Factors vary but experts say people trapped in the rubble of an earthquake can survive for up to a week or more. They emphasize that it depends on their injuries, how they are trapped, and the weather conditions.
Search teams from around the world have joined local emergency personnel in Türkiye and Syria to look for victims from this week's devastating earthquakes that has killed thousands. So far, from infants to elderly people, a large number of earthquake victims have been rescued alive.
Most rescues occur in the first 24 hours after a disaster. After that, survival chances drop as each day passes, experts said. Many victims are badly injured or buried by falling stones or other debris. Access to water and air to breathe are crucial factors, along with weather conditions. Chilly and winter conditions in Syria and Türkiye have hampered rescue efforts and temperatures have dipped well below freezing.
"Typically, it is rare to find survivors after the fifth to seventh days, and most search and rescue teams will consider stopping by then,'' Dr. Jarone Lee, an emergency and disaster medicine expert at Massachusetts General Hospital told Associated Press (AP). "But, there are many stories of people surviving well past the seven-day mark. Unfortunately, these are usually rare and extraordinary cases.'' People with trauma injuries, including crush injuries and limb amputations, face the most critical survival window, said Dr. George Chiampas, an emergency medicine specialist at Northwestern University’s Feinberg medical school. "If you don’t pull them out in one hour, in that golden hour, there’s really a very low chance of survival," he said. Those with other illnesses, whose health depends on medications, also face grim chances, Chiampas said.
Age, physical and mental condition are all critical. "You see a lot of different scenarios where we’ve had some really miraculous saves and people have survived under horrible conditions," said Dr. Christopher Colwell, an emergency medicine specialist at the University of California, San Francisco. "They tend to be younger people and have been fortunate enough to find either a pocket in the rubble or some way to access needed elements like air and water.'' After the 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami, a teenager and his 80-year-old grandmother were found alive after nine days trapped in their flattened home. The year before, a 16-year-old Haitian girl was rescued from earthquake rubble in Port-Au-Prince after 15 days. Mental state can also affect survival. People trapped next to bodies, who have no contact with other survivors or rescuers, may give up hope, Chiampas noted. "If you have someone who is alive, you’re leaning on each other to keep fighting," he said.
More than 90% of earthquake survivors are rescued within the first three days, Ilan Kelman, a professor of disasters and health at University College London told Agence France-Presse (AFP). With the 72-hour window closing early on Thursday morning, Kelman told AFP as to why this timeframe is so important. "Generally, earthquakes do not kill people, collapsing infrastructure kills people," said Kelman, who has published research on quake rescue responses. The most pressing factor is getting medical attention to people crushed under collapsed buildings before "their bodies fail" or they bleed out, he said. Kelman said that normally "the vast majority of survivors are brought out within 24 hours by local teams, often using no more than bare hands or shovels."