A five-year-old girl’s heroic actions helped save her two younger brothers, ages two and one, after they were involved in a tragic car accident that took their parents’ lives on Christmas morning.

The three children miraculously survived the car wreckage for two days in the hot Australian weather after the Christmas day car accident.

The children, along with their parents, Cindy Braddock, 25, and Jake Day, 28, were at a party in Northam, Western Australia. They left the party at around 1 am on Sunday.

The family of five was on their way home to Kondinin, a remote town about 124 miles away, when their SUV crashed and rolled into an embankment. The rest of the family got worried when the young family had not returned home for over 12 hours since they had started the journey. 

Family members went to the police and filed a missing person report on Monday afternoon.

A relative embarked on an extensive search for the family and found their Land Rover Discovery just six miles from home. He discovered the bodies of the parents, Braddock and Day, in the wreckage of the car on Tuesday afternoon.

Although authorities pronounced the parents dead at the scene, the three children had miraculously survived the accident and had been on their own for more than 48 hours.

Michael Read, a cousin, said that the five-year-old girl’s survival instincts had likely saved the lives of the two younger children. According to him, the girl’s seatbelt loosened and made her unstuck in the car. She then got her one-year-old brother out of the car seat, and the three of them stayed in the car for more than 48 hours in the 86 degrees heat. The two-year-old was still strapped in his seat when found. 

He said that it would have been hard for the kids to stay inside the car for the whole time, adding that no one knows what they went through.

Read said that the girl saved her younger brother by unbuckling his seat belt as it was more likely that if she hadn’t done it, he wouldn’t be alive by the time they found them. He said the three kids were injured but they were stable and would be discharged in a couple of days. They also had severe dehydration.

Nathan O’Donnell, a gas station attendant in Northam, might have been the last person to speak to the parents when they stopped at the station at 1 am on Christmas day. He said they stopped for fuel at the station, used the bathrooms, and bought snacks and drinks before leaving.

O’Donnell said they looked exhausted and that although Day told him the drive was a couple of hours, he did not buy any coffee.