Colombia: children lost in the jungle “are still alive”, think the rescuers

2023-05-29 23:22:27

Because we have not found them, they are still alive, think the authorities. Time passes but the hope of finding four children aged 13, 9, 4 and 11 months who have been wandering alone in the Colombian jungle for almost a month after a plane crash is still intact.

“Based on the evidence found, we conclude that the children are alive,” General Pedro Sanchez told W Radio on Monday. If they were dead, it would certainly be easy to find them because they would be motionless”, and the sniffer dogs launched in search of them “would guide us”.

The approximately 200 men mobilized, including soldiers and indigenous natives who bring their knowledge of the jungle, rekindled hope, with the discovery on Wednesday of a pair of shoes and two diapers, one of which was used.

The general even estimates that his units were “about 100 m” from the children “by corroborating the clues found with the GPS”, but that the rains, the vegetation and the marshy terrain make the search difficult. “There, at 20 m, you can’t see anything,” he explains.

Pedro Sanchez admits, however, finding it “strange” that the children “do not stop despite dropping survival kits containing food, water, and “more than 10,000 leaflets” indicating what to do.

The plane lost since May 1

The Cessna 206 in which the children were traveling disappeared from radar on May 1 in the vicinity of San José del Guaviare, in the department of Caqueta, above the Amazon rainforest. He was found on May 15, his nose crushed to the ground in the middle of dense vegetation, with the bodies of the three adults on board, including the mother of the children and the pilot.

The significant search resources deployed made it possible to quickly find several “proofs of life”, according to the rescue services, including footprints, chewed fruit, a bottle, or “a makeshift shelter made of sticks and branches”. Then, later, scissors and a hair band. But since a hasty tweet from President Gustavo Petro on May 17 announcing before retracting the next day that the children had been found alive, nothing.

The search around the wreckage of the aircraft covers an area of ​​approximately 323 square km, three times the area of ​​intramural Paris. The Air Force joined the relief operation dubbed “Hope”, with three helicopters. Using a loudspeaker on board a device, a message recorded by the children’s grandmother was even broadcast. In the indigenous Uitoto language from which the siblings originate, she tells her grandchildren that they are wanted and asks them to stay where they are so that they can be rescued.

Spotlights pointing to the sky

Satellite technology is also being deployed to try to determine the path the children might have taken through the jungle. On Sunday, the army pointed powerful searchlights with a range of three kilometers skyward so that the children “could get closer to us”, Colonel Fausto Avellaneda told television.

Indigenous communities “carry out spiritual processes to ask the jungle to speak” to locate children, according to the government. The grandfather of the missing, Fidencio Valencia, says he has confidence in the eldest of the siblings, “strong” and “intelligent”, who according to him succeeded in bringing his brothers and sisters, who are “used to the jungle, to safety. “. True to the beliefs of the Amazon peoples, he said a supernatural and “mysterious” force had so far prevented the rescue.

According to the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC), the Uitoto live in “harmony” in the jungle and maintain traditions such as hunting, fishing and the gathering of wild fruits. Authorities have not given the reasons for the family’s flight. But the inhabitants of this region, which is difficult to access, due to the lack of roads in particular, are often forced to travel on board small planes. According to civil protection, the pilot had reported problems with the plane’s engine before it disappeared from radar.