Turkish rescuers transport Ergin Guzeloglan, 36, to an ambulance on Saturday after pulling him out of a collapsed building in Hatay, southern Turkey, five days after an earthquake devastated the area.
Can Ozer/AP
hide caption
toggle caption
Can Ozer/AP
Turkish rescuers transport Ergin Guzeloglan, 36, to an ambulance on Saturday after pulling him out of a collapsed building in Hatay, southern Turkey, five days after an earthquake devastated the area.
Can Ozer/AP
ANTAKYA, Turkey – Rescue teams on Saturday pulled more survivors, including entire families, from toppled buildings despite dwindling hopes as the death toll from the huge earthquake that struck a border region of Turkey Turkey and Syria five days ago exceeded 25,000.
Dramatic rescues were shown on Turkish television, including the rescue of the Narli family in central Kahramanmaras 133 hours after the 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck on Monday. First, 12-year-old Nehir Naz Narli was rescued, then both of her parents.
This followed the rescue earlier in the day of a family of five from a mound of debris in the hard-hit town of Nurdagi, Gaziantep province, HaberTurk TV reported. Rescuers cheered and chanted, “God is great! while the last member of the family, the father, was transported to safety.
Turkish President Recep Tayypi Erdogan, on a tour of quake-hit towns, raised Turkey’s death toll to 21,848, bringing the region’s total death toll to 25,401, including government and rebel parts of Syria.
Erdogan said a disaster of this magnitude is rare, affecting such a vast area that is home to so many people. He called it the “disaster of the century” and said it affected an area 500 kilometers (310 miles) in diameter that is home to 13.5 million people in Turkey and an unknown number in Syria.
“In some parts of our settlements close to the fault line, we can say there is almost no stone left,” he said earlier on Saturday from Diyarbakir.
Yet the day brought one stunning rescue after another, numbering more than a dozen.
Melisa Ulku, a woman in her twenties, was pulled from rubble in Elbistan in the 132nd hour since the quake, following the rescue of another person at the same site at the same time. Prior to his rescue, police announced that people were not to clap or clap so as not to interfere with other nearby rescue efforts. She was covered with a thermal blanket on a stretcher. The rescuers hugged each other. Some shouted “God is great!”
An hour earlier, a 3-year-old girl and her father were pulled from the rubble in the town of Islahiye, also in Gaziantep province, and soon after, a 7-year-old girl was rescued in Hatay province.
Rescues brought glimmers of joy amid crushing devastation days after Monday’s 7.8 magnitude quake and a powerful aftershock hours later caused thousands of buildings to collapse, killing more than 25,000 people, injuring 80,000 others and leaving millions homeless.
All did not end so well. Rescuers reached a 13-year-old girl inside the rubble of a collapsed building in Hatay province early Saturday and intubated her. But she died before medical teams could amputate a limb and free her from the rubble, the Hurriyet newspaper reported.
Even though experts say those trapped can live for a week or more, the chances of finding more survivors were rapidly dwindling amid freezing temperatures. Rescuers were switching to thermal imaging cameras to help identify life amid the rubble, a sign that the remaining survivors may be too weak to call for help.
As help continued to arrive, a group of 99 members of the Indian Army Medical Assistance Team began treating the injured at a temporary field hospital in the southern town of Iskenderun, where a main hospital was demolished.
One man, Sukru Canbulat, was taken to hospital in a wheelchair, his left leg badly injured with deep bruises, contusions and lacerations.
Grimacing in pain, he said he was rescued from his collapsed building in the nearby town of Antakya hours after Monday’s quake. But after receiving basic first aid, he was released without receiving proper treatment for his injuries.
“I buried (everyone I lost) and then I came here,” Canbulat said, counting his dead parents: “My daughter died, my brother died, my aunt and her daughter died , and his son’s wife” who was 8 and a half months pregnant.
A large makeshift cemetery was under construction on the outskirts of Antakya on Saturday. Backhoes and bulldozers dug pits in the field on the northeast outskirts of town as trucks and ambulances loaded with black body bags continually arrived. Soldiers directing traffic on the adjacent busy road warned motorists not to take photos.
The hundreds of graves, spaced no more than 3 feet (one meter), were marked with simple wooden planks set vertically into the ground.
An employee of Turkey’s Religious Affairs Ministry who did not wish to be identified due to an order not to share information with the media said around 800 bodies were brought to the cemetery on Friday, his first day in ‘opening. By noon Saturday, he said, as many as 2,000 people had been buried.
“People coming out of the rubble now, it’s a miracle if they survive. Most of the people coming out now are dead, and they’re coming here,” he said.
Temperatures have remained below zero across the greater region and many people have no shelter. The Turkish government has distributed millions of hot meals, as well as tents and blankets, but is still struggling to reach many people in need.
The disaster has deepened suffering in a region plagued by Syria’s 12-year civil war, which has displaced millions internally and made them dependent on aid. The fighting has sent millions more to seek refuge in Turkey.
The conflict has isolated many parts of Syria and complicated efforts to deliver aid.
The UN refugee agency has estimated that as many as 5.3 million people have been left homeless in Syria.
President Bashar Assad and his spouse visited earthquake-injured population at a health center within the coastal town of Latakia, the Syrian chief’s help bottom.
Syrian shape tv mentioned Assad and his spouse Asma visited on Saturday morning Duha Nurallah, 60, and his son Ibrahim Zakariya, 22, who were pulled from the rubble the former night time within the coastal the city neighbor of Jableh.
Global Condition Group well-known Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus arrived in Aleppo, northern Syria, on Saturday, bringing with him 35 tonnes of clinical apparatus, the legit SANA information company reported. He mentioned any other airplane sporting an backup 30 tonnes of clinical apparatus will arrive within the coming days.
Syria’s opposition Civil Protection, often referred to as the White Helmets, mentioned on Saturday that it “is almost impossible to find people alive”.
The whole dying toll within the rebel-held patch of northwest Syria has reached 2,166, a lot of them ladies and kids. The whole dying toll in Syria used to be 3,553, life in Turkey government counted 21,043 as of Saturday.
npr
Don’t miss interesting posts on Famousbio
