The aftermath of the Feb. 6 earthquakes in Türkiye has not been short of miracles as people emerge unscathed from a landscape of rubble spanning for blocks.
Hüseyin Berber's voice was hoarse from calling for help when he was trapped under the rubble of his home, but he was finally freed more than a week after the earthquake, defying the odds for survival. Doctors opined people can survive even without water for days. However, there are so many variables that affect the possibility of survival such as injuries sustained by the victims, their health status, the weather condition, etc. Given the circumstances, rescuers believed any survivor rescued after five days is miraculous.
Berber, a 62-year-old diabetic, survived 187 hours after the walls of his ground-floor apartment were propped up by a fridge and a cabinet, leaving him an armchair to sit in and a rug to keep him warm. He had a single bottle of water, and when that ran out, drank his own urine.
Berber was speaking from a bed at Mersin City Hospital on Wednesday, some 250 kilometers (155.3 miles) from the 15-story building that collapsed in the city of Antakya in southern Hatay province, where half the buildings were either destroyed or heavily damaged. He was admitted on Tuesday.
He said he had been surrounded by relatives in different rooms in his apartment, all of whom he believes managed to survive. "When the earthquake hit, I immediately stood up, my grandchild was sleeping next to me. I looked around, my son turned on a light, took a flashlight and said 'Father, it's an earthquake!' In a second tremor, the ceiling collapsed, but it did not hit me. I immediately crouched and sat down. The wall fell over on to fridge and the cabinet. I was stuck there. There was a rug. I took that and put it over me ... I saw there was an armchair, I climbed over it took the rug and sat there. "I shouted, shouted and shouted. No one could hear me. I shouted so much that my throat hurt. Our son, I think took out the kids ... we were five people, my son and I were in the bedroom." He said he found his diabetes medicine and a bottle of water on the floor. "An hour later, I took (the water bottle) and drank it. Apologies, I peed in it and let it rest. I drank it when it got cold. I saved myself with that."
A member of the Turkish medical rescue team said people under the rubble can generally survive up to five days. "Anything beyond five days is a miracle," he said. Deniz Gezer, the internal medicine specialist at Mersin City Hospital, said one of the biggest problems for survival was the frigid weather. "But some patients stayed in closed areas, so they can live under buildings, in small closed spaces. Some have water with them."
Mohana Amirtharajah, a surgery adviser with Doctors Without Borders (MSF), said dehydration happens faster in children. Asked whether drinking urine was a genuine survival strategy, she said she would not recommend it. "But there are definitely case reports of people who survive that way. But what you will find over time is you become more and more dehydrated, is that your urine becomes more and more concentrated. So the actual water content of your urine will go down."
Berber, in his hospital bed, surrounded by beeping machines, said he thought no one was going to save him. "I was here, they were there. I climbed next to the cabinet, I am reaching out to the ceiling but I couldn't make it. But on the other side of the room, it collapsed onto the bed. Our son brought three diggers, they are digging. I was hitting the ceiling, I saw it is punctured, I heard a voice, I shouted."
"Someone reached their hand out and it met with my hand. They pulled me out from there. The hole I got out of was tiny. That scared me a bit. I remember nothing after they pulled me out. I was rescued, I got out, and I wanted water and food, especially water. I ate nothing, there was nothing to eat."
"It means, I did good deeds with Allah, I stayed in Mecca for seven years, hajj, umrah, prayers, for everyone not only for my family. I think because of that God saved me," he shared.
Çağlar Aksoy Çolak, a doctor at Mersin City Hospital, said doctors only provided "supportive treatment" for Berber. "He has no broken bones, his general status is fairly good ... He actually took care of himself down there. Our patient came out in a very good condition."
Meanwhile, doctors continue to treat an 8-month-old baby who fell five stories from an apartment building during the earthquake, calling her survival miraculous. Birce Fansa fell from the fifth floor of the building with her cradle during the quakes in Hatay's Antakya district. Her mother and father, Nilay and Cengiz, were rescued from the building's rubble 13 and 33 hours after the quake, respectively, while her older siblings Alin and Nil did not survive.
The baby was noticed by the people when she was crying and was taken to Adana City Hospital by ambulance for medical help.
Dr. Nurşah Keskin, who is treating the baby at the hospital, told reporters that Birce is very lucky. "We started treatments to reverse intracranial hemorrhage. Her leg is broken ... Much worse things could have happened with the impact of hitting the ground. God protected her, it's a miracle," she said. The mother said at first she did not know that Birce was alive but now she feels relieved.
At least 35,400 people were killed by two strong earthquakes that jolted southern Türkiye on Feb. 6, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Tuesday.
The magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 tremors last week were centered in Kahramanmaraş and struck nine other provinces-Hatay, Gaziantep, Adıyaman, Malatya, Adana, Diyarbakır, Kilis, Osmaniye, and Şanlıurfa. Over 13 million people have been affected by the devastating quakes. In neighboring Syria, at least 3,688 people were killed and over 14,749 were injured.
