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ADANA, Feb. 8 (AP) Huge cranes are used to hoist concrete slabs and jackhammers to smash up rubble. Then, they stopped.
Quiet.
Read also | A family rescued from the rubble of a collapsed building in Bisina, Syria… – Latest tweet from Reuters.
The key to detecting the faintest noise that could be a sign that a survivor was buried under the rubble of Monday’s earthquake in Turkey and Syria.
Amid the rubble of a collapsed 14-storey building in the Turkish city of Adana on Wednesday, a high-pitched siren could be heard every few minutes. Rescuers yelled for silence and listened for any sounds from the wreckage. Hundreds of people watched in complete silence.
During the excavation, volunteer Bekir Bicer found a crushed birdcage, he said. Inside was a blue and yellow bird, still alive after nearly 60 hours.
“I’m so happy. I almost cried,” Bisser said.
“The cage is broken and the bird is still in it.”
Friends and family of those trapped sat around the fire, waiting for the miracle to happen even as the window of survival for those trapped under the rubble was closing.
Suat Yakan, 50, said his aunt lived with her two daughters in an apartment on the fourth floor of the building. They were probably asleep at home when the earthquake struck. He hoped desperately that they would be rescued alive.
“Look at that bird. Sixty hours,” he said. “It makes me think maybe God is helping us … I have to believe that they will heal everyone.”
David Alexander, professor of emergency planning and management at University College London, said regular silence was crucial for such operations.
He said: “We often found helicopters buzzing overhead, making loud noises and sometimes kicking up dust, while teams desperately tried to listen for any noise that might indicate someone was alive and moving under the rubble. .”
Experienced rescue teams will use microphones to pick up faint noises, while specially trained dogs and fiber-optic cameras will gather heat among the debris. But given the need to move quickly and the limited number of rescue teams deployed across the vast area, calling for help is key.
“If a person can draw attention under the rubble, statistically, they’re about three times more likely to be rescued than if they were unconscious,” Alexander said.
As the sun fell for the third time on devastated towns in Turkey and Syria on Wednesday, efforts to rehabilitate survivors took on greater urgency as food and water scarcity, freezing temperatures and potential injuries intensified.
Experts say there is little chance of finding survivors nearly three days after the quake.
Steven Godby, a natural disaster expert at Nottingham Trent University, said: “The first 72 hours are considered critical as trapped and injured people can quickly deteriorate and become fatal if they are not rescued and given medical attention in time. .”in England.
In Adana on Wednesday, rescuers of another collapsed building put a white cloth over a recess in the rubble, covering what they found there.
The excavator stopped, the stretcher was pulled behind the sheet, and the workers watched in silence.
Adana, an ancient city of more than 2 million inhabitants just 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the Mediterranean Sea, has experienced previous earthquakes. A 6.3-magnitude earthquake in 1998 killed nearly 150 people in and around the city and left thousands homeless.
A strong earthquake this week has left Adana with a large number of buildings, many of them modern, seemingly intact. Many high-rise apartment buildings appear to be intact. However, on the northern edge of the city, several 14-storey buildings collapsed.
As of Tuesday night, the Turkish government reported that 167 people had been killed in the Adana quake, with others still trapped under the rubble. That was just one-tenth of the reported death toll in the devastated Hatay province a few miles away. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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