The cries of a 10-year-old Turkish boy named Poyraz, the discovery of a mother and her 10-day-old infant, and the rescue of teenage sisters alive after 100 hours trapped in hell have bolstered morale among rescue workers who have pulled more than 22,000 bodies from the rubble of one of the deadliest earthquakes in modern times.
The 10-year-old boy was found trapped under tons of rubble in the southern Turkish town of Hatay 90 hours after the first deadly quake struck Monday at 4:17 a.m.
The 10-day-old newborn was rescued with his mother, who was pulled out of a building in Hatay on a stretcher, according to the BBC. The young family’s condition is not known.
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A 7-year-old girl named Asya Donmez was also found in the same town five hours later, and in Diyarbakir, a 32-year-0ld woman and her son were rescued some 100 hours after the quake first hit, giving rescuers hope that more people could survive the bone-chilling temperatures and unimaginable devastation.
Also on Friday, teen sisters were pulled out of the rubble of their home in Kahramanmaras, according to CNN. Ayfer, 15, was discovered 99 hours after the quake and Fatma, 13, was found two hours later. Rescuers had been talking to Ayfer, promising to take her out for ice cream if she just tried to stay awake. They also played her favorite music to try to keep her alert.
On Thursday, a 17-year-old boy named Adnan Muhammed Korkut was rescued with no injuries from a collapsed building in Gaziantep, near the epicenter. He told rescuers he survived by drinking his own urine.
Much less is known about the rescue operations in Syria, where the hardest-hit area is in the region opposing Bashar al-Assad’s hardline government, calling into question how much aid will get through.
Most of the successful rescues are being carried out after signs of life are discovered with seismic sensors, but thousands more people have died after initially being heard calling for help, or identified with the technology. In a number of cases, the removal of debris is too perilous, with workers fearful that further collapses could put other rescue operations at risk.
As each day passes, chances of survival dim, and the operation will soon move from search and rescue to a grim recovery operation, which will allow rescuers to move heavier equipment in to move large chunks of twisted concrete and steel, and to begin the process of putting this unthinkable disaster behind them.
