The last thing Cristian Parra remembers is that the car in which he was traveling with his wife, his two daughters aged 5 and 10, and the driver collided with a traffic signal on the Santa Fe de Antioquia – Bolombolo road.
It was around 6:45 pm last Wednesday. The vehicle, which was going from Andagoya, Chocó, towards San Pedro de Urabá, took several turns at that point in the El Cangrejo sector of Betulia, and left the road. When the car began to sink in the waters of the Cauca River, Cristian woke up. The other four occupants were unconscious.
—I come to and I’m upside down, that is, the car’s tires were up, it was upside down. I had a quick reaction, I was able to release the seat belt and fell. I turn around, manage to see my family and go out through the only window that was available, the driver’s window. I find myself in a whirlpool and swim to shore to call for help. I woke up just before the car finished submerging, I had to see it sink.
Then everything was confusion, Cristian did not know where he was, he even thought that they had fallen into a calm, shallow river.
He ran to ask for help to get his family and the driver out quickly. He looked for lights from nearby houses and climbed the slope. He went out through a chicken coop and met two ladies who mightn’t help him, but who told him that the store he was following would support him.
“I run screaming for help because my family was down there in the river. People from a store came out with sticks and clubs to see what they might reach. I was lucky enough to have a phone in my pocket, although it wouldn’t turn on. I put the sim card in a cell phone that they lent me and I was able to call my wife Yessenia’s family and mine to tell them what had happened. Then the relief corps arrived and began the search from the next morning until now.
Cristian was assessed by the first rescue teams that arrived at the scene, he only ended up with scratches and a slight finger injury. That night he was taken by firefighters to Santa Fe de Antioquia and since then he has been sleeping in Anzá and every morning he returns to the accident site to be present in the rescue operations.
The attention of the incident is led by the regional authorities and supported by the firefighters of Betulia, Santa Fe de Antioquia, Olaya, Sabanalarga and Anzá in a wide area of the Southwest of Antioquia with incidence of the Cauca River.
In addition to the relatives of the disappeared, the search operation is made up of 47 people, including Dagran personnel, Firefighters, the National Army, Civil Defense, Police and the Devimar concessionaire, in charge of the highway.
Added to this are teams from the rescue agencies and others provided by the neighboring community, such as boats, cranes, vehicles, divers and an echo sounder launched into the river to try to locate the car.
Cristian says that they asked the National Navy for expert divers in this type of rescue, in addition to a depth radar, to continue the search.
He denied, in turn, that the hooks thrown into the riverbed had caught parts of the vehicle or elements of the occupants, as was reported over the weekend, and asked that unconfirmed information not be published that may delay the procedures with the authorities. authorities.
—This search is quite distressing, I always try to stay strong, to show myself sensible, but inside me there is a huge emptiness, sometimes I look at the river and you can’t imagine what I feel. I go into a store in Anzá, where I am sleeping these days, and I see toys or notebooks. That breaks my soul. The most important thing for me now is to be able to take Doña Aurelia, my mother-in-law, the body of her daughter and her granddaughters
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