Antakya Earthquake Recovery: 3 Districts Recovered After 296 Hours

Rescuers managed to pull 3 people alive from the rubble of a building in the southern Turkish city of Antakya 296 hours after the devastating earthquake. The rescue team said: A Syrian family of 5 was under the rubble, and that the mother and father survived, but the child in he later died of dehydration, and neither an older sister nor a twin survived for the child. A member of the rescue team said: “We heard screams while we were digging an hour ago. When we find people alive, we are always happy.”

Ten ambulances waited in a nearby road, closed to traffic to facilitate rescue operations. The workers asked for complete silence and for everyone to get off or sit down while the crews went up in atop the rubble of the building where the family was found to listen for any further sounds using an electronic detector. As the rescue efforts continued, a worker in the rubble shouted, “Take a deep breath if you can hear me.” Workers then halted their search when excavators arrived and scrambled up the rubble to start clearing it.

While many international rescue teams left the vast quake zone, local teams yesterday continued to search through the rubble of destroyed buildings, hoping to find more adversity-defying survivors. Experts say: Most relief efforts occur within 24 hours of the earthquake.