Rescuers today pulled a 10-year-old girl alive from the ruins of an apartment building in Turkey’s Hatay province, 183 hours after earthquake of 7.8 degrees that shocked the region, reports the Reuters agency citing the TRT Haber network.
An hour earlier, a 13-year-old boy had been recovered alive in the same area.
While hopes of finding more survivors in the wreckage are fading, the death toll from last week’s earthquakes in Turkey and neighboring Syria has already exceeded 37,000 and is certain to rise.
Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay said 574 children pulled from rubble were unaccompanied. Of these, 76 were eventually reunited with family members.
A team of 200 volunteers, including psychologists, lawyers and doctors, set up coordination centers in the ten affected provinces. Their goal: to locate unaccompanied children and return them to their families, with the assistance of the police.
“We’re getting a flood of calls” said Hatiche Goz, a volunteer at the Hatay Provincial Coordination Center. The group also records families looking for their children, gathering information on their age, characteristics and address.
“We have dedicated teams. They constantly analyze all the information we receive and compare it with the hospital files“, Hatice explained.
“When I saw the list yesterday, the number of missing children we have been informed about was 180. We have handed over 30 to their families,” he added.
Children who are pulled alive from the wreckage are taken to the nearest hospitals but are not always accompanied by a parent. “If the child can’t talk, the family can’t find them.” commented Hatice according to what is relayed by the Athens News Agency.
Source: News Beast
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