The four brothers lost in the Guaviare jungle, in Colombia, after the accident of the plane where they were traveling, appeared alive at dawn this Friday, according to Colombian military sources confirmed to national media and later ratified by Colombian President Gustavo Petro . “A joy for the whole country! The four children who were lost 40 days ago in the Colombian jungle appeared alive,” he announced on his Twitter account.
The minors between the ages of eleven months and thirteen years disappeared on May 1st during a plane crash in which they were traveling with their mother and two other adults, who lost their lives, between the departments of Guaviare and Caquetá.
According to the first information from the local authorities, they have survived alone in the jungle for 40 days and are dehydrated after walking hundreds of kilometers, although there is no fear for the lives of any of them; They also have quite a few insect bites all over their bodies. The children were found far from the crashed plane. A military helicopter was sent to the place where the children were found to take them out of the jungle and to transfer them to a hospital in San José del Guaviare and, later, they will be taken to Bogotá to be evaluated by medical personnel. There the grandmother and father, who participated to a large extent in the search, await them.
More than one hundred soldiers from the Armed Forces and units of the Colombian Air Force, the Aerocivil SAR group and members of the National Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon (OPIAC) and indigenous people, among others, have participated in this operation called Esperanza, that in these six weeks of search various evidence of survival was found, such as the one-year-old baby’s bottle, traces of food and an open suitcase from which the little ones would have been taken some personal items or the discovery of the plane that crashed on May 16.
For the moment, the Civil Aeronautics reported that a team of experts from the Accident Investigation Directorate undertook the investigations to determine the causes of the accident, although according to several national media they point to a possible mechanical failure in the aircraft.
In all this operation, who has played a fundamental role has been Wilson. A tracking and intervention dog from the rescue unit of the Armed Forces, which was participating in the search, helped to find the whereabouts of the four brothers.
Wilson is still missing, but thanks to his footprints along with the children’s a few days ago, they made the authorities believe that they were all together. At that moment, another dog from the team, Ulises, ends up driving to the whereabouts of the brothers in the middle of the Colombian jungle and a few kilometers from the accident.
These dogs are trained to search using body particles from a reference garment to find and rescue. They work at short and long distances, no more than two kilometers. Wilson, for example, was shown all the clothes of the occupants of the plane to sniff.
