters dropped boxes of food into the jungle, hoping that it would help sustain the children. 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.

As the search progressed, soldiers found small clues that led them to believe the children were still alive, including footprints, a baby bottle, nappies and pieces of fruit that looked as if humans had taken bites out of them.

Gen Pedro Sánchez, who was in charge of the rescue effort, said the children were found 5km (3 miles) away from the crash site in a small forest clearing. He said rescue teams had passed within 20 to 50 metres (66 to 165ft) of where the children were found on a couple of occasions but had missed them.

“The minor children were already very weak,” Sánchez said. “They were only strong enough to breathe or reach a small fruit to feed themselves or drink a drop of water in the jungle,” he said.

Some confusion remains as to why the children were not found earlier, given that search teams had passed so close to them. Their great-uncle said that fear had probably led them to hide from their rescuers.

“They were afraid out there, with the dogs barking,” said Valencia. “They hid among the trees … they ran.”

The children may have been frightened of the uniformed search party because their father had previously been threatened by members of a dissident unit of the demobilised Colombian rebel group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.


According to Alicia Méndez, a journalist with El Tiempo, the children had also been scared when they heard their grandmother’s voice booming out of the loudspeakers.

“They heard the message and they were afraid, they hid in the bush so as not to be found,” said Méndez. “Every time [the search team] was close, they hid. We don’t know what was going through their little heads.”

It has also emerged that a military rescue dog called Wilson played a key role in the discovery of the children. The siblings told officials that they had spent time with Wilson, a Belgian shepherd, but that the dog had later gone missing.

As well as discovering the baby’s bottle, Wilson is thought to have left tracks that led the search team to the children.

Cáceres confirmed that Lesly had said they were accompanied by “a dog who was lost, that didn’t know where to go and which accompanied us for a while”. It is believed, though not confirmed, that the dog was Wilson.

The Colombian military said the dog, who had received a year’s rescue training, could have become disoriented by the heavy rains and poor visibility and that his behaviour may have been affected by contact with wild animals such as jaguars and anaconda.

Soldiers had been close to rescuing Wilson on two occasions only for the dog to run away from them. The army’s official Twitter account confirmed that the search continues: “We are united to return our canine commando Wilson from the jungle. The operation isn’t over until we find him!”

Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, who joyfully announced the discovery of the children on Friday, met them in hospital on Saturday.

“The jungle saved them,” said Petro. “They are children of the jungle, and now they are also children of Colombia.”

The Colombian singer Shakira also celebrated the children’s rescue, tweeting: “The suffering of Lesly, Soleiny, Tien and Cristin and the miracle of their lives have shaken us all and have given us the greatest example of unity and resilience.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/ ... ld-survive

[Karearea]

^ Immensely moving story.
I had wondered how far away from the aircraft they had moved, I see it was three miles.
Wishing them recovery from their ordeal.
Hope Wilson turns up safely.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Sounds to me like Lesly deserves the credit for this one.

[PHXPhlyer]

All the more impressive considering a four year old and one year old could not contribute to their survival effort and require near constant attention.
Lesly should consider a future as a jungle survival instructor.
Yep. Been there, done that.

PP

[PHXPhlyer]

Missing children found after 40 days in Amazon released from hospital

https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/15/americas ... index.html

Four young children found last month after surviving 40 days in the Amazon rainforest following an air crash have been released from hospital and are in good shape, according to Colombian authorities.

The four children, ages between 1 and 13, have been receiving treatment at Colombia’s Military Hospitalin Bogota since they were found on June 9.

They were released from the medical facility on Friday and are now staying at a shelter home, according to Astrid Garces, director of Colombian Children Welfare Agency ICBF, at a press briefing Friday.

The children are staying at one of the 188 shelters the agency runs across Colombia.

“Considering everything they went through, they are actually well,” Garces said.

“Their physical health is perfect, and in the hospital, they started receiving care from a team of psychologists and anthropologists,” he added.

Lesly Jacobombaire Mucutuy, 13, Soleiny Jacobombaire Mucutuy, 9, Tien Ranoque Mucutuy, 4, and infant Cristin Ranoque Mucutuy were stranded in the Amazon jungle on May 1 following a deadly plane crash that killed their mother Magdalena Mucutuy Valencia alongside other passengers and the pilot on the aircraft.

Traces pointing to their survival sparked a massive military-led search involving more than hundred Colombian special forces troops and 70 indigenous scouts combing the area.

For weeks, the search turned up only tantalizing clues, including footprints, a dirty diaper and a bottle, until they were found last month, with Colombian President Gustavo Petro calling them “children of the jungle”.

The children ate three kilograms (six pounds) of farina, a coarse cassava flour commonly used by indigenous tribes in the Amazon region, to stay alive, according to a Colombian military special forces official.

On Friday, the ICBF said it is expected to make a case in front of a family court to determine who will get legal custody over the four children, through a process known as “reinstatement of right.”

Their grandparents previously made an appeal to the children to be returned to them.

Both the father of the two youngest children, Manuel Ranoque, and the maternal grandparents have requested legal custody over them, and a family court will have to rule over their fate.

The ICBF did not comment further on the legal matter saying it is a private matter.

PP

[FD2]

Poor kids probably prefer 40 days in the jungle rather than an interrogation by psychologists and anthropologists.

[Ex-Ascot]

Out of hospital.