With few official emergency workers present, earthquake survivors have no choice but to save themselves
For 60 hours, Barış Yapar tried to dig his grandparents’ bodies out from under the rubble of their own home. With his parents, Habip and Sevcan, the 27-year-old clinical psychology student tried in vain to extract the corpses. It was desperate work. It took two full days following Monday’s devastating twin earthquake before Turkey’s official disaster relief agency reached the town of Samandağ near the Syrian border; when they finally arrived, the small number of rescuers were stretched thin.
The Yapars watched as rescue workers pulled people from the smashed concrete the family had known for generations. There was Semire Zubari who owned the local market they had shopped at for years; there was the body of Gönül Sakallı who Barış had known since he was a child.
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