Man’s heartbreaking quest to catch last glimpse of his kin lost in rubble

HATAY — On Ataturk Avenue in Antakya, a lone mountaineering tent is perched subsequent to a mangled heap of iron rebars and concrete. Men in shiny orange and yellow luminescent jackets could be seen speeding up and down the particles.

Nearby, excavators are digging into the rubble of a number of buildings that collapsed into one another on the fateful night time of February 6, when a 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck southern and southeastern Türkiye, killing greater than 40,000 individuals. 

The tent was erected by Mustafa Kazazz, a 25-year-old man with broad shoulders and trimmed hair. For the previous two fortnights, he has barely strayed away from his tent — his dirt-stained pants and worn-out boots poked with holes bear testomony to his dedication. 

“We have found someone’s limb. We’ll keep you posted with more updates,” was the most recent replace Kazazz obtained from two males from AFAD, Türkiye’s catastrophe administration company, on the morning of February 21. 

Antakya, the biggest district in  Hatay, was one of many province’s worst hit. And Kazazz misplaced his whole household — his father, mom, two sisters and brother. 

Even with all of the heavy-duty machines and fashionable gadgets, finding and extracting our bodies is a protracted, arduous course of. AFAD groups have first to take away particles piece by piece, guaranteeing heavy concrete slabs stay intact. One flawed step can destablise the concrete wreckage and crush the our bodies caught beneath. 

The earthquakes of magnitudes 7.7 and seven.6 have left of their wake tales of ache, grief and longing. 

Tens of hundreds of survivors reside in tents. Many have moved to different cities. Authorities have dug out hundreds of our bodies and buried lots of of unidentified ones. The seek for lacking individuals — all presumed lifeless by now — continues. 

Across the district, authorities and reduction organisations have arrange short-term tent cities with lots of of kitchens and cell bathrooms. Lentils and beans are made in massive pots, tea being distributed from kiosks run by completely different municipalities. 

While our bodies are being pulled out within the absence of their subsequent of kin, Kazazz refuses to go away his members of the family behind within the mountain-high pile of particles. For him, time stopped at 4:17 am on February 6. 

Kazazz is a translator and works in Trabzon as a tour information — a considerably better-paying job than he would have present in Antakya that has helped him save sufficient cash to help his household from afar. 

Upon listening to the news of the dual earthquakes, he drove again to his hometown with a pal in a rented automotive and reached the seven-storey residential constructing the place his household lived — on the primary ground — inside a day. He pushed by way of the chaos and visitors jams whereas details about the size of the catastrophe slowly trickled in.

“I found a sledgehammer and frantically began to dig a hole,” he says. Kazazz was capable of finding the our bodies of his mom and one sister — these have been the one ones his cumbersome physique allowed him to achieve as he crawled into crevices within the rubble. 

He attended the funeral of his mom and sister, who have been buried in a government-managed graveyard carved out for the earthquake victims within the Narlica neighbhourhood. 

At instances, Kazazz finds himself hoping in opposition to hope, convincing himself that his brother would possibly nonetheless be alive beneath the rubble.

“My brother is a strong guy. I know he can make it,” he says, his voice drowned by the noise of the excavators and different digging machines being utilized by AFAD to interrupt heavy concrete slabs. 

Although the window of alternative for rescues closed over per week in the past, Kazazz’s hope to see his brother alive is a transparent symptom of his grief.

Just two days earlier than the catastrophe hit the nation, Kazazz had come to see his household in Antakya after an absence of two lengthy years. “I couldn’t come here often enough because I was the one making a living and supporting the household,” he says. 

His mom had discovered a match for him named Fatima. The duo bought engaged over the past week of January. On his quick go to simply earlier than the earthquakes, he and his mom went looking for gold and mentioned different preparations for his forthcoming marriage. 

He returned to Trabzon on February 5 — a day earlier than the earthquakes struck.  His would-be bride additionally died, her physique discovered buried in rubble in one other neighbourhood. 

On February 20, Kazazz stood outdoors his tent watching AFAD staff pull 11 our bodies out from the rubble of a constructing that had stood subsequent to his household’s residence. The our bodies have been discovered mendacity beneath what would have been a stairwell, indicating that the victims may need tried to hurry out down the steps, however weren’t capable of make it out in time. 

Observing the corpses, Kazazz felt he is likely to be getting nearer to giving his remaining members of the family correct burials. But a couple of hours later, when yet one more earthquake struck Hatay on Monday night, shaking the damaged buildings and particles left behind by the preliminary quakes simply two weeks earlier, staff excavating the rubble of his residence ran for his or her lives — as did everybody else. 

“I lost my whole family in one day… Allah, please don’t do this to someone else,” he says, breaking into tears as a gust of wind blows grime into the air. 

By Wednesday afternoon, he was standing his floor, steadfast in his dedication to seek out the our bodies of his family members. But no phrase got here from the AFAD staff as they continued eradicating the particles with care.  

“My mother wanted me to get married so badly. She wanted to see her grandchildren,” he says. “I wasn’t able to fulfill her wish. I will live with that regret for the rest of my life.”

Source: TRT World