(LEX 18) — A 5-year-old and an 8-year-old were found alive after being missing for nearly two days. First responders say skills that the two kids learned from 4-H helped keep the young girls alive.
The two young children went missing from their Benbow, California, home. They were found safe and sound after spending 44 hours in the woods on their own.
The sheriff of Humboldt County says the girls’ survival is thanks in part to the training they got with their local 4-H club.
“If you lose sight of your kids, if your kids lose sight of you, stop wherever you are. Get to a safe place, right there, and just hug a tree, hug a bench, wait right there. And that’s what these girls did,” Sheriff William Honsalm said.
Patrick Allen, who is the 4-H agent in Scott County, says he is glad to hear that the program helped in this situation. He says kids in their program learn similar skills, training kids on the broad concepts of outdoor living.
“Talk through some of the more primitive ways of making fire, fire by friction and then we use fire skills. We do use matches just to show the difference in all of those different methods of making fire.” Allen explained to LEX 18.
The goal is not to scare kids, but to give them skills they can use in real-life situations.
4-H programs are available in every Kentucky county, and most classes are offered for free.
