Turkey earthquake: Baby among miracle rescues as toll reaches 33,000

Rescuers pull a handful of people including a five-year-old, 10-year-old and a seven-month-old baby from the rubble six days after the devastating Turkey quake.

People stand the rubble of collapsed buildings during rescue operations in Hatay. Picture: AFP.

Rescuers have saved a handful of people, including a five-year-old, a ten-year-old and a seven-month-old baby from collapsed buildings on Sunday, six days after twin earthquakes decimated southern Turkey and northern Syria.

But relief teams face a desperate race against time amid sub zero nights and declining odds of people surviving without food and water for much longer. On Sunday, authorities said the death toll has now exceeded 33,000, of which around 7000 are in Syria, and the United Nations warned that the final number may double.

The UN’s emergency relief co-ordinator, Martin Griffiths, said: “We have failed the people in northwest Syria” and that they rightly feel abandoned as aid is struggling to get into the decade-long war zone.

Some heartwarming tales of survival against the odds come as Turkey’s vice-president, Fuat Oktay, authorised immediate arrest warrants for contractors and builders associated with newly built high rise buildings that collapsed in the 7.8 and 7.6 magnitude quakes last Monday. He said 113 detention orders had been issued and that 131 contractors were being investigated.

“We will follow this up meticulously until the necessary judicial process is concluded, especially for buildings that suffered heavy damage and caused deaths and injuries,” Mr Oktay said, announcing the creation of special investigative units in all 10 provinces which were badly damaged in the quakes.

Police detained two contractors linked to the building of high rises in Adiyaman when they attempted to leave Istanbul airport on their way to Georgia.

One of the men, Yavuz Karakus, told reporters: “My conscience is clear. I built 44 buildings. Four of them were demolished. I did everything according to the rules.”

A worker sleepson the rubble in Hatay. Picture: AFP.

In Gaziantep two were arrested on suspicion of having cut down columns to make extra room in a building that collapsed, the state-run Anadolu Agency said.

On Sunday teams of rescuers scouring the pancake flattened residential towers rescued Emira, five, and her relieved father from beneath the rubble in Kocaeli.

In Hatay, a region that was badly damaged, a 10-year-old girl, named Cudi, was hauled through a hole cut in the concrete slab of a building by a Columbian rescue team. A seven-month-old baby named Hamza was also rescued on Sunday in Hatay, following on from a five month old being found alive earlier.

In Antakya, a Chinese rescue team and Turkish firefighters rescued a 54-year-old Syrian man while in another building, a 55 year old woman was rescued.

International rescuers from Romania found 35 year old Mustafa Sarıgül inside the debris of a collapsed six-storey building about 149 hours after the quake struck, CNN Turk reported.

“His health is good, he was talking,” one of the rescuers CNN Turk. “He was saying, ‘Get me out of here quickly, I’ve got claustrophobia’.”

In Kahramanmaras, Muhammed Habib, 27, was extricated after a ten hour rescue operation and he pumped the air when he was finally free, yelling “God is greatest”.

A British firefighter who helped rescue two people in Hatay, described the precarious rescue operation.

Phil Irving, 46, told the Press Association his team had found the two, a police officer and a woman on Friday but it wasn’t until Saturday that they had been able to extract them: “These people were entombed in rubble and debris and we had to work around the clock to bring them out alive,” he said.

“It was Friday afternoon when we first discovered signs of life. We knew 100 per cent that they were alive.

“We were hearing them tapping and shouting so we knew we were close to them but reaching them was a major challenge.

“It was a catastrophic collapse and access was difficult.

“They were trapped in there for over five days and it will stay with me their incredible capacity to keep going, hope and believe.” He added: “Of course, when we are successful in getting someone out it gives the team a boost, but I don’t think you ever have a rescue that is not moderately tarnished with the bigger reality that the survivor will have to deal with grief for the people that didn’t make it.”

The latest person to be found alive was a woman called Saadet Coşkun found in the rubble of Nilüfer Apartment in Gaziantep some 160 hours after the earthquake struck.

Meanwhile authorities have arrested nearly 100 people for looting or attempting to defraud earthquake survivors.