Six relatives huddled in a tiny air pocket day after day. A desperate teen got so thirsty that he drank his own urine. Two terrified sisters are comforted by a pop song as they wait for rescuers to free them.
Earthquake survivors were among more than a dozen people pulled from the rubble on Friday after more than four days of being trapped in thick darkness following the disaster in Turkey and Syria.
The unlikely rescue that came so long after Monday’s 7.8-magnitude earthquake toppled thousands of buildings, offered fleeting moments amid a catastrophe that killed nearly 24,000 people, injured at least 80,000 others and left millions more Became homeless.
In the Mediterranean coastal city of Iskenderun, a crowd chanted “God is great!” Raised slogans of As Hacı Murat Klink and his wife, Raziye, were carried on a stretcher to a waiting ambulance.
“You’re working so many hours, God bless you!” A relative of the couple told a friend of theirs.
A rescue worker said that Klink was joking with the crew members trapped under the rubble, trying to boost their morale.
Two hours earlier in Kahramanmaras, the city closest to the epicenter, rescue workers hugged and thanked God after pulling a man out of his collapsed home.
In Adyaman, a hard-hit city of more than a quarter million people, rescuers and onlookers suppressed their joy in order not to frighten 4-year-old Yagiz Komsu, according to Haberturk television. Rescue Live.
He was given jelly beans to distract him. The teams later rescued his 27-year-old mother, Ayfer Komsu, who suffered a broken rib.
But the flurry of dramatic rescues could not obscure the devastation spreading across a vast border region that is home to more than 13.5 million people. Entire neighborhoods of skyscrapers have been reduced to rubble, and this earthquake has already killed more people than Japan’s Fukushima earthquake and tsunami combined, with many more bodies yet to be recovered and counted.
Relatives wept and wailed as rescuers pulled 17-year-old Adnan Muhammad Korkut from a basement in the Turkish city of Gaziantep near the epicenter. He was trapped for 94 hours, forced to drink his own urine in order to survive.
“Thank God you came,” she said, hugging her mother and others who leaned in to kiss and hug her as she was being loaded into an ambulance.
Adnan’s escape becomes difficult for one of the rescuers, who is identified as Yasmeen.
“I have a son like you,” she said after giving him a warm hug. “I swear, I haven’t slept for four days. … I was trying to get you out.
Elsewhere, Haberturk television said rescuers had identified nine people trapped inside the remains of a multi-storey apartment block in Iskenderun and pulled out six of them, including a woman who was being carried on a stretcher. The crowd shouted “God is great!” after he was brought out.
The building was only 600 feet (200 m) from the Mediterranean Sea and was spared a flood when a massive earthquake sent water into the city centre.
Video of another rescue attempt in Kahramanmaras shows an emergency worker playing a pop song on his smartphone to distract two teenage sisters as they waited to be freed.
There were more stories yet: A German team said it worked more than 50 hours to free a woman from a collapsed house in Kirikhan. And in video broadcast by Haberturk television, a trapped woman can be heard speaking to a team trying to dig her out. She told her future rescuers that she had given up hope of being discovered – and prayed to sleep because she was too cold. The station did not say where the operation was taking place.
Although experts said that those trapped could survive for a week or more, the chances of finding more survivors were diminishing rapidly.
Death was everywhere: morgues and cemeteries were full, and in the streets of some cities bodies lay wrapped in blankets, rugs, and tarpaulins.
Temperatures remained below freezing throughout a large area, and many people had no shelter. The Turkish government distributed millions of hot meals, as well as tents and blankets, but was still struggling to reach many in need.
The disaster has added to suffering in a region wracked by Syria’s 12-year civil war, which has displaced millions of people within the country and left them dependent on aid. The fighting sent millions more seeking refuge in Turkey.
The conflict has isolated many regions of Syria and complicated efforts to get aid. The United Nations said the first convoy of earthquake-related aid crossed from Turkey into northwestern Syria on Friday – a day after an aid shipment was planned before the disaster struck.
The United Nations refugee agency estimates that some 5.3 million people are homeless in Syria. Shivanka Dhanapal, the country representative in Syria for the UNHCR, told reporters on Friday that the agency was focusing on providing tents, plastic wrap, thermal blankets, sleeping mats and winter clothing.
According to Syrian state media, Syrian President Bashar Assad and his wife Asma visited survivors at Aleppo University Hospital. It was the leader’s first public appearance in an affected area of the country since the disaster. He then visited rescue teams in one of the worst affected areas of the city.
Aleppo has been scarred by heavy bombardment and shelling for years – much of it by the forces of Assad and his ally, Russia – and was one of the cities most devastated by the earthquake.
The Syrian government also announced that it would allow aid to reach all parts of the country, including areas controlled by rebel groups in the northwest.
Also on Friday, the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, announced a ceasefire in its separatist insurgency in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast, including some areas hit by the quake.
Turkey’s disaster-management agency said that more than 20,200 people have been confirmed killed in the disaster in Turkey so far, while more than 80,000 people have been injured.
More than 3,500 people have been confirmed killed in Syria, bringing the total death toll to nearly 24,000.
According to Turkey’s Minister of Environment and Urban Planning Murat Kurum, about 12,000 buildings have either collapsed or been seriously damaged in Turkey. Turkey’s Vice President Fuat Oktay said that more than one million people have been placed in temporary shelters.
Engineers suggested that the scale of the devastation was partly explained by lax enforcement of building codes.