Turkey earthquake: Girl, 3, grabbed rescuer’s thumb through rubble

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A three-year-old girl who had been trapped for three days under the rubble of a deadly earthquake in a Turkish coastal city has miraculously survived. 

Firefighter Muammer Celik found Elif Perincek lying motionless, covered in dust, and he asked a colleague for a body bag.

But as Mr Celik extended his arm to wipe her face clean, she opened her eyes and grabbed hold of his thumb.

‘That’s where we saw a miracle,’ Celik, of the Istanbul fire department’s search-and-rescue team, told The Associated Press, recounting Monday’s operation 65 hours after the quake hit, killing at least 94 people in Turkey and Greece. 

Elif is now being treated in hospital and has been pictured waving while clutching a bright pink fairy wand.  

It was the second dramatic rescue Monday after a 14-year-old was also pulled out alive. Onlookers applauded with joy and wept with relief at both scenes in the Turkish city of Izmir, where the vast majority of the deaths and nearly 1,000 injuries have occurred. 

Two teenagers also died and 19 people were injured on the Greek island of Samos, near the quake’s epicenter in the Aegean Sea.

The US Geological Survey rated the quake 7.0, though other agencies recorded it as less severe. Many buildings were completely reduced to rubble or saw several floors pancake in on themselves in Turkey, which has a mix of older buildings and cheap or illegal construction that do not withstand earthquakes well. 

Regulations have been tightened to strengthen or demolish older buildings, and urban renewal is underway in Turkish cities, but it is not happening fast enough.

On Monday, authorities detained nine people for questioning about six building collapses, including contractors and officials who approved plans, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

Celik, whose team was among several who traveled to Izmir, said he found Elif Perincek lying on her back between her bed and a closet in a space that was just big enough for her.

‘At first I was very upset,’ he said. ‘Then I stretched out my hand to clean her face and she grabbed my thumb. … I froze because right before that moment, I had asked my team for a blanket and a body bag.’

His voice breaking with emotion, he added: ‘This is a firefighter’s joy.’

The child spent nearly three full days in the wreckage of her apartment and became the 106th person to be pulled alive from the rubble. Her mother and two sisters, 10-year-old twins, were rescued two days earlier. Her six-year-old brother did not survive.

Health Minister Fahrettin Koca tweeted that both Elif and 14-year-old Idil Sirin were doing well.

Video broadcast by HaberTurk television showed Elif holding a doll and waving at a camera from her hospital bed, with one eye slightly swollen.

Elsewhere in Izmir, rescue workers scrambled to find more survivors used listening devices to detect any signs of life.

‘Can anyone hear me?’ a team leader shouted, asking possible survivors to bang against surfaces three times if they could.

Officials said 147 quake survivors were still hospitalized, and three of them were in serious condition.

The quake also triggered a small tsunami that hit Samos and the Seferihisar district of Izmir province, where one elderly woman drowned. The tremors were felt across western Turkey, including in Istanbul as well as in the Greek capital of Athens. Hundreds of aftershocks followed.

Turkey sits on top of fault lines and is prone to earthquakes. In 1999, two powerful quakes killed some 18,000 people in northwestern Turkey. Earthquake are frequent in Greece as well.  

Rescue workers clapped as 14-year-old Idil Sirin was removed from the rubble, after being trapped for 58 hours. Her eight-year-old sister, Ipek, did not survive, NTV television reported. 

‘A thousand thanks to you, my God. We have brought out our little one Elif from the apartment block,’ Mehmet Gulluoglu, head of Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD), wrote on Twitter.

Onlookers applauded as ambulances carrying the girls rushed to hospitals immediately after their rescue.

Close to a thousand people were injured in the quake, which was centred in the Aegean Sea, north-east of the Greek island of Samos. It killed two teenagers on Samos and injured at least 19 other people on the island. 

There was some debate over the magnitude of the earthquake. The US Geological Survey rated it 7.0, while Istanbul’s Kandilli Institute put it at 6.9 and Turkey’s emergency management agency said it measured 6.6.

The quake triggered a small tsunami that hit Samos and the Seferihisar district of Izmir, drowning one elderly woman.

The tremors were felt across western Turkey, including in Istanbul as well as in the Greek capital of Athens. Hundreds of aftershocks followed.

Turkey has a mix of older buildings and cheap or illegal construction, which can lead to serious damage and deaths when earthquakes hit.

Regulations have been tightened in light of earthquakes to strengthen or demolish buildings and urban renewal is under way in Turkish cities, but it is not happening fast enough. 

More than 3,500 tents and 13,000 beds have been supplied to provide temporary shelter, according to AFAD, which said 962 people had been injured in Friday’s earthquake.

More than 740 victims have so far been discharged from hospitals, AFAD said.

It was the deadliest earthquake in Turkey since one in the eastern city of Van in 2011 which killed more than 500 people. A quake in January this year killed 41 people in the eastern province of Elazig.

Turkey sits on top of fault lines and is prone to earthquakes. In 1999, two powerful quakes killed some 18,000 people in north-western Turkey. Earthquakes are frequent in Greece as well.