For about 200 hours, buried under the rubble of a collapsed building in the earthquake-ravaged city of Kahramanmaras, two Turkish brothers rationed bodybuilding supplements, drank their own urine and gulped air.
“Breathing was easy,” said one brother, Abdulbaki Yeninar, 21 the local news agency Ihlas. “We used protein powder.”
On Tuesday, rescue workers extricated Mr Yeninar and his brother, Muhammed Enes Yeninar, 17, from cement and twisted metal, one of at least nine such unlikely rescues over a week after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake devastated cities, killing tens of thousands of people and many other displaced persons in Turkey and Syria.
In the same city, teams dug a five-meter tunnel through tons of collapsed walls, floors and pipes to reach a woman who was broadcast on live television. And in the south, a volunteer mining crew joined efforts to rescue another, earning the acclaim of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who said they “will never fade from our memories.”
The miraculous rescues served as rare bright spots in what Mr Erdogan said on Tuesday could reasonably be called the “disaster of the century”.
He reported a new death toll for his country, 35,418, and the United Nations said more than 5,500 Syrians had died. Millions more people in both countries have been displaced since the quake devastated the region last week. Many are afraid to return to damaged buildings and are struggling to survive in makeshift shelters and extreme cold.
Relief organizations typically scramble to find survivors in the first 72 hours after a natural disaster, as the time that passes exponentially diminishes the hope of finding signs of life. Over the past week, more than 35,000 Turkish search and rescue teams have joined forces with thousands of international workers to dig through the rubble, according to AFAD, Turkey’s emergency management agency.
Desperation has mounted in recent days as rescue missions turned to reconstruction, a humanitarian crisis took shape, and hard-hit and hard-to-reach Syrian cities lamented being forgotten.
On Tuesday, as the total death toll in both Syria and Turkey exceeded 40,000, Turkish authorities arrested more suspected contractors shabby construction that violated building codes. Critics of Mr Erdogan, who is trying to defend his response to the disaster, drew attention to videos showing him earlier hailing some of the housing projects that were collapsing and burying people. And the Turkish police arrested numerous social media users on charges of spreading panic-inducing posts.
But as Turkey’s National Defense Ministry and national broadcasters shared footage of the rescue operations, the rare piece of good news was celebrated.
In the southeastern Turkey city of Adiyaman, rescue workers in bright red and yellow hard hats and vests contrasted sharply with the dusty skin and hair of a young man they were trying to extricate from the rubble.
After digging up the man, identified by state news outlets as Muhammed Cafer Cetin, 18, they hooked him up to an IV, fitted an oxygen mask and wrapped him in a shimmering survival blanket.
They then carefully carried him on a stretcher over the rubble under which he had been buried to an ambulance waiting to take him to the hospital. His condition was not immediately clear. Another man, Ramazan Yucel, 45, was also rescued in the province, according to the state-run Anadolu Agency.
Finally freed, the exhausted Yeninar brothers emerged from the rubble, their eyes closed, their arms bound in stretchers as rescuers in uniforms and glowing vests carried them away at Kahramanmaras, near the quake’s epicenter.
Desperate for good news, the workers hugged and cheered as the brothers went to the hospital, where they explained to the media how they survived.
Rescuers had also pulled her mother alive from the rubble two days earlier and she was being treated for leg injuries at a hospital in the city of Kayseri, they said.
In the same city, the state news service Anadolu Agency broadcast the rescue of Aysegul Bayir, 35, live in front of an enthusiastic Turkish audience. Spectators watched Rescue teams dug a five-meter tunnel through the ruins to reach them.
In the same devastated city, Muharrem Polat, 32, and his wife, Hadiyet Polat, emerged from the rubble after 203 hours. In Antakya, a mining volunteer crew from northern Zonguldak province found Emine Akgul, 26, and took her to safety, state broadcaster TRT said. Another woman was rescued 204 hours after the quake hit the city of Antakya in Hatay province.
Welcoming the miners, Mr Erdogan said: “The tunnels they dug to bring our citizens out are truly extraordinary feats.”
While footage of the survivors being lifted from the ruins to applause heartened rescuers who had scraped their way through the cold cement for days and heartened a grieving populace, the rescues were most likely a fleeting and perhaps final dose of such news.
The chances of finding more survivors only diminish as the hours and days lengthen, experts say. And faced with challenges from millions of homeless and displaced people, many of whom are starving, Turkey and Syria have struggled with the scale of the relief effort and the search for accountability.
On Tuesday, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres announced the launch of a $397 million humanitarian appeal to Syria over three months. The agency had released $50 million from its emergency relief funds for shelter, health care, food and shelter for five million Syrians who it said are not receiving earthquake relief at the scale and speed they need.
“Aid must come through from all sides, from all sides and by all routes – without restrictions,” Mr Guterres said.
In north-west Syria, the earthquake’s damage spanned a region torn apart by 12 years of civil war: areas held by the government of authoritarian President Bashar al-Assad and forces opposing him.
The opposition side has received only a trickle of aid, partly because of difficulties in gaining access to the region. The government side, where outside aid arrives through major airports, strictly controls and restricts aid shipments from its territory to the opposition side. Before the quake, only one border crossing from Turkey was used for all UN aid that flowed to the opposition-held side.
Mr al-Assad has now agreed, for the first time since the war began, to allow two more border crossings from Turkey used to deliver temporary aid to opposition-controlled areas in the north-west.
When the United Nations attempted to negotiate agreements with the Syrian government, the Turkish authorities turned to the issue of unsafe structures. Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag, said on Sunday that trials were pending against more than 130 people over their alleged links to collapsed buildings.
Among those accused was Sukru Isitmen, a builder of at least six collapsed buildings in Besni district, Adiyaman province. Mr. Isitmen is a member of the Executive Body of the District Department of the President’s ruling Justice and Development Party.
Hours after rescue workers pulled the last survivors from the rubble after night had fallen and temperatures had dropped again, Mr Erdogan addressed the nation.
“Our search and rescue teams, pulling our citizens out alive,” he said, “even after many long hours, is the primary source of comfort in this dark picture.”
