Taipei, Feb. 16 (CNA) A 40-strong contingent from a search and rescue team deployed by Taiwan to earthquake-struck Turkey was welcomed back to Pingtung late Wednesday, where they recounted their search for survivors in a city where 70-80 percent of buildings have been reduced to rubble.
The rescue workers from the Pingtung Fire Bureau's Special Search and Rescue Team were part of a 130-person team that departed for Adiyaman Province in southeastern Turkey on Feb. 7 and arrived back in Taiwan on Wednesday.
Upon returning to their home base at 10 p.m., they were met by Pingtung County Magistrate Chou Chun-mi (周春米), who distributed bonus pay and containers of chicken essence to help them recover from fatigue.
Speaking to reporters, the unit's deputy commander Chen Shih-hung (陳世鴻) said the subzero temperatures in Turkey had created difficult rescue conditions, though the team was constantly receiving provisions of firewood and even food and drinks from local residents.
"The image that is stamped on my eyelids is how 70-80 percent of the buildings [in Adiyaman] had collapsed," he said.
Moreover, because many of the city's buildings were constructed with cinder blocks, they lacked stability and tended to collapse "like mille-feuille cakes," Chen said, adding that there was a constant risk of aftershocks causing further damage.
Meanwhile, Chen said one of the highlights of their deployment was on Feb. 10, when they discovered a female survivor in a gap in the rubble where she was not being crushed by anything, and were able to pull her out.
After extracting the survivor from the rubble, Chen went to the woman's father who was waiting nearby and gave him a hug, "because I knew he still had family members missing inside," he said.
In interviews at the airport, meanwhile, other members of the Taiwan Search & Rescue Team said their mission in Turkey had been complicated by factors such as the weather and the remote location of the quake zone.
Lin Ching-wen (林清文), a squad member based in Taipei, said the freezing temperatures in the aftermath of the earthquake may have shortened the window in which rescue workers could find survivors.
Another rescue worker, Yeh Cheng-lung (葉正隆) of Pingtung, said the team had spent a long time on the road to Adiyaman, and that by the time they arrived, the Turkish government had already moved into the disaster zone with excavators, thus limiting their role in rescue operations.
A magnitude 7.8 earthquake hit southeast Turkey on Feb. 6. The death toll in Turkey and neighboring Syria has risen to above 40,000 as of Thursday morning Taiwan time.
