Members of the Taiwan Search & Rescue Team miraculously pulled a woman from a collapsed residential building in the Turkish province of Adiyaman on Thursday (local time), about 89 hours after a massive earthquake devastated the area.
According to Taiwan’s National Fire Agency, Taiwanese rescuers first detected the injured victim of the magnitude 7.8 earthquake at 2:37 a.m. Thursday (local time), some 70 hours after the quake flattened thousands of buildings in both Turkey and Syria early on Feb. 6.
The team found the woman to be pinned under a fallen concrete pillar but still able to speak with a clear mind and then used a life detector device to get a better idea of her situation.
They used special tools to break up the pillar in their bid to get closer to the victim, and notified medical personnel to remain on standby at the scene, the agency said in a statement.
At 12:43 p.m., Taiwanese and Turkish rescuers confirmed her exact location and found her to be under other objects, including wrecked floor panels, a bed mattress and quilts.
The 35-year-woman was eventually rescued from the wreckage 19 hours and 37 minutes after she was initially found to be alive by the Taiwanese team.
The rescue was a rare moment of good news in the aftermath of the earthquake and major aftershocks that has left more than 20,000 dead in Turkey and Syria, with the toll likely to climb further.
Taiwan has dispatched a total of 130 personnel and five sniffer dogs to Turkey since Monday. Most of them have arrived in Adiyaman, one of the hardest-hit areas, where they began their search and rescue mission soon after their arrival.
The woman rescued Thursday was the second living person picked out of earthquake rubble by the team.
It pulled another woman from a collapsed building in Adiyaman on Wednesday night, but she died shortly afterwards at a local hospital, according to the Taipei City Fire Department on Thursday.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel