Desperation and loss were growing Tuesday as frantic rescue workers continue their increasingly futile efforts to recover survivors trapped by the devastating earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that the death toll in Turkey due to last week’s earthquake has increased to 35,418; Syrian officials have said at least 5,800 have died there.
Rescue worker Salam Aldeen spent a week digging through the rubble in Antakya, Turkey, about 40 miles south of the coastal city of Iskenderun in a region of about 500,000 people.
Speaking with USA TODAY from a car leaving the city after a week of rescues, Aldeen said international aid groups are helping desperate Turkish rescue teams working around the clock.
“I have never seen so much death and so many dead bodies in my entire life,” he said, crying as he spoke. “The conditions are like in an Armageddon movie; it’s unbelievable. The whole city smells of dead people.”
He said he helped free four people, including a boy found alive Monday, and recovered 35 bodies.
In a video he shared, red-helmeted fire department workers carefully clear rubble from around the boy, one worker cradling his hand between the metal reinforcing bars embedded in the concrete surrounding him.
Aldeen, the founder of Team Humanity, is a veteran aid and rescue worker who has operated in Greece, Syria, Ukraine and Afghanistan. The magnitude 7.8 and 7.5 quakes struck nine hours apart in southeastern Turkey and northern Syria on Feb. 6.
HOW TO HELP:Relief efforts ongoing after deadliest earthquake in years
New developments:
- The impact area of the earthquakes that hit southern Turkey and Syria on Monday was equivalent to about twice the entire area of neighboring Lebanon – which covers about 4,000 square miles, according to Lebanese geologist Tony Nemer.
- King Charles met with members of the Syrian and Turkish communities in London, a show of support as they packed aid boxes bound for the earthquake region.
- Turkish authorities said more than 150,000 survivors have been moved to shelters outside the affected provinces.
100 YEARS OF EARTHQUAKES:Turkey, Syria disaster could be among this century’s worst
Remains of infants, children add to rescue workers’ pain
Aldeen recounted finding a dead man trapped beneath rubble, his body cradling a blanket-swaddled infant who also died. In another instance, he said, a woman escaped out a door when a collapse began but lost her husband and two children.
“Her husband, he was holding each child in a hand. When I found them, when I saw the first body, I was begging that it was not them, that I would find them alive,” Aldeen said, describing how he clambered through the rubble. “He died while he was still holding his children, a child in each hand.”
Aldeen said he and his friends worked nearly 24 hours straight to extricate the bodies, and then he built a fire to keep warm. He and his team lived on crackers and bread for a week, he said, taking occasional naps in their rental car.
“I was watching the bodies in front of me by the fire and I just started crying,” he said. “There are bodies everywhere you walk. And they’re just on the street, bodies.”
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Geologist warns that Turkey could see another quake soon
Tony Nemer, a geologist at Beirut American University in the Lebanese capital, told Anadolu news agency that the fault line that broke in Turkey is more than 200 miles long. But Nemer said that only part of the East Anatolian fault line was broken in the recent earthquake. Almost half the fault line saw no activity, he said.
“Now authorities in Turkey need to pay attention to the … the eastern part of the fault line,” Nemers said. “It’s unpredictable when there will be activity in this part. It may be right now, in a short time, or in a few years.”
MIRACLE RESCUES:Some survived a week under rubble; Assad to allow more aid into rebel land; death toll surpasses 36,000: Updates
