14 DAY TRIAL // Rescuers have managed to get a family of five to safety after they have been lost for a night in the Everglades.
The Schrecks of Seville, Ohio lost their way in the Francis Taylor Wildlife Conservation area on Thursday, April 4, CBS Miami details.
44-year-old Scott Schreck embarked on the journey with his wife and his sons, Luke, 9, Zane, 4 and Drew, 10. None of them has been injured throughout their Everglades adventure, reports say.
They departed from a site located 20 miles (32 km) from Krome Avenue in the early morning, heading towards an area which was unfamiliar to them.
A wrong turn sent them off through dense vegetation and they were unable to maneuver their airboat out.
“We were going back and we made a wrong turn and we got stuck in these trees,” Luke describes.
“I went, instead of two miles (3.2 km) this way, I went two miles and a tenth (3.4 km), turned right, and we got stuck,” adds Scott Schreck.
“(It was) awful. [...] The mosquitoes were bad. I started a fire though,” he adds.
They used a flare gun to signal their location, but the alert went unnoticed. They used their rain jackets to shelter themselves.
“The kids slept and then we made a little hut over the boat and a box in there and we set it up to keep the rain off. And we had rain jackets. We put them on top to keep the rain off too. And my wife and I stood there like this for 8 hours. We had plenty of food and water,” he recalls.
They were found by Miami-Dade Fire Rescue teams and Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officials, who deployed airboats and helicopters for the search.
“This was a perfect example of what a team can accomplish through effort like this. [...] If it wasn’t for the work of Miami-Dade Fire Rescue and what was done through our work, we might not have been able to find these people,” FWC spokesman Jorge Pino states.