GAZIANTEP, Turkey — At first glance,
there was little reason to expect that anyone was still alive in the ruins of
the apartment building on Tuesday.
The powerful earthquake that struck southern Turkey the day before had reduced its six floors to a hulking pile of concrete
rubble.
اضافة اعلان
And yet, there was hope.
The brother of a man who had lived on the
fifth floor with his wife and their children was standing atop what remained of
the roof, talking to his brother, Ibrahim Karapirli, who was trapped in the
ruins below.
The results of the scattershot rescue
operation that followed would be both heroic and tragic.
Across the huge expanse of territory in
southern
Turkey and northern Syria ravaged by the quake, countless attempts
like this one unfolded on Tuesday by professionals and amateurs, using whatever
tools were at hand, in hopes of finding survivors of a calamity that killed
thousands of people and upended millions of lives.
A professional soccer player was pulled
from the rubble in southern Turkey. In northwest Syria, a newborn found in a
collapsed building appeared to be the only surviving member of her family.
“We kept phoning them, it rang and rang,” said Aydin, 41. “Then we ran here to check and the building was like this.”
The rescue effort in Gaziantep, a city in
south-central Turkey near the epicenter of the
7.8-magnitude quake early Monday
morning, pulled in dozens of people and drew hundreds of onlookers.
By midafternoon, the rescue workers on the
roof had located the family and started the delicate process of cutting through
concrete, metal, and wood to reach them without making moves that would shift
the debris, endangering those pinned below.
The building was more than two decades old,
built before Turkey implemented stricter building codes designed to withstand
earthquakes after a devastating tremor in western Turkey in 1999. That left the
structure vulnerable when the quake hit.
While neighboring buildings had only surface
cracks, the six floors of the apartment building had completely collapsed,
leaving a pile of rubble that looked like a messy stack of books on its side.
It was not immediately clear how many
people were inside at the time. But Macide Kurbay, an exporter for a yarn
factory who had come with her husband to help out, tallied up 15, including the
Karapirli family of six on the fifth floor. The fact that the rescuers were
talking to them gave her hope.
“They are very close to saving that family,”
she said. “But for the rest. …,” she added, her voice trailing off.
By Tuesday afternoon, a crowd of about 100
people stood in the street and on the tram tracks watching the rescuers work.
The mood was somber, but with a glimmer of optimism that someone could still be
found alive. One man handed out baklava. A restaurant nearby gave out free
lentil soup in paper cups.
Among the crowd were relatives of people
who lived in the building. One man in a black overcoat and muddy shoes paced
back and forth, smoking cigarette after cigarette.
“My wife died and my son is still inside,”
he said, on the verge of tears.
A woman wrapped in a purple shawl sat on a
plastic yellow chair, waiting for news of her 90-year-old father-in-law, a
retired timber salesman who had lived alone in the building. He had often
complained to her that the building was “rotten”, she said, giving only her
first name, Selda.
Her family had persuaded the rescuers to
remove a concrete wall of what they thought was his room, she said. They had
found his respirator and bed inside, but did not see him.
“That’s no way to die,” she said with pain
in her voice as she looked up at the rubble.
On the curb sat relatives of Karapirli, his
wife Pinar, and their four children. Yasemin Aydin, Karapirli’s sister-in-law,
recalled her panic after the quake had subsided.
Every now and then, a rescue worker would yell “Silence!” and everyone would freeze and stop talking so the workers could hear the voice of the trapped father.
“We kept phoning them, it rang and rang,”
said Aydin, 41. “Then we ran here to check and the building was like this.”
She and others watching the workers said
that no one had come to help the day of the quake, arriving only Tuesday
morning, more than 24 hours after the building collapsed.
“Yesterday there was nothing here, nothing
done,” she said.
To locate the buried family, the workers
drilled holes through concrete and shined a light through them to see whether
the father trapped inside could see it, said Mehmet Ali Canakci, a volunteer
rescue worker. On the third try, it worked.
The police then brought what he called a
“snake camera” and got a glimpse of the father, he said.
As they removed debris to get closer to the
family, the workers yelled down for a long metal hook, which was passed up to
them. Later, they called for a small saw. Still later, a neck brace, some
blankets and a child-size stretcher.
Every now and then, a rescue worker would
yell “Silence!” and everyone would freeze and stop talking so the workers could
hear the voice of the trapped father.
After dusk, a cheer went up from the roof
and the crowd in the street joined in, yelling “God is great!” because the
workers had reached the family.
About an hour later, another cheer rang out
as two of the children, a pair of twins — a girl named Elcin and a boy named
Eray Ahmet — were lifted out. The workers formed a line up the side of the
rubble pile and passed the children from hand to hand down to the waiting
ambulances.
Next out was the mother. The workers put
her on a stretcher and lowered her to the street using a crane.
Finally came the father, wrapped in a shiny
gold emergency blanket. When he reached the street, he was panting visibly in
the frigid air, his two bare feet sticking out at the end of the stretcher.
In the crowd was Fatma Kaplan, a friend of
his wife who had rushed to the scene in tears.
“We met when we were 7,’’ she said. “She is
my heart.”
All the family members were taken to local
hospitals. It was a remarkable rescue, but one that soon turned tragic.
Night was coming on and the crew had not
yet found the other two children, the boys Enes and Erdem, ages 11 and 12. Nor
had anyone heard their voices in the rubble.
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