Following a series of earthquakes and aftershocks that shook southern Turkey and northern Syria this week, more than 9,000 people died. As a result, the international community rushed aid – including medical supplies and personnel, food and water, and emergency/rescue equipment and personnel – to the affected regions.
Over 11,000 structures were devastated by the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, and grisly footage posted online show bodies being removed from the rubble. Turkish news agency Anadolu also released videos showing people being saved, including babies and the elderly.
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One of these videos depicts a daughter, a health worker, saving her mother, while another shows a woman being saved an hour after her baby was saved. Arif Kaan, a three-year-old boy, and an 80-year-old mother are among the survivors.
The three-year-old boy’s lower body is shown in the video of his rescue being encased in concrete debris, and rescue workers are seen wrapping a blanket around the boy’s torso to keep it warm.
Emergency workers carefully removed the rubble from around him since they didn’t want to cause another collapse. The boy’s father, who had previously himself been saved, wept as his son was freed. As the dramatic rescue was carried around the nation, a Turkish television reporter commented, “For now, the name of hope in Kahramanmaras is Arif Kaan.”
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More than 24,000 Turkish rescue workers were joined by rescue crews from more than 20 other nations, and donations flooded in. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) headquarters in Brussels flew the flags of all 30 of its members at half-staff on Tuesday in memory of those who lost their lives.
