Turkey earthquake: how long can people live under rubble?

In Turkey’s earthquake-ravaged towns and cities, the scenes are as inspiring as they get rarer: survivors are pulled from the rubble eight, nine or 10 days after being buried under the rubble.

But their numbers are minuscule compared to the death toll of more than 43,000 after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit southern Turkey and northern Syria on February 6. earthquake, in the remains of a building in Kahramanmaras, near the epicenter; Two men have been rescued from a collapsed hospital in Antakya.

How realistic is it to hope that the living will remain among the recovered?

Experts say that with luck and skill, more miracles can happen. But in an already defying recovery effort, the window was about to close.

“It’s very unusual to have survivors for this long,” said trauma surgeon Dr. Susan Briggs of Massachusetts General Hospital, who has rushed to disaster areas for 37 years to treat survivors.

“After 72 hours, the chance of survival is not great,” Briggs said. “It is unlikely that you will meet survivors after two weeks.”

Still, “people surprise us all the time,” added Briggs, who in 1999 founded and directed Mass General’s International Medical Surgical Response Team. In the earthquakes in Armenia, Haiti, and Iran, I remembered seeing people pulled alive from destroyed buildings after improbable lengths of time. They all have stories to tell of the little things that saved them.

Experts say luck and resourcefulness on the part of the victims, and the skill and preparedness of the rescuers, will be decisive factors in whether more survivors are found in Turkey and Syria. The age and health of the victim also plays a major role. And looming cold winter in Turkey.

Survivors often recount being buried between walls or heavy structures that were left intact. After escaping a crushing injury, these trapped find that good luck and ingenuity often mean the difference between doom and survival. A small amount of rainwater caught from a nearby hole helps prevent drought, which can kill within hours or days, depending on the temperature. Blankets or insulation pulled from rooms or walls protect against hypothermia, which can cause death within hours.

A survivor is carried on a stretcher from a collapsed building in Antakya, Turkey, on Wednesday, nine days after the devastating earthquake.

(Ogur Yildirim / Associated Press)

Emergency physician Dr. Scott Goldberg said a trapped victim can sometimes obtain provisions that make it possible to survive further delay. Tapping is better than yelling, he said, to get rescuers’ attention, because it conserves energy and cuts more distinctly through the noise of emergency workers and their machinery. Goldberg, a member of Massachusetts 1, an urban search and rescue team dispatched by FEMA, said rescue workers can then deliver water, food or blankets as a temporary solution before freeing the person.

At this point in Turkey and Syria, Goldberg said, “I don’t think it’s hopeless.” “But the prospects are getting very bleak.”

The survivors who escaped from the rubble alive are not safe either. If rescuers do not act to avoid the consequences of the so-called crush syndrome, the victim may be poisoned by the accumulation of toxic proteins released by the muscle tissue of a punctured or crushed limb that is deprived of blood flow. Once the blood from that limb begins to circulate to other parts of the body, it can carry the poison to the kidneys and other organs, causing fatal damage even after rescue.

Before lifting weights off people, rescuers need to apply a tourniquet to prevent poisoned blood from flowing into the rest of the body. When they can, rescue teams also try to start intravenous lines, often directly into the bone (called an intraosseous IV), to rehydrate the survivor and thin the blood so that the buildup of toxic proteins can be flushed out through dialysis.

Age also matters in most circumstances.

USC trauma surgeon Dr. Kenji Inaba, who heads a team of USC specialists who span disasters around the world, said: “A healthy 20-year-old will endure dehydration and extreme conditions for longer than an 80-year-old.” generally unhealthy.” . But Annaba said that a healthy young man who lingers for a long time and is dehydrated after a hard workout may not have a survival advantage over an older person who rests after dinner.

And in all people, there is what Inaba calls the “true intangible”: the will to survive. It is impossible to measure, or to predict, how long survival might extend in the event of a disaster.

“But any trauma surgeon would be lying if he didn’t believe in their hearts the desire to survive as a powerful motivating factor,” Inaba said.

Indeed, while disaster medicine is a specialized area of ​​the medical profession, it is not a specialty that is guided by a lot of research, said Dr. Thomas D. Kirsch, an emergency physician who teaches at George Washington Medical College.

“We can identify risk factors for death more easily than we can identify factors associated with survival,” Kirsch said.

In the hours and days immediately following a disaster, the desperate efforts of loved ones, neighbors, and local disaster crews are responsible for most rescues. By the time specialized search and rescue teams reach the scene of international disasters, he said, survival is often “just luck.”

the news

Get your free coronavirus newsletter today

Subscribe to get the latest news, top stories, and what they mean to you, plus answers to your questions.

Enter the email address

Engage me

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.

Once those crews arrive, Kirsch said, one factor seems to outweigh all others in raising the odds of getting someone out alive: the survival of friends or relatives who know where the person is being held and who continually call for help in search-and-rescue crews to find them or find it.

Kirsch said he has received such tortured pleas. “This is a terrible experience,” he said, in circumstances where resources are scarce, needs unlimited, and death everywhere, because such appeals often cannot be met or end in grim discovery.

But some end up happy. On Friday, as most search and rescue teams succumbed to cleaning crews across Turkey, a police crew celebrated after a 12-year-old boy named Osman was found among the rubble of a building in Antakya.

Jubilant team leader Okan Tosun told private news agency DHA that his team was beginning to feel frustrated by the futility of their efforts.

He said, “Just when our hopes were over, we reached our brother Osman at 260.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

What Are The Main Benefits Of Comparing Car Insurance Quotes Online

LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / June 24, 2020, / Compare-autoinsurance.Org has launched a new blog post that presents the main benefits of comparing multiple car insurance quotes. For more info and free online quotes, please visit https://compare-autoinsurance.Org/the-advantages-of-comparing-prices-with-car-insurance-quotes-online/ The modern society has numerous technological advantages. One important advantage is the speed at which information is sent and received. With the help of the internet, the shopping habits of many persons have drastically changed. The car insurance industry hasn't remained untouched by these changes. On the internet, drivers can compare insurance prices and find out which sellers have the best offers. View photos The advantages of comparing online car insurance quotes are the following: Online quotes can be obtained from anywhere and at any time. Unlike physical insurance agencies, websites don't have a specific schedule and they are available at any time. Drivers that have busy working schedules, can compare quotes from anywhere and at any time, even at midnight. Multiple choices. Almost all insurance providers, no matter if they are well-known brands or just local insurers, have an online presence. Online quotes will allow policyholders the chance to discover multiple insurance companies and check their prices. Drivers are no longer required to get quotes from just a few known insurance companies. Also, local and regional insurers can provide lower insurance rates for the same services. Accurate insurance estimates. Online quotes can only be accurate if the customers provide accurate and real info about their car models and driving history. Lying about past driving incidents can make the price estimates to be lower, but when dealing with an insurance company lying to them is useless. Usually, insurance companies will do research about a potential customer before granting him coverage. Online quotes can be sorted easily. Although drivers are recommended to not choose a policy just based on its price, drivers can easily sort quotes by insurance price. Using brokerage websites will allow drivers to get quotes from multiple insurers, thus making the comparison faster and easier. For additional info, money-saving tips, and free car insurance quotes, visit https://compare-autoinsurance.Org/ Compare-autoinsurance.Org is an online provider of life, home, health, and auto insurance quotes. This website is unique because it does not simply stick to one kind of insurance provider, but brings the clients the best deals from many different online insurance carriers. In this way, clients have access to offers from multiple carriers all in one place: this website. On this site, customers have access to quotes for insurance plans from various agencies, such as local or nationwide agencies, brand names insurance companies, etc. "Online quotes can easily help drivers obtain better car insurance deals. All they have to do is to complete an online form with accurate and real info, then compare prices", said Russell Rabichev, Marketing Director of Internet Marketing Company. CONTACT: Company Name: Internet Marketing CompanyPerson for contact Name: Gurgu CPhone Number: (818) 359-3898Email: [email protected]: https://compare-autoinsurance.Org/ SOURCE: Compare-autoinsurance.Org View source version on accesswire.Com:https://www.Accesswire.Com/595055/What-Are-The-Main-Benefits-Of-Comparing-Car-Insurance-Quotes-Online View photos