United Hatzalah Emergency Rescue Mission Commander Yossi Cohen announced that the organization's rescue teams are currently working in the Turkish city of Kahramanmaraş helping victims of the earthquake. They were alerted to the possibility of victims still trapped underneath the rubble of the two severe earthquakes that hit Turkey and Syria this week.
"Our team arrived at the site of a destroyed building. We joined the Israeli Home Front Command Search and Rescue units active in the area,” Cohen said. “We weren't allowed to split up our team due to security concerns. We began assisting in the rescue currently underway in one particular building. This was a residential building that was 9 stories high when it was standing. The building pancaked when it collapsed during the earthquake."
"As other rescue units left that building after assessing that there were no casualties, we were alerted by locals that there were still people trapped underneath who were suspected to be alive. United Hatzalah team members entered the ruins accompanied by an engineer from the search and rescue units. After approximately three hours of searching, they were able to make contact with those trapped by utilizing tapping techniques (recurring patterns of tapping on collapsed walls) to verify that there were indeed a number of people alive.”
Cohen added: "From what we were able to ascertain there are between four and ten people still alive in the rubble and we are currently working to get them out. The team is scheduled to be staying at the disaster zone in Kahrmanmaras throughout the day and into the night in order to save as many lives as we can. We have found many people who are deceased and we are trying to get to those who are still alive."