GAZIANTEP, Turkey — At first glance, there is little reason to think that anyone is still alive in the rubble of Tuesday’s apartment building. The strong earthquake that struck southern Turkey a day earlier turned its six floors into a giant concrete rubble.
However, there was hope.
The brother of a man who lives on the fifth floor with his wife and their children is standing on the remains of the roof, talking to his brother, Ibrahim Karapirli, who is trapped in the rubble below.
The outcome of the flash rescue operation that follows will be both heroic and tragic.
Across the vast territory of southern Turkey and northern Syria devastated by the earthquake, countless attempts like this were launched on Tuesday by professionals and amateurs alike, using whatever technology they may have. tools at hand, in the hope of finding survivors of a disaster that has killed thousands and saved millions.
ONE professional soccer player was pulled from the rubble in southern Turkey. In northwestern Syria, one Newborn baby found in a collapsed building appears to be the only surviving member of her family.
The rescue effort in Gaziantep, a city in south-central Turkey near the epicenter of the 7.8-magnitude earthquake early Monday morning, drew dozens of people and hundreds of onlookers.
By mid-afternoon, rescuers on the roof had located the family and began the delicate process of cutting through concrete, metal and wood to reach them without making any significant moves. could displace debris, endangering those trapped below.
Zuleyha Kulak, a civil engineer who came to the site with about two dozen of her colleagues to take advantage of their experience moving heavy concrete, said: “Today, we might be the ones in need of help. help.
The collapsed building is across from a park on a tramway in a middle-class residential area. A construction company and hairdresser occupied the ground floor.
The building, which has been around for more than two decades, was built before Turkey implemented stricter building codes designed to withstand earthquakes following the devastating earthquake that hit western Turkey in 1999. That leaves the structure vulnerable to earthquakes.
While neighboring buildings only had surface cracks, six floors of the apartment building collapsed completely, leaving a pile of rubble that looked like a messy stack of books next to it.
It is not clear how many people were inside at the time. But Macide Kurbay, an exporter of a yarn mill who had come with her husband to help, counted 15 people, including the six-person Karapirli family on the fifth floor. The fact that the rescuers were talking to them gave her hope.
“They were going to save that family,” she said. “But for the rest. …,” she added, her voice fading.
By Tuesday afternoon, a crowd of about 100 people stood on the streets and on the tram tracks watching rescuers work. The mood was bleak, but with a glimmer of optimism that someone could still be found alive. A man handing out baklava. A nearby restaurant offers free lentil soup in paper cups.
Among the crowd were relatives of those living in the building. A man in a black coat and muddy shoes paced back and forth, smoking one cigarette after another.
“My wife is dead and my son is still inside,” he said through tears.
A woman wrapped in a purple shawl sits on a yellow plastic chair, waiting for news of her 90-year-old father-in-law, a retired lumber salesman who lives alone in the building. He would often complain to her that the building was “fat,” she said, giving only her name, Selda.
She said her family convinced rescuers to remove the concrete wall they thought was his room. They found his gas mask and bed inside, but he was nowhere to be found.
“That’s not the way to die,” she said in a pained voice as she looked up at the rubble.
Relatives of Mr. Karapirli, his wife Pinar and their four children sat on the curb. Yasemin Aydin, Karapirli’s sister-in-law, recalled her panic after the earthquake subsided.
Ms Aydin, 41, said: ‘We kept calling them, it kept ringing. Then we ran here to check and the building was like this.”
She and others who watched workers say no one came to help on the day of the quake, only arriving on Tuesday morning, more than 24 hours after the building collapsed.
“Yesterday nothing was here, nothing was done,” she said.
Mehmet Ali Canakci, a volunteer rescue worker, said that to locate the buried family, workers drilled holes in the concrete and shined lights on them to see if the father was trapped inside. in visible or not. On the third try, it worked.
The officer then brought what he called a “snake camera” and caught a glimpse of the father, he said.
As they cleared the debris to get closer to the family, the workers shouted for a long metal hook and was handed it to them. Then they called for a small saw. Then there are neck braces, blankets and stretchers for children.
Occasionally, a lifeguard will shout “Shut up!” and everyone would freeze and stop talking so the workers could hear the trapped father’s voice.
After sunset, a cheer rang out from the rooftops and crowds on the street joined in, shouting “God is great!” because the workers have reached the family.
About an hour later, another cheer was heard as two children, a set of twins — a girl named Elcin and a boy named Eray Ahmet — were carried outside. Workers lined up next to the rubble and passed the children to the waiting ambulances.
Next is the mother. The workers put her on a stretcher and lowered her onto the road with a crane.
Finally, the father, wrapped in a shiny gold emergency blanket. When he got to the street, he gasped in the cold air, his bare feet sticking out at the end of the stretcher.
Among the crowd was Fatma Kaplan, a friend of his wife, who ran to the scene in tears.
“We met when we were seven,” she said. “She is my heart.”
All family members were taken to a local hospital. It was a remarkable rescue, but one that soon turned tragic.
Night fell and the crew had yet to find the other two children, boys Enes and Erdem, aged 11 and 12. Nor could their voices be heard in the ruins.
