NDRF personnel rescue a child in earthquake-hit Turkey
New Delhi:
She was wrapped in a blanket. Her neck was firmly secured with a support device as a doctor checked her condition. People in yellow helmets carried her on a stretcher gently.
This is how a six-year-old girl was brought out to safety from the rubble of a collapsed building by a team of the National Disaster Response Force, or NDRF, deployed in Turkey, where large parts of the country has been devastated by a series of strong earthquakes.
“Standing with Turkey in this natural calamity. India’s NDRF is carrying out rescue and relief operations at ground zero. Team IND-11 successfully retrieved a 6-year-old girl from Nurdagi, Gaziantep today,” the Home Ministry spokesperson tweeted with the hashtag “Operation Dost”.
Standing with Türkiye in this natural calamity. India’s @NDRFHQ is carrying out rescue and relief operations at ground zero.
Team IND-11 successfully retrieved a 6 years old girl from Nurdagi, Gaziantep today. #OperationDostpic.twitter.com/Mf2ODywxEa
— Spokesperson, Ministry of Home Affairs (@PIBHomeAffairs) February 9, 2023
The Home Ministry, headed by Amit Shah, is the parent department of the NDRF, an organisation with vast experience in helping out with rescue and relief work after natural disasters and other types of incidents.
Yesterday, a team of 51 NDRF personnel left for Turkey to join two teams already deployed there, NDRF Director General Atul Karwal said.
Mr Karwal told news agency PTI that 101 personnel divided into two teams sent to Turkey on Tuesday have been deployed at Nurdagi in Gaziantep province and Urfa, two of the areas worst-hit by the earthquakes.
The NDRF teams can sustain themselves for about two weeks as they have carried rations, tents and other logistics. “We have provided our rescuers special winter clothing to work in the extreme cold climate of Turkey. This clothing has been borrowed from the Indo-Tibetan Border Police and some others,” Mr Karwal told PTI.
Across the affected areas in Turkey, rescuers continued to look for survivors amid the bitter cold, which hampered the four-day search of thousands of flattened buildings. The 72-hour mark that experts consider the most likely period to save lives has also passed.
The 7.8-magnitude quake struck as people slept early Monday in a region where many people had already suffered loss and displacement due to Syria’s civil war.
