Kyrgyz women dog handlers in quake-hit Türkiye to 'do whatever is possible'

Kyrgyz women dog handlers in quake-hit Türkiye to 'do whatever is possible'

Ana, Elina are part of 7-member team from Central Asian nation trying to find survivors in southern Türkiye

By Riyaz ul Khaliq

KAHRAMANMARAS, Türkiye (AA) – The place is teeming with people, yet there is pin-drop silence.

This is a search site in the city center of Kahramanmaras, a yawning crater filled with towering heaps of debris.

Hope for a survivor has been sparked by a sound heard from deep down one of the mangled mounds of concrete and memories.

The silence is suddenly pierced by an excited bark as a dog comes into view, followed closely by a woman clad in camouflage green rescue gear.

Tia is no normal dog, but a canine specifically trained to sniff out any sign of life in disaster areas.

Ana, her handler, leads her away from the site as rescuers hone in on the area she just identified with a tap of her paw.

“We are here to help the people of Türkiye,” Ana, who just gave her first name, told Anadolu via an interpreter.

She sat down for a quick rest on a pavement a few meters away from the site, joining her colleague Elina, who had her own canine partner.

“Too many people have been affected and we will do whatever is possible,” said Ana, who is part of a seven-member group from Kyrgyzstan.

“We are here because people need help, and helping Turkish people is important to us,” she added.

By Thursday afternoon, the death toll from the Feb. 6 twin tremors had risen above 36,100 in Türkiye.

The two powerful earthquakes have affected some 13 million people in 11 provinces – Kahramanmaras, Hatay, Gaziantep, Adiyaman, Malatya, Adana, Diyarbakir, Kilis, Osmaniye, Sanliurfa, and Elazig.


- A team caring for the dead

On the other side of the same disaster site, an excavator was plugging away at debris, removing it bit by bit.

Workers on that side were not looking for a survivor, but rather carefully scouring the area after being informed there might be a victim under the rubble.

Waiting patiently for that eventuality is a team from Europe, which has the particularly macabre task of handling bodies of disaster victims.

“We are called the Death Care group,” said Kay Seeman, the team leader from Germany.

He said the group was previously in Türkiye in the aftermath of the 1999 Izmit earthquake, but the situation this time is even more terrible.

Once they have a body, the team takes samples for identification purposes and applies preservatives to stave off immediate decomposition, he explained.

“I can judge the condition of the body just by the smell. Our entire work, in fact, is by nose,” Seeman said.

While the searches continue – both for a possible survivor and for a body – rescue personnel take short breaks, some lying under the sun on a dusty mattress clearly pulled out from the debris.

Nearby lies a wooden trunk with documents, books, shoes, and the remains of a money box, while Turkish security personnel keep a close watch on the entire crowd.

They are still searching for trapped people but it is also becoming “hard for those who have died,” said Seeman, referring to the state of decomposition.

Explaining his team’s process, he said: “Soon after we take custody of the body, we use preservatives, do the identification by taking fingerprints, while our doctors also take tooth and DNA samples.”

He said the team aims to send the bodies on for burial “without wasting more time.”

“We take an average of 10 minutes for each body,” he said, adding that Death Care has tended to more than 1,000 victims over the past week.

Seeman’s team, which has members from France, Germany, and the Netherlands, is expecting a second group to join them soon.

He was full of praise for Turkish people and the love they have shown the thousands of foreign personnel who have flown in for relief efforts.

“What makes us happy is to see Turks come to us, offering food and other things,” said Seeman.

Death Care teams were also in Taiwan after an earthquake in 2005, a year after they joined the massive operations following the catastrophic 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.​​​​​​​

Kaynak:Source of News

This news has been read 118 times in total

ADD A COMMENT to TO THE NEWS
UYARI: Küfür, hakaret, rencide edici cümleler veya imalar, inançlara saldırı içeren, imla kuralları ile yazılmamış,
Türkçe karakter kullanılmayan ve büyük harflerle yazılmış yorumlar onaylanmamaktadır.
Previous and Next News