“It is a very big emotion for us. This is the result of what we are doing here, the delivery of the agents and we will continue our work, which is to save lives,” José Guilherme told the Lusa agency.
During the afternoon, even before the rescue took place, José Guilherme admitted to Lusa some frustration in view of the several days of failed work, but he assured that hope would never disappear “until the moment of demobilization” of the 52 agents who are in Antakya. .
The Portuguese team helping to search for survivors of Turkey’s earthquake has succeeded in rescuing a 10-year-old child in Antakya, the state secretary for civil protection said.
The ten-year-old boy was found in the center of Antáquia, in the sector assigned to the Portuguese agents and where they had been working for several days, with the help of dogs.
According to José Guilherme, the team was alerted by people who had heard noise coming from a building that had been partially destroyed.
The cinotechnic teams were activated and the dogs signaled that someone was alive, under the rubble.
“Then it was teamwork, understanding the sounds that were heard, whether they belonged to someone, drilling and getting as close to the child as possible to confirm that there was a living human,” he explained.
The boy was in a bag in the rubble of the building, because he always managed to get a translator to talk to him.
The rescue operations lasted a total of three and a half hours, José Guilherme added.
“In the end, a miracle happened, because hope is the last to die and here we go, hoping to save more people,” the commander of the Portuguese mission stressed.
“Unprecedented joy! On the third day of the mission, the Portuguese National Force in Turkey rescues a child trapped alive in the rubble! Years of training, exercises and education… There is no better reward!” wrote Patrícia Gaspar in her account on the social network Twitter, in a publication showing an image of the rescue.
There are 52 Civil Defense, National Republican Guard and emergency medical personnel on the scene, including six dogs, divided into two teams working in shifts of approximately 12 hours from the day they arrived, working 24 hours a day in support of search and rescue. , Wednesday, in Antakya, southeastern Turkey.
Syria and Turkey were hit by a magnitude 7.8 earthquake early Monday morning, which was followed by several aftershocks, including one measuring 7.5 that killed 25,000.
Source: DN
