Ahan rai
8th November 2020
Elif Perincek rests in her hospital bed (Source- Turkish health ministry)
Sixty-five hours after the devastating quake that hit on a Monday morning, the girl identified by the authorities as Elif Perincek was rescued. The firefighter who rescued the girl from her house's ruins, Muammer Celik, told CNN that she squeezed his hand close until she was taken away from the rubble to safety.
"I thought she might be in the space between her bed and her dresser. I went in that direction, and that is where I found her lying on her back. I picked her up. I cleaned her face got rid of the dust. She held my finger and would not let go until we got to the ambulance," said Celik. He also added that "Elif is our miracle."
On Monday, Fahrettin Koca, the Turkish Minister of Health, said that the three-year-old was admitted to the hospital and treated in 'intensive care.' She did not experience any significant fractures or muscle crush injuries and was in good health, he added. Fahrettin Koca, later on, said that Perincek 's mother and two others had been saved earlier; however, tragically, one of her siblings died.
Just hours after another boy was found alive beneath the debris and safely carried to the surface by emergency workers, the reports of the rescue arrived. Turkey's Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) said that 14-year-old Idil Sirin was rescued after being stuck under a collapsing house for more than 58 hours.
In a video captured by one Turkish citizen, dozens of locals are seen cheering as she is being freed from the rubble, adding to Sirin's rescue's dramatic moment. According to Anadolu, Sirin was treated with first aid at the scene before being transported to a local hospital.
The quake was said to have struck Fourteen kilometres (8.7 miles) northeast of the town of Neon Karlovasion on the Greek island Samos, as confirmed by the USGS (United States Geological Survey), at a comparatively shallow depth of twenty-one kilometres (13 miles). Cause of this, the impact of the earthquake was quite powerfully around the epicentre at ground level. After the earthquake, measured as magnitude 7.0 by the 'US Geological Survey,' shook parts of both Greece and Turkey on Friday. It was reported that at least ninety-one people died, and nine hundred and ninety-one people were injured.
According to Izmir Mayor Tunc Soyer, about twenty buildings in Izmir were severely damaged by the tremor. A vast number of them were also damaged in the middle-class of the 'Bayrakli neighbourhood.'
Turkey's disaster agency also added that the earthquake had triggered what the authorities referred to as a 'mini tsunami', causing floods on the streets of Turkey's wider Izmir province while also flooding some areas of Samos. More than nine hundred aftershocks were reported after the initial quake, forty-two of them with a magnitude greater than 4.0.
(Sources- CNN, People, New Indian Express, Today)
Edited by- Arjun Rohit Vikraman