Six days in Turkey, three lives saved: British volunteer reflects on rescue mission

Rob Davis has just saved three people’s lives.

The beers he had on Tuesday night after arriving home from Turkey in the early hours of the morning were well-deserved – as was the full night’s sleep he enjoyed afterwards.

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Mr Davis, 52, is a retired firefighter and team leader with SARAID, Search and Rescue Assistance in Disasters.

The rescues in the devastated city of Kahramanmaras were a joint effort – from the volunteer SARAID team, alongside local rescue teams in Turkey and their German counterparts @ Fire.

They were working on buildings that had been “tipped upside down”, toppled blocks of flats merged into one pile of rubble, so they weren’t sure if there had originally been six buildings or eight.

Under the rubble of a six-storey building, the team had their first rescue on their first night in Turkey.

The dogs had picked up a live scent, so they knew there was someone still breathing. They put a camera through a hole they had drilled – and a hand grabbing the lens was confirmation of what the dogs had smelled.

The hand belonged to Serpa, a 33-year-old who had been trapped under the “pancaked” building for more than 60 hours.

Next to her was her daughter, six-year-old Hamza. Water bottles were posted through a hole to them – and when a tunnel big enough had been created, a medic crawled in to assess them. Both escaped without traumatic injuries.

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‘Eerie’ silence helped find trapped teen

Twenty-four hours later, the team’s second rescue – this time they were called to assist a local Turkish team who needed their technical sound location equipment.

The heavy machinery ground to a halt and they called for silence in the gathered crowd.

“It was quite eerie, really. You could hear a pin drop,” Mr Davis said.

Then over the headset, they heard tapping.

Once they had located the noise, the local team set to work on getting to the trapped person.

“They lifted this massive piece of concrete off this collapsed building and underneath was Iqbal, a 15-year-old. You could just see the head, the hair, and the rest of her was trapped by the legs,” Mr Davis said.

‘Bitter’ conditions amid miracle rescue efforts

They initially thought her legs had been crushed, but she was just pinned in place, suffering from dehydration but with no major injuries.

It was the bed frame that saved her – both by protecting her from the collapsing building and giving her something to bang against, that alerted the rescue team to her location, 110 hours after the earthquake.

Unfortunately, she was alone in her luck.

She kept asking for her mum, Mr Davis said, but they weren’t able to detect anyone else alive in the ruins.

The rescuers worked in difficult conditions. Distraught relatives were desperate for them to rescue their loved ones; they couldn’t always help.

The temperature got down to a “bitter” -10C.

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Mr Davis said his team had “numerous conversations” about the harrowing conditions.

“If it’s cold for us and we’ve got five layers of clothes on and a hot drink, and we can now move and get ourselves warm – just think what it’s like to be stuck in a small space under a building five, six, eight days later,” Mr Davis said.

More than a week after the earthquake, the rescues are tailing off.

Mr Davis still expects there will be the occasional miracle rescue – but that’s what they will be, miracles.

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