Turkish television reporter Yüksel Akalan somehow kept his composure as he and his crew took off running after a 7.5 magnitude aftershock struck Turkey almost 12 hours after an earthquake measuring 7.8 magnitude devastated the region.
Akalan, speaking in Turkish and reporting for A Haber network, continued to describe the harrowing situation as he ran away from a collapsed building, the sound of grinding concrete and twisting steel nearly drowning out his voice at times.
Akalan, who was reporting from Malatya in eastern Turkey, was one of hundreds of journalists and thousands of rescuers who fled to the scene to report and rescue.
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Several rescuers were also reportedly injured when a badly damaged building they were trying to search for survivors collapsed further. There have been no official reports of deaths among search and rescue teams, but the death toll has hit 2,300 across both regions of Turkey and Syria.
Meanwhile, scenes of miraculous rescues, including a young Syrian child with blood-stained pajamas pulled from the rubble of a collapsed building, and several people pulled from between narrow slabs of concrete continue to give rescuers hope.
The United States Geological Survey estimates that the death toll could hit the tens of thousands.
