ADIYAMAN, Turkey — As the human death toll surpassed 28,000, despair grew with each passing hour for those hoping to find their relatives alive in the rubble days after two earthquakes devastated Turkey and Syria.
But as rescue teams continued their round-the-clock search in sub-zero temperatures Saturday, the chances of finding survivors among those trapped in the concrete mounds of fallen houses and apartment blocks became slim, and the coordinator The United Nations emergency relief agency warned that the death toll could double.
In Turkey, 67 people had been pulled from the rubble in the past 24 hours, Vice President Fuat Oktay told reporters late Friday, the Associated Press reported. He added that around 80,000 people were being treated in a hospital, and more than 1 million had been made homeless and were in temporary shelters.
His comments came after NBC News witnessed 33-year-old Ozlem Yilmaz and his 6-year-old daughter, Zeliha, being pulled from the rubble of a building in the southeastern city of Adiyaman by Turkish miners. with the help of an American rescue team.
“This is a miracle,” their relative Ilkay Yavuz said after speaking to them in an ambulance. «How can a person live in rubble for five days?»
However, Yavuz’s joy was soon tempered by the fact that Ozlem’s 11-year-old daughter, Zeynep, had died. Her husband, her cousin, Oguzhan Yilmaz, 43, was confirmed dead on Saturday.
While local media reported more people had been pulled from the rubble on Saturday, Martin Griffiths, the UN’s emergency relief coordinator, warned that the death toll was likely to rise.
«I think it’s hard to estimate accurately as we have to hide under rubble, but I’m sure it will double or more,» he told British broadcaster Sky News on Saturday. That’s terrifying. This is nature fighting back in a really tough way.” (Sky News is owned by Comcast, the parent company of NBC News.)
The first of Monday’s devastating earthquakes hit Turkey and neighboring Syria in the early hours and registered a magnitude of 7.8. It rated as «major» on the official magnitude scale. Hours later, a second quake, registering at a magnitude of 7.6, struck nearby.