Turkey earthquake wreaked havoc in Iskenderun. But amid the grief and anger, there is also a rare hope

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Turkish authorities left retired prison officer Suleiman Samar for dead in the shattered concrete and twisted metal of his collapsed apartment, before his rescuer inadvertently rolled over on an excavator.

Mr. Samar was buried alive for 88 hours near his mother’s body in the ruins of their second-floor apartment, in the ruined port city of Iskenderun in Turkey’s southeastern Hatay province.

The man in his 60s was stuck between an overturned sofa and a collapsed wall on Thursday afternoon, more than three days after the earthquake killed 25,000 people and displaced millions in Turkey and neighboring northwest Syria.

But a new threat loomed just a few feet away from him. The excavator’s digging bucket was about to get sucked into the wreckage.

The machine’s operator, Sinom Cente, had driven 10 excavators from the nearby city of Adana to help find survivors, beating out the official rescue workers.

They failed to reach the hard-hit region of Hatay for several days, fanning anger against the Turkish government among survivors who were forced to search for their loved ones on their own.

Read more about the earthquake disaster:

With so few rescuers in the quake zone and the government’s response faltering, survival of those buried alive now depends on a stroke of luck.

Just before digging began, a sound rang out

When Mr. Senti rolled to clear rubble from Mr. Summer’s building, the police gave him everything.

Sinom Cente was given everything to start digging through the rubble with an excavator, but he stopped when he heard a sound. (ABC News: Sean Rubinsztein-Dunlop)

“The police came with the dogs and told us no one was alive at the site,” said Mr Cente.

“But relatives came to us and said there might still be someone alive, so please be careful with the rig.”

Mr. Summer’s family intervened frantically, shouting in the rubble to ask if anyone was alive.

A weak voice resounded from within, triggering a meticulous rescue.

As the process dragged on for hours under the rig’s sleepy arm, Mr. Summer was heard screaming as breathing became more and more difficult.

Amid his pleas to get him out, rescuers moved in cautiously, cautiously retrieving children’s books, a kitchen pot, and a Koran.

They drilled a hole in the wall where his head was pressed, fearing that any wrong move might cause it to fall on him.

His family, already struggling with a mountain of grief, watched anxiously through the crowd of onlookers desperate for some happy news.

Suleiman’s brother Mehmet shouted just before Sinom started digging, and was surprised to receive a reply. (ABC News: Sean Rubinsztein-Dunlop)

“When people talk to him, he says, ‘I’m fine, I’m fine,'” said his nephew Emre Insat.

“Maybe, psychologically, he’s trying to keep up the spirits, but we don’t know.”

Unbeknownst to Mr. Samar, at least four members of his family have been found dead in the ruins of Iskenderun over the past four days.

Fears are growing of a second disaster

Nearby, the hospital was so overwhelmed with an influx of corpses that a stench rose from the emergency room doors.

The death toll is now over 25,000, leaving many families in mourning. (ABC News: Haidar Jones)

Bodies arrived every few minutes in lorries, carts, and wooden carts, followed by the wails of grieving families.

A woman cried for her daughter, “My angel, my angel.”

Another woman is held by a family as she fights to rush to a corpse tied to blankets, demanding to see her brother one last time.

At the hospital’s side door, weary doctors take a break, while a couple on a motorbike stops to ask for antibiotics and continue their desperate search.

Survivors pick through the ruins of their lives trying to find their belongings. (ABC News: Haidar Jones)

Medicine is running out all over the city.

Families sleep on mattresses in the middle of the day, with nowhere to turn.

Others sleep in freezing temperatures at night, in cars or huddle around fires in abandoned buildings.

The World Health Organization fears that a second catastrophe could follow from this devastation. (ABC News: Haidar Jones)

There are so many survivors without shelter, electricity, communications, fuel or running water in Turkey and Syria that the World Health Organization fears a secondary humanitarian catastrophe could kill more people than earthquakes.

Sadness gives way to anger

With the task of getting to Samar still in the evening, local man Erdi Ekizoglu entered the crowd and found himself caught up in the cautious operation.

Engineer Erdi Ekizoglu said that poor construction standards are responsible for the collapse of thousands of buildings. (ABC News: Sean Rubinsztein-Dunlop)

Mr. Ekizoglu had just made a miserable journey from yet another search for the wreckage in which his relative was missing, after emergency workers gave up hoping to find survivors.

“We’re here to get some good news because we need to smile,” he said.

There are no words to describe everyone’s feelings here.

Days earlier, he had pulled out his father’s body from the rubble of his house himself because the rescuers had not arrived yet.

Ekizoglu, the architect of the survey, was among a group of critics who said poor building standards and corrupt operators were to blame for the collapse of thousands of buildings.

“You can see that many here did not use the correct building standards, because this one has collapsed while the other is still standing,” he said.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan acknowledged some “shortcomings” in the earthquake response, particularly the delivery of aid to an area where transport links were damaged.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited an earthquake-hit town in southern Turkey. (AP: Turkish Presidency)

But in his first nationally televised address after the earthquake, he warned that he would “keep records of all the dissidents and all the lies and spreaders of fake news abroad”.

Erdogan, who has led Turkey for 20 years, was already facing a tough election in May due to the country’s deepening economic crisis.

But an earthquake could make things worse.

Criticism of the government is usually silenced in Turkey, where public protests are banned and dissent muzzled, but earthquake survivors surprise themselves with the power of their anger.

Ezikoglu said Turkey’s rescue operations and disaster preparations were “totally inadequate”, despite the country’s tragic history of earthquakes.

“There is a huge lack of coordination,” he said.

“Thousands and thousands of relief trucks are coming and they don’t know where to drop their equipment or their materials.

“There are a lot of machines waiting to be directed, but it’s already too late. These operations were supposed to happen two days ago, not today.”

About eight hours after the rescue operation began, Suleiman Samar was finally pulled from the rubble to the sounds of cheers and whistles.

Rescue workers banded together to form a human corridor through which he was transported on a spine board to an ambulance.

Remarkably, the doctors discovered that he only had minor scratches and kidney problems due to dehydration, in addition to damage from a mouth full of dust.

Emre’s uncle spent 88 hours under a pile of rubble in the aftermath of the earthquake in Turkey. (ABC News: Sean Rubinsztein-Dunlop)

“He had so much dust in his nose and mouth that it became difficult for him to breathe,” said Emery, his nephew.

And he said, ‘If it didn’t work out tonight, I wouldn’t have done it. I couldn’t get myself together.'”

Remarkably, even six nights after the earthquake, more victims were found alive under the rubble.

But with so much lost in the inadequate response, the Turkish government is facing anger it could not have anticipated a week ago.

Survivors continue to be found in the rubble six days after the earthquake, but hopes are fading. (ABC News: Haidar Jones)

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