Galapagos Islands: 8-year-old Frenchman who fell into a 100-meter crater is in ‘stable’ condition

The news is reassuring. The health condition of a little French boy who fell into a crater 100 meters deep on one of the Galapagos Islands is “stable”, the French embassy in Quito said on Sunday. “The condition of the little boy is stable, he is receiving the necessary medical care,” the embassy said.

An 8-year-old boy, identified by local media as Axel Devoss, fell into one of two craters at the Los Hemelos site on Santa Cruz Island on Friday, according to the Galapagos National Park. “The prompt intervention of rescuers trained in these emergencies made it possible to retrieve him from the bottom of the crater more than 100m away,” he said in his report on Friday.

Popular place for tourists

Los Hemelos is formed by two facing craters created by the collapse of magma chambers and is a popular hiking destination for tourists. “We were on our way back to the taxi, and Axel, the tallest (of his sons), was in the back, looking at things, and at some point there was a scream. The Brazilian said he saw him fall,” the boy’s father, Jérôme Devosse, told local media.

He added that “when they (the firefighters) arrived, they used ropes. It was very hard, they could not see him (the boy). There was one person, a Brazilian, who had a drone that helped the firefighters find the child.” The child was taken to the hospital of the island of Republic del Ecuador. According to its director Boris Daza, quoted by the local press, “the patient arrived in a non-critical condition, despite the situation.”

The Galapagos archipelago, which got its name from the giant tortoises, is located 1000 km from the coast of Ecuador and has a unique fauna and flora in the world. In the first quarter of this year, 78,507 tourists visited the Galapagos Islands.