The commander of the Portuguese mission in Turkey, José Guilherme, said this Saturday that it was “a very great emotion” to be able to rescue a child, after several days without success.
“It is a very big emotion for us. This is the corollary of what we are doing here, the delivery of the operations and we will continue with our work, which is to save lives,” José Guilherme told the Portuguese news agency.
In the afternoon, even before the rescue took place, José Guilherme admitted some frustration to Lusa after several days of unsuccessful work, but he guaranteed that hope will never die “until the moment of demobilization” of the 52 operatives who are in Antáquia. .
The Portuguese team that collaborates in the search for survivors of the earthquake in Turkey managed to rescue a 10-year-old boy in Antakya, reported the Secretary of State for Civil Protection.
The ten-year-old boy was found in the center of Antáquia, in the sector assigned to the Portuguese operatives and where they had been working for several days, using dogs.
According to José Guilherme, the team was alerted by people who had heard some sound coming from a building that was partially destroyed.
The cynotechnic teams were activated and the dogs gave a signal that there was someone alive under the rubble.
“So it was teamwork, understanding the sounds that were heard, if they were from someone, drilling and getting as close as possible to the child to confirm that there was a living human being,” he explained.
The boy was in a bag in the rubble of the building, he had always managed to get a translator to talk to him.
The rescue operations took a total of three and a half hours, José Guilherme added.
“A miracle ended up happening, because hope is the last to die and we are going to continue here, hoping to save more people,” stressed the commander of the Portuguese mission.
“Unprecedented joy! On the third day of the mission, the Portuguese National Force in Turkey rescues a child trapped in the rubble alive! Years of training, exercises and formation… There is no better reward!” wrote Patrícia Gaspar, in his account on the social network Twitter, in a publication that shows an image of the rescue.
There are 52 Civil Protection, National Republican Guard and EMS personnel on site, including six dogs, divided into two teams working around 12-hour shifts, working 24 hours a day in support of search efforts. and rescue, from the day they arrived. , Wednesday, in Antakya, in southeastern Turkey.
Syria and Turkey suffered an earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale early Monday morning, which was followed by several aftershocks, one of them measuring 7.5, which caused 25,000 deaths.
Source: TSF
