Turkey: Made it out alive after being buried under rubble for 149 hours

Rescuers pulled a 35-year-old man alive from rubble in Turkey’s Hatay province six days after Monday’s deadly earthquake. The death toll in Turkey and Syria has topped 28,000 and is expected to rise.

A Romanian rescue team managed to pull 35-year-old Mustafa out of the rubble of the building, Turkish broadcaster CNN Turk reported about 149 hours after the quake. “He’s in good health, he was talking,” one of the rescuers said, adding, “His first words to the rescuers were: ‘Get me out of here soon, I’m claustrophobic.’

Ergin Guzeloglan, Hatay, bu sabah bir Turk ekibi cikardi enkazdan. (AP Photo) pic.twitter.com/1ZcTypmzWs

— Burhan Ozbilici (@BurhanOzbilici)

Ergin Guzeloglan, Hatay, bu sabah bir Turk ekibi cikardi enkazdan. (AP Photo) pic.twitter.com/1ZcTypmzWs

— Burhan Ozbilici (@BurhanOzbilici) February 11, 2023

“>February 11, 2023

On Saturday, rescue worker Gizem (from the southeastern province of Sanlıurfa) said he saw people looting in Antakya. “We can’t stop them because most of them have knives,” he said.

Police and soldiers are trying to maintain order, control traffic and help with rescue operations and food distribution. According to Turkish authorities, about 80,000 people were hospitalized, and the number of homeless people exceeded one million.

With the city’s basic infrastructure destroyed, experts are worried about disease outbreaks. “Many died under the rubble, from their injuries. Their bodies are still are under the rubble, the corpses began to decompose, ”Gizem emphasized. “Besides, there are no toilets here. This is a big problem”.

Martin Griffiths, head of the UN’s humanitarian division, called the earthquake the strongest in a century in the region and predicted that the death toll would “at least double”.

“It is difficult to accurately estimate the number of victims. But I’m sure it will double if it doesn’t go up even more,” Griffiths told Sky News.

The earthquake is the seventh-deadliest natural disaster on record this century, with a death toll close to that of the 2003 earthquake in Iran that killed 31,000 people. The head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, visited Aleppo in Syria and called the disaster “heartbreaking”.

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