Mother clutched infant to her chest when rescuers reached them
© Cem Ozdel/AbacaRescue workers and heavy equipment work at the site of a collapsed building following the earthquake in Ercis, on Tuesday, Oct. 25.
Ercis, Turkey - Rescuers pulled a two-week-old baby girl alive from the wreckage of a collapsed apartment block Tuesday as they battled to find survivors from a earthquake in eastern Turkey that killed at least 432 people and left thousands homeless.
The baby's mother and a grandmother were also brought out alive on stretchers to jubilant cries from onlookers who followed the dramatic rescue under cold, pouring rain.
"It's a miracle!," said Senol Yigit, the uncle of the baby, Azra, whose name means "purity" or "untouched" in Arabic. "I'm so happy. What can I say. We have been waiting for two days. We had lost hope when we first saw the building," he said sobbing.
Television footage showed rescuers in orange jumpsuits clapping as the baby was removed from the wreckage. A rescuer cradled the naked infant, who was wrapped in a blanket and handed over to a medic.
The baby's mother, Semiha, had been pinned next to a sofa inside the flattened building before her rescue. She had been clutching the infant to her chest when rescuers reached them.
However, hope of finding more people alive under tons of rubble faded with every passing hour as rescuers pulled out more bodies.
The death toll from the 7.2-magnitude quake rose to 432, from an earlier 366, the Disaster and Emergency Administration said. The final count was likely to rise further as many people were still missing and 2,262 buildings had collapsed.
It said the epicentre of the aftershock was Degirmenozu, between Van city and the badly hit town of Ercis. An aftershock with a magnitude of 5.4 shook the southeast province of Van on Tuesday.
Thousands slept for a second night in crowded tents or huddled around fires and in cars across a region rattled by aftershocks in Van province, near the Iranian border.
The center of Van, a city of one million, resembled a ghost town, and in the hard-hit town of Ercis thousands of people roamed the streets.
© Microsoft/Navteq
'Waiting'Rescuers in two cities, Ercis and Van, raced to free people trapped inside mounds of concrete, twisted steel and construction debris. Authorities have warned survivors of the deadly quake not to enter damaged buildings and thousands spent a second night outdoors in cars or tents in near-freezing conditions, afraid to return to their homes.
In Ercis, the large crowd gathered at the scene applauded when a rescuer emerged cradling the baby in his arms. Relieved relatives pressed forward as she was taken to an ambulance.
"We have been waiting for almost 48 hours," said a teenaged boy cousin, whose mother was also missing. "I hope my mother and aunt will be rescued as well."
The family had been trapped since the apartment block, several stories high, collapsed when the quake stuck early on Sunday afternoon.
There was no word on the baby's father.
One side of the building was reduced to a pile of broken concrete masonry and mangled metal, while the other side was leaning, only propped up by a crane so that the rescue operation could continue more safely.
Dogan news agency said rescuers had pulled five people out of the rubble alive in the early hours of Tuesday, although many more bodies were discovered.
Oguz Isler, 9, was trapped for eight hours beneath the rubble of a relative's home. He was finally rescued, but on Tuesday he was waiting at the foot of the same pile of debris for news of his parents and of other relatives who remain buried inside.
The boy waited calmly in front of what was left of the five-story apartment block that used to be his aunt's home. The city of 75,000, close to the Iranian border, lies in one of Turkey's most earthquake-prone zones.
Turkish rescue workers in bright orange jumpsuits and Azerbaijani military rescuers in camouflage uniforms searched through the debris, using excavators, picks and shovels to look for Isler's mother and father and other relatives still inside.
Dogs sniffed for possible survivors in gaps that opened up as their work progressed.
"They should send more people," Isler said as he and other family members watched the rescuers. An elder cousin comforted him.
'Help! We're here'Mehmet Ali Hekimoglu, a medic, said the dogs indicated that there were three or four people inside the building, but it was not known if they were alive.
The boy, his sister and a cousin were trapped in the building's third-floor stairway as they tried to escape when the quake hit. A steel door fell over him.
"I fell on the ground face down. When I tried to move my head, it hit the door," he said. "I tried to get out and was able to open a gap with my fists in the wall but could not move my body further. The wall crumbled quickly when I hit it."
"We started shouting: 'Help! We're here,'" he said. "They found us a few hours later, they took me out about 8 1/2 hours later. ... I was OK but felt very bad, lonely. ... I still have a headache, but the doctor said I was fine."
Isler's 16-year-old sister, Ela, and 12-year-old cousin, Irem were also saved.
"They took me out last because I was in good shape and the door was protecting me. I was hearing stones falling on it," said Isler.
The government's response to the quake appeared to be well-coordinated because of the country's vast experience in dealing with killer quakes and their aftermaths. Hundreds of rescue teams from throughout Turkey rushed to the area, racing to find survivors, while Turkish Red Crescent dispatched tents and blankets and set up soup kitchens.
There was still no power or running water and aid distribution was at times disrupted as desperate people stopped trucks even before they entered Ercis, leading some residents to complain that they could not get tents and stoves for their families.
The Turkish Red Crescent was criticized for failing to ensure that some of the neediest, particularly in villages, received tents as night temperatures plummeted. The government has apologized for the slowness in distributing tents.
"We were sent 25 tents for 150 homes. Everybody is waiting outside, we've got small children, we've got nothing left," said Ahmet Arikes, the 60-year-old headman of Amik, a village outside Van that was reduced to rubble.
Television images showed desperate men pushing each other roughly to grab tents from the back of a Red Crescent truck.
"I didn't think the Red Crescent was successful enough in giving away tents," Huseyin Celik, deputy chairman of the ruling AK Party, told CNN Turk. "I apologize to our people."
Soon after, the relief agency's chairman told the news channel that 12,000 more tents would reach Van on Tuesday. Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay, overseeing relief operations there, said: "From today there will be nothing our people lack."
Hundreds of tents were erected in two stadiums but many preferred to stay close to their homes for news of the missing or to keep watch on damaged buildings.
The government said it would set up temporary homes and would begin planning to rebuild destroyed areas with better housing. Turks across the country began sending blankets and warm clothing.
Turkey lies in one of the world's most active seismic zones and is crossed by numerous fault lines. In 1999, two earthquakes with a magnitude of more than 7 struck northwestern Turkey, killing about 18,000 people.
Istanbul, the country's largest city with more than 12 million people, lies in northwestern Turkey near a major fault line, and experts say tens of thousands could be killed if a major quake struck there.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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