New details have emerged in the miraculous survival of four Colombian siblings rescued Friday after surviving 40 days in the Amazon jungle and a deadly plane crash.
“We are grateful to God,” their grandpa, Narcizo Mucutuy, said upon the rescue.
The children were flying with their mother from the Amazonian village of Araracuara to San Jose del Guaviare when the Cessna single-engine plane went down. The pilot declared an emergency landing due to engine failure. Three adults died, leaving the four children to fend for themselves.
Their uncle, Fidencio Valencia, told a media outlet that the kids — ages 1, 4, 9, and 13 — of the Huitoto Indigenous population have begun to talk about their experience as they continue to recover at a military hospital in the country’s capital, Bogota.
The oldest sibling, Lesly Jacobombaire Mucutuy, was able to use her survival skills to help the others stay safe from the deadly elements of the Amazon Rainforest.
The kids said they hid in tree trunks for protection.
They also were familiar with the fruit and seeds they could eat, as well as cassava flour they took from the plane.
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One of the members of the search and rescue team told reporters the siblings found two small bags on teh plane with cloths, a towel, a flashlight, two cellphones, a music box, and a soda bottle, which they used to collect water in the jungle.
The siblings were able to successfully forage enough food and water to survive for the time it took the Colombian military and rescue units to locate them approximately three miles from the crash site.
The team followed their cast-away items, including discarded fruit, a baby bottle, hair scrunchies, scissors, and plastic wrapping.
“As the grandfather to my grandchildren who disappeared in the jungles of the Yari, at this moment I am very happy,” Mucutuy told Reuters.
“A joy for the whole country! The four children who were lost … in the Colombian jungle appeared alive,” Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro tweeted.
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