Hope amid the rubble as babies and children rescued from quake sites
KAHRAMANMARAS, Turkey — Rescue workers in Turkey were rewarded with moments of elation as they raced to find survivors in the rubble of the devastating earthquake that hit in the early hours of Monday.
The rescues have offered some much-needed hope to residents of Turkey and Syria, where the death toll has climbed above 12,000 after massive backto-back earthquakes — the first measuring 7.7 magnitude and the second 7.5 — hit the region on Monday, local officials told the New York Times.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said during a visit to hard-hit areas of his country on Wednesday that the number of dead in Turkey alone had risen to 9,057, and that 52,000 others were wounded.
He pledged to keep up rescue efforts until there was “no one left under the debris.” Some 6,000 buildings were destroyed, he said.
Turkish firefighters pulled a 7-month-old baby from underneath the debris in the southern province of Adiyaman, reported the news agency Anadolu on Wednesday. Rescuers in Hatay, a hard-hit province on the Mediterranean coast, also freed a baby 58 hours after the disaster struck.
The rescuers climbed into a gap between collapsed house walls, wrapped the baby in a blanket and lifted it out, as seen on footage obtained by the DHA news agency. In the same city, a 10-year-old boy had also survived the quake and was brought to safety after 65 hours under debris, said Istanbul’s municipal rescue team.
An entire family managed to survive the earthquake in the city of Kahramanmaras and were found by local rescue workers.
A 1-year-old child and her pregnant mother were pulled out alive from underneath the rubble after 56 hours, DHA reported. The girl’s face was white with dust. The father had been rescued alive earlier. Search teams from abroad have joined tens of thousands of local emergency personnel but they are running out of time to save more people. The critical survival limit for people trapped under debris is normally 72 hours.
Freezing and stormy temperatures have made their efforts even more difficult and have created life-threatening conditions for survivors. Hundreds of thousands have lost their homes and have been forced to sleep outdoors since the quake hit.
Erdogan pledged emergency aid of 10,000 Turkish lira — about $530 — to each affected family.
“We will leave no citizen unattended, standing in solidarity as state and nation,” said Erdogan, taking in the mass destruction Monday’s earthquakes left in in their wake in Hatay province.
Across the border in war-ravaged Syria, the situation was harrowing.
The death toll there stood at 2,662.
Government figures said around 298,000 Syrians have been affected, with most having to leave their homes, the state news agency SANA reported. The country has opened 180 emergency shelters.
Thousands of people are still missing in Syria and heavy equipment to move debris was still urgently needed.
Raed Saleh, head of the White Helmets volunteer organization, told dpa: “Our teams are now racing against time ... our mission is getting more difficult by the day.”
“Our teams, some of them had only a little sleep,” he said.
The long-running civil war and international sanctions have hindered the delivery of aid to the quake-hit regions of Syria.
Frustration grew on Wednesday that while Turkey was receiving large amounts of aid, Syria was being neglected.
“People have abandoned the Syrians — in this earthquake they abandoned us because we have not received any help so far despite the fact that in Turkey they received many rescue teams to help,” Saleh said.