“Our Hearts Couldn’t Take It”: Turkish Miners Rush To Help Earthquake Victims

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When miner Ismail Hakki Kalkan saw people buried under the rubble of Turkey’s earthquake, he rushed to help despite living on the opposite side of the tragedy-stricken country.

Kalkan, who has been a miner for eight years, said he feels he has more expertise than digging in rough terrain because Turkish miners are no strangers to disasters.

“When we saw on TV what was happening here, we knew we had to be here and we came,” said the miner from the Black Sea province of Zonguldak.

Monday’s 7.8-magnitude earthquake killed some 22,000 people in southeastern Turkey and parts of Syria.

It was too much for Kalkan.

“Our hearts could not take it,” he told AFP, wearing black boots and a high-visibility jacket.

He is one of about 30 miners wearing dusty white and yellow helmets trying to find people trapped under the rubble in the ancient city of Antakya.

Antakya is in Hatay Province, one of the worst affected provinces in Turkey.

Turkey, a coal producer, suffered its deadliest coal mining disaster in 2014, which killed more than 300 people in the western city of Soma.

Dozens of people were killed in a similar incident in Amasara near Zonguldak late last year.

Kalkan’s allies stand upright with pickaxes, shovels, hammers, saws and crowbars – their everyday tools ready to save lives.

Another miner has large iron wire cutters on his shoulder.

‘Words can’t describe it’

Turgay Acikgoz understands the harsh conditions and emotional turmoil that such catastrophes wreak on rescue workers.

“Mine disasters have been frequent,” he said.

The miner said, “We know what this pain feels like, because we have tasted this pain before… Words cannot describe it.”

Older members of the group recall the 2010 tragedy at Zonguldak, when an explosion killed 30 miners.

The most recent incident last year injured four miners, two of them seriously, just three weeks after the Amasara incident killed 42 people in a similar explosion, only 50 kilometers (30 mi) away.

In Antakya, miners spend most of their time on a large boulevard where cars make their way through the ruins of collapsed buildings.

They head towards a building turned into a pile of rubble. Many people are likely under large, broken pieces of cement and scrap metal, traumatized survivors told the miners.

A mechanical digger is helping to clear the debris.

The head of the group from the Zonguldak mine tells the machinist to stop breaking through the concrete.

The head wearing a white helmet covered with dust begs for a blanket.

They have just found the body of a child lying in their bed.

losing hope

A grief-stricken father in a black cap and scarf carries the body away, clutching his child tightly.

A few meters away, a woman with her face painted on stands beside her daughter.

Nesibe Kulubecioglu guides the miners. His 80-year-old mother-in-law lives in the same building with her son’s family, with only one floor between them.

Kulubesioglu and his daughter fled to safety after the quake that struck around 4:00 a.m. (0100 GMT) on Monday but lost six loved ones.

She no longer has any hope of finding people alive and blames the government and the slow arrival of rescuers.

But the mother is still relieved to see the Black Sea miners. With their help, she hopes to have a body to rest in.

Only then will she mourn and think about the future.

“We must first find a place to bury them and then start anew.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)