Argentine White Helmets arrived in Turkey: ‘Where we work there are reports of living people’

The Turkish city of Adana, located 922 kilometers from Istanbul, is very close to the epicenter of the two earthquakes that occurred on Monday February 6, which They have already caused more than 27,000 deaths between this country and northern Syria. Before the earthquake, it had 2,183,000 inhabitants. It is the fifth largest city in Turkey. No one could risk its current population.

They are here right now 33 members of the Argentine search and rescue mission who left Ezeiza on Thursday evening, arrived this Saturday, February 11 at noon from our country to Istanbul, and from there went to Andana. They belong to the Argentine Agency for International Cooperation and Humanitarian Assistance – White Helmets (ACIAH)-, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, International Trade and Cults and Argentine Federal USAR Group. They had the daunting task, five days after the earthquakes, to find survivors among the remains of a huge building where families lived, the very one where their colleagues from Spain and Portugal are already working.

Veronique Ayala He is part of the Argentine contingent. Coordinator of emergency health logistics of the White Helmets, interrupted for a few moments the assembly of the camp where the group will settle for at least ten days to speak with GlobeLiveMedia. He has just arrived from where the humanitarian mission will have to work, six kilometers from where it is setting up its headquarters. The night in Adana is cold and the thermal sensation marks 2 degrees at 10 p.m. The Argentinians will be under the orders of two regional coordinators from the Turkish Disaster Management Agency (AFAD), who has 160,000 rescuers operating in this country. This is not the first time that Ayala has been confronted with the heartbreaking images left by an earthquake: he has been to Haiti twice, during the disasters of 2010 and 2021, and to Ecuador in 2019.

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The first thing she admits is that she is “tired”. realize that he’s barely slept two hours since he left Buenos Aires. During the trip, they devoted themselves to planning what will be their performance from today. “Today, as soon as we arrived, we went to one of the impact zones. Specific sites are assigned, which can be a building, a hotel, a house or a hospital. We had a particular, family building. We know that we have a difficult job ahead of us, on the one hand due to the scale of the disaster and we have to do it in a short time, and on the other hand it is complicated by the low temperatures that are recorded here and by how the structures were left,” he points out.

Despite reports circulating that in several places in Turkey they have stopped searching for people trapped in the rubble, she is confident it is not too late to act. Although 72 hours after the disaster, the chances of finding survivors are reduced, there have already been more than 80,000 rescues, which restores hope and boosts the morale of rescuers. Ayala points out that “I couldn’t say how the other contexts are, today was our first day in the field and there is activity, a lot of people working. And from what we’ve been told, there are reports that there are people alive where we need to intervene. We are a mixed group: there are logisticians, liaison and coordination people, interpreters, and the specific search and rescue team, in which we have a couple who brought together two canines specialists in the search for people among the rubble”.

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The dogs are Akira, a border collie; And Indian, a Belgian malinois. They, Ayala says, are essential, as they are trained to “detect human remains”. “Looking for They are the first to find footprints and traces, to allow the rest of the team to access and perform the rescue task. This particular group is led by Commissioner Daniel Iglesias42 years and 25 years of service.

The total equipment transported by the Argentine mission is three tons, among which are communication equipment with two futurecom portable repeaters, which weigh 82 kilograms; an 800MHz-VHF cross-band repeater; thirty portable multiband radios 700/800 MHz, VHF, UHF Range 1 and 2; two APX multi-battery chargers; two Yagi-Uda type antennas with a gain of 12 dBi; two panel antennas with 6 dBi gain; two antennas of the collinear type with a gain of 5 dBi; two 10 dBi gain dipole antennas; an Automess 6150 radiological measuring device; an endoscope; a thermal camera; a multigas team; an explosimeter and other items such as task-specific clothing such as four encapsulated suits, eight laminated suits with chemical protection, 8 parts nitrile gloves, chemical resistant boots and rescue rope up to 50 meters. As indicated, the group is made up of highly qualified personnel in terms of technical research; canine search; medical assistance; Hazardous Material; structural engineering; support for reception and departure centers (DRC), support for the field operations coordination center (OSOCC), as well as support for the USAR coordination unit (UC).

Ayala says that each of the situations he had to experience in terms of earthquakes was different. “We already have a strategy on how to work. We are the ones who have little time on the pitch. But contexts change. In Haiti, for example, it was not the same the first time as the second. Yes, there are things that repeat themselves, like despair, limited time to work. Of course, in Haiti it was very hot and here it is very cold. Also the language and culture are different. Especially because communication is vitally important in times like these, for this reason We have Turkish and English interpreters.

In principle, it will be ten days since the Argentine delegation will act. But Ayala maintains that it is temporary. “We don’t know if they will change our area, but for now this is the site they have assigned to us. It will depend on how the situation develops, but being here to represent Argentina is a source of pride, We are a very united country”.

The situation in Turkey is desperate. After the 7.8 earthquakes that occurred on Monday, February 6 at 4:17 a.m. local time in Gaziantep and the second in Kahramanmaraş on the same day at 1:24 p.m. local time with an intensity of 7.7 on the Mercali scale, there are more than 27 thousand dead and the number of injured exceeded 87 thousand. The destroyed houses are, according to current estimates, more than 12 thousand. And the UN has reported that some 870,000 people are in dire need of food.

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