() — One month after four children went missing in the Colombian Amazon, a preliminary report from the General Directorate of Civil Aeronautics offers clues as to how they might have survived the devastating plane crash that killed all the adults on board.
The extraordinary story of the missing children has aroused great interest in Colombia and around the world, as an army-led jungle search operation continues.
On the ill-fated May 1 flight were the pilot Hernando Murcia Morales, the Yarupari indigenous leader Herman Mendoza Hernández, an indigenous woman named Magdalena Mucutuy Valencia, and their four children, the oldest 13 years old and the youngest just 11 months old.
According to the report, shortly after taking off early in the morning from the remote community of Araracuara, the pilot radioed air traffic control that he would be looking for an emergency landing site.
“…Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, 2803, Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, I’ve got the engine on low, I’m going to find a field,” he said.
The pilot later reported that the engine had regained power and continued on his route, only to have trouble again less than an hour later: “…Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, 2803, 2803, engine has failed me again … I’m going to look for a river… I have a river on the right…”.
This time the problem was not solved.
According to the report, air traffic control later detected the plane veering to the right. Then he disappeared from the radar.
According to the report, the plane likely first collided with trees in the dense forest, ripping out the engine and propeller, and then fell vertically. (Credit: Accident Investigation Technical Directorate)
Despite air and water searches that immediately followed the incident, according to the report, the plane was not found until more than two weeks later, a time that may still prove significant to the fate of the plane’s passengers.
Five days after the plane went missing, the Colombian military deployed special forces units to scour the terrain on May 6. Ten days later, on the night of May 16, they finally located the wreckage of the plane.
All three adults were found dead at the scene. However, the four children disappeared completely, leading the rescue teams to assume that they had survived, evacuated the plane and made their way through the jungle on their own.
Photos of the crash site taken by investigators show the raised tail of a blue and white-painted plane, its nose and nose smashed into jungle terrain. According to the report, the plane likely first collided with trees in the dense jungle, ripping out the engine and propeller, and then fell vertically to the jungle floor.
“Detailed inspection of the wreckage indicated that, during the landing in the trees, there was a first impact against the trees; this impact caused the separation of the engine with its cover and the propeller from the aircraft structure,” the report says. . “Due to the strong deceleration and loss of control on the first impact, the aircraft fell vertically and collided with the ground.”
The seat map
While noting that forensic examinations are ongoing, the report suggests that the adults seated in the front of the plane’s cabin suffered fatal injuries from the crash. “The accident injury chart recorded fatal injuries to occupants in positions 1 (pilot), 2 (male adult occupant) and 3 (female adult occupant),” the report said.
However, the back seats, where the older children were, were less affected by the impact, according to the report, offering a possible explanation for their survival and signs of life — including a bottle, a used diaper, and footprints—later found in the jungle by search and rescue teams.
The impact against the trees caused the engine and propeller to separate from the aircraft structure, according to the report. (Credit: Accident Investigation Technical Directorate)
According to the report, two of the three seats occupied by the children remained in place and upright despite the crash, while one child’s seat was detached from the airframe. The baby may have been in the mother’s arms, according to the report.
The children “were not located in the area of the accident and there was no indication that they had been injured, at least not seriously. For this reason, an intensive search was launched to find them,” the report said.
A total of 119 Colombian special forces and 73 indigenous scouts have been deployed so far to comb the area, according to the report.
The relatives had already said that the children knew the jungle well, but they were worried about whether they would understand that the outside world had not given up on their search.
“Maybe they are hiding,” Fidencio Valencia, the children’s grandfather, told Colombia’s Caracol TV earlier this month.
“Maybe they don’t realize that they are looking for them, they are children.”
