Their father, Manuel Ranoc, told reporters that his wife, Magdalena Mukutuy, survived the plane crash but died four days later.
“My daughter said his wife had been alive for four days,” Ranok said. – Before she died, she said to them, “Maybe you should leave.”
Children aged 13, 9, 4 and 11 months flew with their mother from the Amazon village of Araraquara in San José del Guaviare. Their Cessna plane crashed on the morning of May 1 due to engine failure, reported by the pilot moments before the crash.
On June 9, a military sniffer dog found the siblings who had spent more than a month in an area crawling with snakes, mosquitoes and other animals, the Guardian notes. The children’s great-uncle, Fidencio Valencia, said his family survived by eating farinha fruit and cassava flour and using their knowledge of rainforest fruits.
– When the plane crashed, they took a farinha under the wreckage of the plane and survived with it. Once the farinha was finished, they started eating the seeds, Valencia told reporters outside the hospital, where the children will stay for at least another two weeks.
The children seem to owe their lives to their older sister Leslie. She nurtured the children using the knowledge of the rainforest her mother passed on to her. For her part, Astrid Caceres, director of the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare, said children could eat fruit because “there was a harvest in the jungle”.
Damaris Mukutui, the children’s aunt, told a local radio station that “the children are doing well” despite dehydration and insect bites. According to her, psychological help was also offered to them.
The search team found the plane on May 16 in dense rainforest, but the children’s bodies were nowhere to be found. The Colombian army launched a rescue operation and sent 150 soldiers with dogs to an area where visibility was extremely poor due to constant fog and dense foliage. Dozens of indigenous volunteers joined in the search.
Soldiers in helicopters dropped boxes of food into the jungle, hoping it would help feed the children. Planes flying over the area fired flares to help ground search teams at night, and rescuers used loudspeakers that played a recorded message from the grandmother telling the children to stay in one place. During the search, soldiers found items indicating the children were still alive, including a water bottle, diapers and pieces of fruit.
General Pedro Sanchez, who led the rescue effort, said the children were found three miles from the crash site in a small clearing. He noted that the search teams passed several times within 20-50 meters of this place, but did not notice them.
“The kids were already very weak,” Sanchez said. “They could only breathe, eat a small fruit or drink a drop of water in the jungle.
It also turned out that a military rescue dog, a Belgian Shepherd named Wilson, played a key role in the discovery. The children told authorities they had been spending time with the animal, but the dog then disappeared. It is believed that in addition to finding the bottle, Wilson left traces that led the search team to the children.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who happily announced the discovery of the children on Friday, visited them in hospital.
“The jungle saved them,” Petro said. “They are the children of the jungle, and now the children of Colombia.
Colombian singer Shakira also celebrated the rescue of the children by tweeting (blocked in RF): “The suffering of Leslie, Soleini, Tien and Christine and the miracle of their lives shocked us all and gave us the greatest example of unity and resilience.
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