Four hik­ers who went miss­ing near Edith Falls in Ch­aguara­mas were found safe this morn­ing af­ter an overnight search and res­cue op­er­a­tion led by emer­gency ser­vices.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, a dis­tress call was re­ceived by Fire Con­trol around 6:52 p.m. on Thurs­day. With­in min­utes, North Con­trol was alert­ed, and of­fi­cers from the San­ta Cruz Fire Sta­tion were dis­patched.

A search team, led by Haz­mat Of­fi­cer Her­nan­dez and in­clud­ing Of­fi­cers Vic­tor, Charles and Sam­bra­no, en­tered the rugged ter­rain by 7:35 p.m. and car­ried out op­er­a­tions through the night.

At 6:03 a.m. to­day, the four hik­ers were found and as­sessed to be in good health.

“This suc­cess­ful op­er­a­tion un­der­scores the pro­fes­sion­al­ism, ded­i­ca­tion, and rapid re­sponse of our na­tion’s emer­gency ser­vices,” the min­istry said in a re­lease.

The min­istry thanked all per­son­nel in­volved and re­mind­ed the pub­lic to take pre­cau­tions when ven­tur­ing in­to re­mote ar­eas. It al­so urged cit­i­zens to keep emer­gency num­bers handy, in­clud­ing the fire ser­vice at 990, po­lice at 999, am­bu­lance at 811, and ODPM at 511.