B.C. team helps rescue woman, pulled from rubble four days after Turkey quake
A search and rescue team from British Columbia has taken part in the successful rescue of a woman from earthquake rubble in Turkey, more than four days after the tremor hit.
Footage by the CBC showed members of the Burnaby Urban Search and Rescue team being thanked and embraced by Turkish colleagues on the scene, moments after the dustcovered woman was taken to an ambulance in the town of Adiyaman on Friday.
The volunteer Canadian team had earlier shared photos on social media showing them at work in Adiyaman, where Turkey’s consul general in Vancouver said they had been deployed early Thursday.
The Burnaby team is the only Canadian rescue crew in the quake zone, after the consulate said a deadline for others to participate had expired.
B.C.’s Emergency Management Minister Bowinn Ma shared news of the rescue on Twitter on Friday and said the government is “incredibly proud,” and remains in daily contact with federal authorities to provide help.
A post on the Burnaby search team’s Facebook page says it is “getting reports of trapped people messaging on their phones for help” after what it said was a long day at work in the town in southeast Turkey.
The team said there had been 235 people rescued in Adiyaman since the first quake.
The Vancouver consulate said Thursday that the Burnaby team “is and will be the only team from Canada” acting as rescuers in the quake zone, after it independently offered help.
Ma said Thursday that the Burnaby team “self-deployed.”
Canadian federal authorities have not given an official go-ahead to any rescue teams since Monday’s quake, which has killed thousands.
Ottawa has sent an assessment team and committed $10 million to relief efforts.
ISKENDERUN, Turkey — Rescuers pulled several earthquake survivors from the shattered remnants of buildings Friday, including some who lasted more than 100 hours trapped under crushed concrete after the disaster slammed Turkey and Syria and killed more than 22,000 people.
The survivors included six relatives who huddled in a small pocket under the rubble, a teenager who drank his own urine to slake his thirst and a 4-year-old boy who was offered a jelly bean to calm him down as he was shimmied out.
But the flurry of dramatic rescues – some broadcast live on Turkish television – could not obscure the overwhelming devastation of what Turkey’s president called one of the greatest disasters in his nation’s history. Entire neighbourhoods of high-rise buildings have been reduced to twisted metal, pulverized concrete and exposed wires, and the magnitude 7.8 quake has already killed more people than Japan’s Fukushima earthquake and tsunami, with many more bodies undoubtedly yet to be recovered and counted.
Four days after the earthquake hammered a sprawling border region that is home to more than 13.5 million people, relatives wept and chanted as rescuers pulled 17-year-old Adnan Muhammed Korkut from a basement in the Turkish city of Gaziantep, near the quake’s epicenter. He had been trapped for 94 hours, forced to drink his own urine to survive.
“Thank God you arrived,” he said, embracing his mother and others who leaned down to kiss and hug him as he was being loaded into an ambulance.
For one of the rescuers, identified only as Yasemin, Adnan’s survival hit home hard.
“I have a son just like you,” she told him after giving him a warm hug. “I swear to you, I have not slept for four days . ... I was trying to get you out.”
In Adiyaman, meanwhile, rescue crews pulled 4-year-old Yagiz Komsu from the debris of his home, 105 hours after the quake struck. They later managed to rescue his mother, Ayfer Komsu, who survived with a fractured rib, according the HaberTurk television, which broadcast the rescue live.
The crowd was asked not to cheer or applaud to avoid scaring the child, who was given a jelly bean, the station reported.
Elsewhere, HaberTurk television said rescuers had identified nine people trapped inside the remains of a high-rise apartment block in Iskenderun and pulled out six of them, including a woman who waved at onlookers as she was being carried away on a stretcher. The crowd shouted “God is great!” after she was brought out.
The building was only 200 metres from the Mediterranean Sea and narrowly avoided being flooded when the massive earthquake sent water surging into the city center.
There were still more stories: A married couple was pulled from the rubble in Iskenderun after spending 109 hours buried in a small crevice. A German team said it worked for more than 50 hours to free a woman from a collapsed house in Kirikhan. In the hard-hit city of Kahramanmaras, two teenage sisters were saved, and video of the operation showed one emergency worker playing a pop song on his smartphone to distract them.
And the work continued: A trapped woman could be heard speaking to a team trying to dig her out in video broadcast by HaberTurk television. She told her wouldbe rescuers that she had given up hope of being found – and prayed to be put to sleep because she was so cold. The station did not say where the operation was taking place.
Even though experts say trapped people can live for a week or more, the chances of finding survivors are dimming.
The rescues Friday provided fleeting moments of joy and relief amid the misery gripping the shattered region where morgues and cemeteries are overwhelmed and bodies lie wrapped in blankets, rugs and tarps in the streets of some cities.
In Kahramanmaras, a sports hall served as a makeshift morgue.
Temperatures remain below freezing across the large region, and many people have no shelter. The Turkish government has distributed millions of hot meals, as well as tents and blankets, but was still struggling to reach many people in need.
The disaster compounded suffering in a region beset by Syria’s 12-year civil war, which has displaced millions of people within the country and left them dependent on aid. The fighting sent millions more to seek refuge in Turkey.
The conflict has isolated many areas of Syria and complicated efforts to get aid in. The UN said the first earthquake-related aid convoy crossed from Turkey into northwestern Syria on Friday – a day after an aid shipment planned before the disaster.
The UN refugee agency estimates as many as 5.3 million people have been left homeless in Syria. Sivanka Dhanapala, the country representative in Syria for UNHCR, told reporters Friday that the agency is focusing on providing tents, plastic sheeting, thermal blankets, sleeping mats and winter clothing.
Syrian President Bashar Assad and his wife, Asmaa, visited survivors at the Aleppo University Hospital, according to Syrian state media. It was the leader’s first public appearance in an affected area of the country since the disaster. He then visited rescuers in one of the city’s hardest-hit areas.
The Syrian government on Friday also announced that it will allow aid to reach all parts of the country, including areas held by insurgent groups in the northwest.
Also Friday, the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, said it was declaring a cease-fire in its separatist insurgency in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast, including some areas affected by the quake.
Meanwhile, Turkey’s conflict with Kurdish militants in Syria who are linked to the PKK has further complicated the delivery of aid. On Thursday, Kurdish officials in Syria said that Turkish-backed Syrian rebels had blocked an aid convoy destined for earthquake victims.
Turkey’s disaster-management agency said more than 19,300 people had been confirmed killed in the disaster so far in Turkey, with more than 77,000 injured.
More than 3,300 have been confirmed killed in Syria, bringing the total number of dead to more than 22,000. The bodies of more than 700 Syrians killed in Turkey have been repatriated since Monday for burial, Syrian opposition official Mazen Alloush told The Associated Press on Friday.