Still more quake survivors rescued
Amid moments of joy, tragedy’s death toll exceeds 28,000
LATAKIA, Syria — Five days after two powerful earthquakes hours apart in Turkey and Syria caused thousands of buildings to collapse, killing more than 28,000 people and leaving millions homeless, rescuers Saturday were still pulling unlikely survivors from the ruins — one of them just 7 months old.
Although each rescue elicited hugs and cheers from the weary men and women working tirelessly in the freezing temperatures to save lives, they were the exception in a region blanketed by grief, desperation and mounting frustration.
More than a dozen survivors were rescued Saturday, including a family in Kahramanmaras, the Turkish city closest to the epicenter of Monday’s quake. Crews there helped 12-year-old Nehir Naz Narli to safety before going back for her parents.
In Gaziantep province, which borders Syria, a family of five was rescued from a demolished building in the city of Nurdagi and a man and his 3-year-old daughter were pulled from debris in the town of Islahiye, television network HaberTurk reported. A 7-year-old girl was also rescued in Hatay province.
In Elbistan, a district in Kahramanmaras province, 20-year-old Melisa Ulku and another person were saved from the rubble 132 hours after the quake struck.
Turkish TV station NTV reported that a 44-yearold man in Iskenderun, in Hatay province, was rescued 138 hours into his ordeal. Crying rescuers called it a miracle, with one saying they weren’t expecting to
find anyone alive but as they were digging, they saw his eyes and he said his name. In the same province, NTV also reported that a baby boy named Hamza was found alive in Antakya 140 hours after the quake. Some details of his rescue, including how he survived so long, weren’t immediately clear.
Not every attempt ended happily. Zeynep Kahraman, who was brought out of the rubble after a rescue that took 50 hours, died at a hospital overnight.
The rescues came amid frustration over the Turkish government’s response to the earthquake, which has killed 24,617 people and injured at least 80,000 people in Turkey alone.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan acknowledged last week that
the initial response was hampered by extensive damage. During a tour of damaged cities Saturday, Erdogan again referred to the tragedy as the “disaster of the century.”
But the challenges facing aid efforts were of little comfort to those waiting for help.
In Antakya, scattered rescue crews were still hard at work but many residents had left by Saturday. Among those who stayed were people with family still buried. Many had been camping in the streets for days and sleeping in cars.
Acting on a tip, a rescue team from Hong Kong found three survivors under a building near the city’s center on Saturday, said Gallant Wong, the group’s spokesperson.
But Bulent Cifcifli, a local man, said he has been waiting for days for crews to pull his mother’s body from her collapsed home. He said rescuers were working to retrieve her body, but they were called to another location because they suspected there were survivors.
“Six days later, we don’t know how many are still under the rubble, and how many are dead or alive,” Cifcifli said.
Yazi al-Ali, a Syrian refugee who came to Antakya from Reyhanli, has been living in a tent as she waits for crews to find her mother, two sisters, including one who was pregnant, and their families. At one point, she stood over the rubble of the home in Antakya’s old city center where she believes her pregnant sister
was buried and, in a cracking voice, shouted her sister’s name.
“No one is answering to us, and no one comes to look,” she said. “They have stopped us from looking ourselves. I don’t know why.”
Even though experts say trapped people can live for a week or more, the odds of finding any additional survivors are quickly waning. Rescuers were shifting to thermal cameras to help identify life amid the rubble, a sign that any remaining survivors could be too weak to call for help.
A large makeshift graveyard was under construction Saturday in Antakya’s outskirts. Backhoes and bulldozers dug pits in the field as trucks and ambulances loaded with black body bags arrived continuously.
A worker with Turkey’s Ministry of Religious Affairs who didn’t wish to be identified because of orders not to share information with the media said around 800 bodies were brought to the cemetery Friday. By midday Saturday, he said, as many as 2,000 had been buried.
The disaster compounded suffering in a region beset by Syria’s 12-year civil war, which has displaced millions within the country and left them dependent on aid. The fighting sent millions more to seek refuge in Turkey.
The death toll in Syria’s northwestern rebel-held region has reached 2,166, according to the rescue worker group the White Helmets. The overall death toll in Syria stood at 3,553 on Saturday.