The authorities and the indigenous people who are participating in the search for the four children who disappeared after a plane crash in a jungle area in Colombia have found new traces that they would have survived the incident, which makes them believe that they have been lost for 23 days. According to the army, in the last few hours diapers, a mobile phone accessory, a towel and tennis shoes have been found in two different places. They appeared almost 600 meters from the place where the plane fell, in which the four minors were traveling with their mother, another adult who accompanied them and the pilot. The special forces entered the jungle 17 days ago, on the border between Caqueta and Guaviare, where the search is difficult due to how dark the jungle is, there you can’t see more than 20 meters away and the sun’s rays barely reach through the trees.
Commandos from the special forces and a Nukak woman found the shoes, which due to their size would belong to a four-year-old boy – his brothers are 11 months, 9 and 13 years old. Elsewhere, 428 meters northwest of the crash site, they found the other traces. Due to the wear and tear of the things they have found, the army believes that the children were in that place between May 3 and 8, that is, in the days after the plane crash, which reported an engine failure on the day 1. These findings reinforce the idea that the children survived the accident and that they did so without serious injuries, since no traces of blood have been found in the surroundings.
titanic effort
“This encourages the titanic effort of Operation Hope, where more than 350 Colombians, including State institutions, the civilian population, and communities, use all their technological capabilities, knowledge, and experiences to defy the impossible and bring back the four children.” noted the army. The trackers have also found at this time a shelter built with sticks and branches, where there were scissors, a hair tie and a bitten apple. On Monday, General Pedro Sánchez, commander of the National Army’s special forces, said that it was imminent for them to appear. “According to the trackers, both from our troops and from Don Manuel, the father of the two boys and stepfather of the two girls, they told us that the tracks are very fresh, from 24 to 48 hours. Helicopters have flown throughout that area, noise has been made and we say that they are only a few hours away,” the general explained.
The children boarded a Cessna 206 on May 1, the most popular light aircraft in extreme flights because they are small, resistant and can land on short runways. They left Araracuara and had to arrive at San José del Guaviare, the capital of the region. But halfway, when they were flying over Caquetá, over the Apaporis River, in the middle of the Amazon jungle, the pilot radioed in an engine failure. He never contacted the control tower again. The most plausible hypothesis is that they had lost height and crashed. Nothing was heard from the ship for 15 days, until on the 16th it was found along with the three corpses of the adults, but without the minors.
The next day, President Gustavo Petro announced that the four had been found safe and sound. The news shocked the country immediately. The president found out from Family Welfare, the institution in charge of ensuring the rights of minors. They had informed that organization from a community that they had been found and that they were being transferred upriver to the command post of the authorities. With the hours, the children did not appear. The information turned out to be false. Petro had to say on Twitter that it had been misunderstood and that he was sorry for the mistake, but that the search continued and it was the priority of the entire nation.
newsletter
Analysis of current affairs and the best stories from Colombia, every week in your mailbox
RECEIVE THE
The same plane that crashed had already crashed in 2021. There were no deaths, but it was destroyed. The device was repaired without consulting the manufacturer because the restoration was cheaper. The plane was manufactured in 1982, in the United States, and arrived in Colombia in 2019. An aeronautical mechanic consulted by this newspaper maintains that it should never have flown in those conditions.
The Colombian Amazon comprises 42% of the geography of the entire country. Finding someone in that vast territory is an almost impossible mission. Moving between towns is also very difficult, and often risking your life. There are no airports, no taxiways, just unmarked runways with uneven patches of asphalt, dirt and gravel. Experts consider that it is urgent to invest in infrastructure in these remote places, which can often only be reached by air or by river.
In this area of Colombia there are about 40 small companies that operate as air taxis. They are not commercial flights, but charter. In general, they are precarious aircraft, whose flight autonomy is six hours. In the last five years there have been 16 plane crashes that have left 11 dead. Fourteen of those accidents were single-engine Cessnas, like the one the children and their mother were traveling in.
subscribe here to the EL PAÍS newsletter on Colombia and receive all the key information on the country’s current affairs.
#evidence #children #missing #plane #crash #survived