Children ate cassava flour, berries during 40 days in Amazon jungle after plane crash | CBC News

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 in Bogota, Colombia, receiving treatment after their rescue on Friday.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro, family members, and government and military officials met the children on Saturday in hospital.

Defence 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,” he said.

They were travelling with their mother from the Amazonian village of Araracuara to San José del Guaviare, a city in southeastern Colombia, when the plane crashed in the early hours of May 1.

The Cessna single-engine propeller plane 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.

First flour, then seeds

“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 favour. 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 on Friday showed a helicopter using lines to pull up the children because it couldn’t land in the dense rainforest where they were found.

The military on Friday posted photos on Twitter 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 led the rescue efforts, said the children were found five kilometres from the crash site in a small forest clearing. Rescue teams had passed within 50 metres of where the children were found on a couple of occasions but had missed them.

“The minors were already very weak,” Sanchez said. “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.”

Boxes of food dropped

Two weeks after the crash, 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 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 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.

The announcement of their rescue came shortly after Petro, the Colombian president, signed a ceasefire 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 said on Twitter. “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 suffering from insect bites. She added that the children had been offered mental health services.

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

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