Tom Mutch
ANTAKYA, Turkey—Hassan Hassan had been keeping vigil outside of his family’s destroyed apartment block for days now. “Three of my family members are under there,” he said, motioning to the huge expanse of rubble that thousands of people had called their home until just over a week ago.
Rescue workers usually refer to a “golden period” of 72 hours where the vast majority of survivors are found. When The Daily Beast visited Antakya, a city in Hatay province in south Turkey on the border with Syria, many people had long given up. But although it was 10 days after the original 7.8 magnitude quake hit Turkey and Syria on Feb. 6—killing upwards of 41,000 people—orange diggers and men and women in hard hats and high-vis jackets were still pulling through the rubble looking for any sign of survivors.
Around 90 different search and rescue teams have been sent from around the world in one of the most desperate efforts of the 21st century. When they—as is almost inevitable—find a corpse, they put it into a black body bag, and it is driven away by a waiting hearse.