Muhammed Enes Yeninar, a 17-year-old earthquake survivor, was rescued on Tuesday.Ismail Coskun/Ihlas News Agency, via Reuters
Miraculous rescues in Turkey earthquake
Rescue workers in the earthquake-devastated city of Kahramanmaras pulled two Turkish brothers from the rubble after the men had spent about 200 hours trapped there, one of at least nine such improbable rescues. The pair had survived by rationing bodybuilding supplements, drinking their own urine and swallowing gulps of air, they said.
Relief organizations typically scramble to find survivors in the first 72 hours after a natural disaster, as over time signs of life become much more rare. In the past week, more than 35,000 Turkish search-and-rescue teams joined international workers to dig through the rubble, according to Turkey’s emergency management agency.
More than a week after 7.8-magnitude earthquake leveled towns, killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions in Turkey and Syria, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said it could reasonably be called the “disaster of the century.” The death toll now exceeds 40,000 across the two countries.
More aid to Syria: President Bashar al-Assad agreed to open more border crossings from Turkey — a first in the 12 years since Syria’s civil war began. Before the quake, only one crossing had been used for all of the U.N. aid flowing to the opposition-held side.
