Missionary family escape Amazon riverboat disaster

An American missionary and his wife who escaped a burning boat on the Amazon river with their young family have spoken about their incident, in which several died.

Ezra Brainard, a distant relative of 18th century missionary to the Native Americans David Brainard, was on the boat with wife Joanna and four children, including a young baby, on 29 July when it caught fire, exploded and sank. The couple’s two-and-a-half year old slipped away from Ezra after they jumped into the water, but someone pulled her into a canoe and took her to shore.

The Brainards are missionaries in the Amazon jungle with CMML (Christian Missions in Many Lands). In a statement shortly after the incident, CMML-US said they had been on a nine-day boat trip from Manaus back upriver to Benjamin Constant.