CNN
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More than 10 days after a devastating 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit Turkey and Syria, people continue to be pulled from the rubble, defying hopes of surviving hours.
Rescue worker Özer Aydinli told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr Sanjay Gupta this week: “Of course, we think this is impossible, because it’s not possible to get someone out alive after 10 The day will be a really big surprise for us.”
Aydinli and his team rescued a 13-year-old boy named Mustafa from the rubble 228 hours – almost 10 days – after the earthquake.
“When [our friends] say, ‘We found someone alive,’ we thought, ‘No, they must be hallucinating.’ We couldn’t believe it. But it is a miracle. … The only thing we can say is this is a great miracle,” he said.
Search and rescue lectures have so far emphasized the “golden 48 hours” after a building collapse, in which the chance of being saved is the highest. Some learn says the majority of live rescues happen within the first five or six days.
However, everyone continued save from the rubble of the 6 February earthquake, including Mustafa.
“I don’t know how he survived for 228 hours, because when the excavator was working, there was more debris falling around, filling the space above and below him, so we didn’t any intact housing structure could be seen, because it was buried. it’s all rubble,” rescue worker Uğur Sevgin told Gupta. “Then, from the wreckage, we took him out, dug him out with our hands.”
Amidst the rubble, Aydinli said, there was only a pair of eyes and then a cry of “Brother!”
“When we saw it, when we heard it, there were 70, 80 people in the crew, and when we said there was one person alive, all our friends went to that area. ,” Aydinli said. “No one moved, and we were all crying. And even now, we still shed tears from time to time.”
Aydinli says Mustafa may have been trapped in the “triangle of life,” explained by a theory that when buildings collapse, ceilings fall on objects or furniture inside, leaving a possible space next to the person.
“After watching Mustafa, I completely believe there will be others. It was a miracle,” Sevgin said. “But, of course, that seems to be scientifically impossible. It’s been 10 days and it’s still going up.”
Some rescue teams follow the “four-man rule,” which assumes that trapped people can survive four minutes without air, four days without water, and four weeks without food.
However, research to show that that the “general, rigid time frame” may not be accurate, as survival can be prolonged under rare conditions.
In Turkey, for example, experts suggest that people trapped in collapsed residential buildings may have had access to some source of water or food.
“You really just need some air, oxygen, water and perhaps some food to survive, hopefully just enough for the rescuers to find you,” said Dr. emergencies and disasters, said medical specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital. “But I think it also has to do with the kind of trauma that occurs during the initial breakdown and insult, if they are only slightly injured compared to major trauma to internal organs like your liver, etc.”
Lee says a person’s underlying health is key. People with pre-existing medical conditions — those who can’t access their medications or whose medications have side effects like dehydration — have a lower chance of survival.
“I think the people that will continue to be found will be younger people, maybe children and other healthier people. … Children are also usually smaller and there is always a chance that they are in a crash zone where they can outlast just because they are smaller,” Lee said.
Cold temperatures can stave off dehydration and heat exhaustion in stranded people, experts say, but sub-freezing temperatures in Turkey and Syria are doing more harm than good.
“In trauma patients, cold temperatures are not good for general physiology. After some degree of hypothermia, the heart can stop working. Dr Girma Tefera, medical director of the American College of Surgeons’ Operation Giving Back, said clotting factors don’t work well and other serious physiological disturbances occur.
Advances in search and rescue training and technology, including the use of dogs, drones, and on-site IV rehydration, may also account for the extended survival time.
Lee said that while he hoped for more survivors, these were “unusual or rare circumstances” given the more than 43,000 deaths following the quake. “In many ways, these are still a handful of people who survived the countless devastation and unfortunate deaths.”
Rescue is just the first step on a survivor’s road to recovery.
At Adana City Research and Teaching Hospital, the largest trauma hospital in the region, more than 5,000 patients were treated in the week following the earthquake.
Dr Suleyman Cetinkunar, the hospital’s chief of staff, told Gupta that the majority of injuries included “limb amputation, contusion and brain injury”.
In addition to injuries from collapse, patients can develop “crush syndrome,” when compressed muscle tissue is eventually released and broken down, releasing toxins into the bloodstream. These toxins can damage the kidneys and lead to kidney failure, causing seemingly stable patients to rapidly deteriorate after emergency care.
During their interview, the team received another call to the helipad to receive a 26-year-old man who had crush syndrome and needed immediate dialysis.
“Even getting out of the wreckage is a big step towards getting them into a stable hospital. But they don’t come out of the woods in any way. There’s a high chance they might still not survive in the hospital,” said Lee of Massachusetts General.
Getting medical care is even more difficult when hospital buildings, like most buildings, are not immune to earthquakes.
Governments and non-profit organizations have set up field hospitals, tent hospitals, and even hospital ships to continue caring for earthquake victims.
Gupta talking to doctors People perform essential orthopedic surgery in tents set up in the parking lot of a dilapidated hospital in Antakya, Hatay province.
“I’ve worked in places where people like this don’t get surgery. They lay at home, exhausted. Some of them will get sores, blood clots, pneumonia and possibly die from it,” Dr. Greg Hellwarth, an orthopedic surgeon from Indiana, told Gupta.
Dr. Elliott Tenpenny, an emergency physician from North Carolina and director of the International Medical Unit for Samaritan’s Purse, showed Gupta a tour of the field hospital, where, between 5.0 aftershocks, they continue to control critical conditions such as blood loss and asthma.
“It’s not just about broken bones and heartbreak. It’s also about these patients,” Tenpenny told Gupta.
The floating hospital also provide immediate beds, operating rooms and even maternity wards. Unlike field hospitals on the ground, the captain told Gupta, hospital ships are relatively protected from the aftershocks that continue to ravage land.
Experts say the disaster caused disruptions in the healthcare system, putting people with chronic illnesses at risk of losing access to lifesaving drugs or medical appointments.
“The consequences of that will be weeks to years, months to years,” Lee said. “Unfortunately, the consequences will be huge from this.”
