Adiyaman: A 17-year-old highschool pupil has captured Turkish hearts after he filmed a farewell message to his family members as he was trapped below the rubble of his dwelling throughout final week’s earthquake. Taha Erdem and his household had been quick asleep when a 7.8 magnitude quake hit their hometown of Adiyaman within the early hours of February 6. Taha was abruptly woken by violent tremors shaking the four-story house constructing in a blue-collar neighbourhood of the central Anatolian metropolis.
Inside 10 seconds, Taha, his mom, father, youthful brother, and sister had been plunging downward with the constructing.
He discovered himself alone and trapped below tons of rubble, with waves of highly effective aftershocks shifting the particles, squeezing his area amid the mangled mess of concrete and twisted metal.
(Picture Credit score: AP)
Taha took out his cellular phone and commenced recording a closing goodbye, hoping it will be found after his dying.
“I believe that is the final video I’ll ever shoot for you,” he mentioned from the tight area, his cellphone shaking in his hand as tremors rocked the collapsed constructing.
Displaying exceptional resilience and bravado for a young person believing he was talking his final phrases, he lists his accidents and speaks of his regrets and the issues he hopes to do if he emerges alive. In the course of the video, the screams of different trapped individuals will be heard.
“We’re nonetheless shaking. Demise, my associates, comes at a time when one is least anticipating it,” says Taha, earlier than reciting a Muslim prayer in Arabic.
“There are various issues that I remorse. Might God forgive me of all my sins. If I get out of right here alive at this time there are various issues that I wish to do. We’re nonetheless shaking, sure. My hand is not shaking, it is simply the earthquake.”
The teenager goes on to recount that he believes his household is useless, together with many others within the metropolis, and that he’ll quickly be a part of them.
However Taha was destined to be amongst a few of the first saved from the destroyed constructing. He was pulled from the rubble two hours later by neighbours and brought to an aunt’s dwelling.
Ten hours after the quake, his dad and mom and siblings had been additionally saved by native residents who dug on the wreck of the constructing with their naked fingers and no matter instruments they might discover.
When The Related Press spoke to the household on Thursday they had been dwelling in a government-provided tent, together with lots of of hundreds of others who survived the catastrophe that hit southern Turkiye and north Syria, killing greater than 43,000.
“That is my dwelling,” mentioned Taha’s mom Zeliha, 37, as she watched excavators digging up their previous life and dumping it into heavy vehicles.
“Increase-boom-boom, the constructing went down ground by ground on high of us,” she recalled, describing how she had stored yelling her son’s identify whereas trapped below the particles within the hope that every one 5 of them might die collectively as a household.
The Erdems’ youthful kids? daughter Semanur, 13, and 9-year-old son Yigit Cinar had been sleeping of their dad and mom’ room when the quake hit.
However Taha couldn’t hear his mom’s calls via the mass of concrete. Nor might she hear her son’s cries in the dead of night, and each believed the opposite was mendacity useless within the destroyed constructing.
It was solely when Zeliha, her husband Ali, 47, a hospital cleaner, and the opposite kids had been taken to her sister’s dwelling that they realized Taha had survived.
“The world was mine at that second,” Zeliha mentioned. “I’ve nothing, however I’ve my children.”
The story of the Erdem household is one in every of many emotional tales of human fortitude to emerge from the widespread catastrophe space. Many vividly recount the horrors of being trapped beneath their properties.
Ibrahim Zakaria, a 23-year-old Syrian who was rescued within the coastal Syrian city of Jableh on February 10, informed the AP that he survived by licking water dripping down the wall subsequent to him, slipping out and in of consciousness and dropping hope of survival in his waking moments.
“I nearly surrendered as a result of I believed I’ll die,” he mentioned from his hospital mattress. “I believed: There is no such thing as a escape.”
Within the Turkish metropolis of Gaziantep, 17-year-old Adnan Muhammed Korkut, was trapped for 4 days earlier than he was rescued. He informed the personal IHA information company that he grew so thirsty that he drank his personal urine.
Muhammet Enes Yeninar, 17, and his 21-year-old brother had been saved after 198 hours in close by Kahramanmaras.
He mentioned they cried for the primary two days, principally questioning about their mom and whether or not she had survived, IHA reported. They later started to consolation one another ? ?speaking about brotherhood? and consuming powdered protein.
Additionally in Kahramanmaras, Aleyna Olmez, 17, was pulled free after 248 hours below the rubble.
“I attempted to move the time by myself,” she mentioned.
Tales of exceptional survival typically emerge throughout a catastrophe, particularly following earthquakes, when the world’s media information the fading hope of recovering survivors as every hour ticks by.
Following the 2010 Haiti earthquake, a 16-year-old lady was rescued in Port-Au-Prince 15 days after an earthquake devastated the town. Three years later, a girl trapped below a collapsed constructing in Dhaka, Bangladesh, was saved after 17 days.
