More than nine days after a powerful quake shook Turkey and Syria, rescuers were still pulling people from the rubble, defying predictions that the time for survival had passed.
On Wednesday, Turkey’s Ministry of National Defense released video showing rescuers extricating a 77-year-old woman from debris in the city of Adiyaman on Tuesday, some 212 hours after the earthquake struck.
Turkey’s state-run news agency Anadolu identified her as Fatma Gungor, and said her family hugged her after she was saved.
Then on Wednesday, another woman, identified as 45-year-old Melike İmamoğlu, was rescued after 222 hours in rubble in the city of Kahramanmaras, according to Turkey’s state television TRT Haber.
Earlier, teams in southern Turkey said they were still hearing the voices of trapped survivors.
Live images broadcast on CNN affiliate CNN Turk on Tuesday showed rescuers working in two areas of the Kahramanmaras region, where they were trying to save three sisters – but it’s unclear if the sisters survived.
In the same region, emergency workers saved a 35-year-old woman believed to have been buried for around 205 hours, according to state broadcaster TRT Haber. Others were rescued too – two brothers, two men and a women – all on Tuesday, eight days after the quake.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s Chief Medical Correspondent, who’s in Turkey’s Hatay province, says it’s unusual for people to survive more than 100 hours trapped in rubble – most are rescued within 24 hours.
However, he says freezing temperatures in the quake zone may be extending survival times for people trapped.
Source: cnn.com
