Australian rescuers tell their stories

Six days after the catastrophic earthquake struck south-eastern Turkey, Dr. Rob Scott recovered the bodies of two teenage girls from the rubble that was their home.

“They were sisters,” Scott recalls. “Her extended family was all waiting by the side of the road.”

“I won’t forget the sounds and emotions as we brought these girls out and gave them back to their families. They were absolutely desperate.”

“They had already lost the girls’ parents … their little brother, who must have been around three or four years old, was sitting there crying with the others.”

Looking down the street, Scott saw the same scene over and over again, as families waited for rescuers to recover their dead loved ones from under tons of cement and bent metal.

The accident doctor and anesthetist from Sydney had just arrived in the devastated city of Antakya, the capital of Hatay province.

He was part of a team of 72 Australians trained in urban search and rescue who had been dispatched to help local rescue workers search for survivors and retrieve the dead from the rubble that just days earlier contained homes, hospitals, schools and shops had been.

Scott volunteered for the mission within 48 hours of the February 6 earthquake at 4:17 a.m. local time. It would be the first overseas assignment for the paramedic, who normally splits his time between St George’s Hospital in south-east Sydney and rescuing critically injured people with the NSW Ambulance.

“My heart was in my mouth as I agreed to go and asked my wife and told the kids what happened,” said the father of three young daughters, ages 10, 8 and 5.

The team consisted of two accident doctors and five paramedics from NSW Ambulance, 60 NSW fire and rescue workers, one NSW police officer and four members of the Department for Foreign Affairs and Trade’s National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA).

The team flew out the next day. It would take more than two days to get to Antakya.

This would be Murray Traynor’s fourth international assignment. The 36-year-old paramedic had been on the scene after the 2008 tsunami in Samoa, after the 2011 earthquake in Christchurch and after the 2015 cyclone in Vanuatu.

But even Traynor found the extent of the destruction in Antakya overwhelming.

“The whole city, about the size of Parramatta, was reduced to rubble,” Traynor said.

The damage from the earthquake and its aftershocks covered an area of ​​around 350,000 square kilometers (about the size of Germany) through Turkey and across the Syrian border.

It is the deadliest natural disaster in Turkey’s modern history with more than 55,700 dead – 48,400 in Turkey and more than 7,200 in Syria.

An estimated 2.4 million people have been left homeless, seeking shelter in tents and temporary shelters, and more than 850,000 children remain displaced, the United Nations International Organization for Migration says.

Australians knew there was little chance of finding large numbers of survivors so many days after the first earthquake. They heard reports from other rescue teams finding a handful of people alive in basements and other air pockets under the rubble, but the Australians found no living victims in their 10 days in the field.

“We had all the instruments and machines and other countries had dogs that we could use to find possible living victims … but unfortunately that wasn’t the case,” Traynor said.

Recovering the dead and returning their bodies to their families became their main task.

In one day, the crew recovered 12 victims, including children as young as two, Traynor said.

“There were a lot of children that we pulled out of the rubble. That would reach anyone, I don’t care what anyone says,” he said.

“Families would beg you to go inside. To be able to give back their loved ones, so they can mourn and bury with dignity… that’s how we’ve done it.”

The father of a 12-year-old girl buried under the remains of her home had to be dragged away from the site for fear of injury.

“But at the end of the day he was so grateful that we found his daughter. At least he had his child to mourn again. Each of us will have such a memory,” Traynor said.

Australian paramedics and doctors were responsible for the health and well-being of their fellow Australians while they searched the dangerous terrain.

“The team did some heroic things to ensure the deceased could be returned to their families and they had the expertise to do so safely,” Traynor said of the crew, who were struggling amid piles of rubble beneath buildings amid aftershocks and the possibility of further earthquakes.

They were set up to treat major trauma and acute injuries, but fortunately none existed.

In total, the team brought 22 tons of equipment to ensure they are fully self-sufficient and not further draining local resources.

They set up their base of operations in a fairground parking lot and slept in tents when the temperature dropped below minus 10 degrees overnight.

At the end of the mission, the Australians donated a large part of their medical supplies (medicines and consumables) to Turkish health facilities.

Locals, despite their own deep traumas, showed unwavering hospitality to Australians, offering them countless cigarettes and cups of tea and coffee, Traynor said.

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“An old man on his 120cc bike came by and shook hands with all of us and said, ‘Thanks for coming,'” he said. “It’s something that will stay with me for a long time,” he said.

On February 20th, the last day in the field before the Australians left for home, there was another major earthquake.

For Scott, this 6.3 magnitude tremor revealed the fragility of the lives of survivors and the ongoing humanitarian crisis that would likely continue for years to come.

“I just wanted to come home and hug my kids,” he said.

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