Five people were rescued alive this Wednesday after being buried under rubble for nine days after earthquakes in Turkey left at least 40,000 dead in the country and Syria.
The latest rescue took place around 1pm (GMT) in Antioquia, one of the cities most devastated by the earthquakes and where rescue teams rescued a woman and two children trapped alive from the rubble for 228 hours.
An hour earlier, teams rescued a 74-year-old woman, Cemile Kekeç, who lives in the town of Kahramanmaras, near the quake’s epicenter.
In the same city, a 42-year-old woman, Melike Imamoglu, was found alive in a collapsed building after search teams heard her calling for help.
As a member of the rescue team told Istanbul newspaper Hürriyet, the woman was in good health, despite being trapped in the rubble for 222 hours, and “better than those outside,” something inexplicable, he said.
These five rescues, almost miraculous because they took place after several days, are added to the rescue of another woman, Fatma Güngör, 77 years old, rescued in Adiyaman city.
The low temperatures, close to zero degrees or even lower, in the region affected by the earthquakes can, in certain circumstances, facilitate the survival of the trapped people, as explained by specialists from the fire brigade of Madrid, in Spain, who participated in the rescues for several days. , at the desk Efe.
The concrete rubble protects against the extreme cold and because it is not hot, the body does not sweat and dry out as it does in the summer when the survival rate would be only two or three days.
The death toll from the two 7.7-magnitude and 7.6-magnitude earthquakes has already passed 35,000 in Turkey and 5,000 in Syria, but it is feared it could rise as the debris begins to clear.
Source: DN
