HATAY PROVINCE, Turkey (Reuters) – Turkish miners who dug survivors out of collapsed buildings after a massive earthquake said hearing voices of people beneath the rubble brought both joy that someone was still alive and worry that they would not reach them in time to save them.
“There is no other joy than hearing the voice of a survivor. It is nothing I can explain,” said Cemil Dedeoglu, 37. “There is no other happiness than taking that person out and handing them over to their families.”
But they said hearing an appeal for help beneath a collapsed building was also tempered with concern about getting them out quickly and without further injury, when survivors were often buried in small spaces and under tonnes of broken concrete.
“It is our hardest moment because we want to get them out as soon as possible,” said Musab Basan, 39.
Miners from Turkish Hard Coal Enterprises arrived in Hatay Province, which was heavily damaged by the massive Feb. 6 earthquake, shortly after the tremor struck, joining the first wave of rescuers after thousands of buildings fell down or were heavily damaged.
The combined death toll for Turkey and neighbouring Syria has climbed above 42,000, while the region has been hit by more than 4,300 aftershocks, adding to jitters among the shattered population.
The miners came from the coastal city of Zonguldak, almost 1,000 km (625 miles) north of the earthquake zone.
When the quake struck, Dedeoglu, Basan and their colleagues put their work on hold and deployed to help with rescue efforts.
It required days of work with little sleep, but they said appreciation from relatives of those rescued kept them going.
“Sometimes we meet with their families the next day or they see us on the ground. They hug us, they thank us,” said Basan. “The gratitude that the people here have for us, this is our strongest moment. It gives us extra power, a dedication.”
(Reporting by Marco Trujillo and Malgorzata Wojtunik; Writing by Christina Fincher; Editing by Edmund Blair)
