Earthquake: Mother, Children Buried In Rubble Rescued After Four Days
A mother and her three children have miraculously survived having been buried under the rubble of a collapsed building for four and half days in Turkey.
As of Friday, experts say 22,000 casualties have been recorded from the quake. However, a family of four made it out alive.
Rescuers used a chainsaw to rip through the debris separating them from a mother and her three young children who were entombed by a multi-storey building in Antalya, Turkey, Daily Mail UK reported.
According to reliefweb.net, the first 72 hours after an earthquake is a critical time frame after which the survival rate falls to 5-10%, with most rescue efforts usually called off after five to seven days. Whether someone is found within these ‘golden hours’ is a matter of life and death.
Shocking images showed how the family were extracted on spinal stabilisation stretchers owing to the extent of their injuries – but all of them survived the terrifying ordeal thanks to the bravery of their rescuers.
The scarcely believable tale of endurance comes after a 10-day-old boy and his mother were pulled alive from the rubble 90 hours after their home was reduced to ruins.
The infant, named Yagiz, had spent almost half his life stuck under slabs of concrete before he was extracted from the ruins of Turkey’s southern Hatay province.
Desperate search and rescue efforts are ongoing in both Turkey and neighbouring Syria, with some quake victims still clinging to life beneath the debris.
This morning a family of six was saved in Iskenderun and a teenager was hauled free in Gaziantep more than 100 hours after being entombed by the quakes.
One three-year-old girl was extracted alive after 103 hours stuck underground, and 18-month-old Yusuf Huseyin somehow made it 105 hours alive before being saved.
But hopes of finding many more survivors are rapidly dwindling, with dehydrated and injured victims also suffering bitter winter temperatures four days on from the disaster.
