The smell of a dog, the last hope of the victims of the earthquake in Turkey

Their names are Mia and Farah, they are Belgian Shepherds crossed with Malinois, and they play on the grass with an empty bottle or ask the owner for food, like any other pet after a few hours of driving in a truck.

But moments later, the game turns into a life-or-death challenge as they start looking for survivors among the ruins of Antioch, one of the cities hardest hit by last Monday’s earthquake in southeastern Turkey.

” dogs they learn to look caught people among the rubble through the game, for them it is not much different from finding a stick,” said EFE, who visited the zone, a member of the Ericam team, the emergency and immediate response service of the Community of Madrid.

The first days a group of four dogs and their respective owners – each animal comes with one person – and about twenty firefighters who specialize in detecting traces survivorsin addition to a few toilets, they worked in the city of Alejandretta, also affected by numerous landslides.

There, they managed to rescue a man stuck between the walls of a building for more than 48 hours on Wednesday after discovering his calls for help.

It took many hours to get to it, because there was almost no space left between the floor and ceiling of each floor, and holes had to be drilled from floor to floor to climb from below, say, firefighters.

It’s important to know where to look, and it’s usually the locals themselves who warn the team that they’ve heard voices in some ruins.

“First of all, we conduct an inspection ourselves, call and knock to find out if there is a response. To a depth of about three meters, we hear noises. dogsthey are trained to perceive the smell of a living person up to seven meters. And if that doesn’t work, we install geophones, high-precision sensors,” David Barderas, a member of the team, told Efe.

dogs They are trained to only respond to smells. living people; They ignore corpses, he explains, and the team isn’t looking for the dead either; Only living matter.

LITTLE HOPES

There are few hopes in Antioquia this Friday, but there are still opportunities, as low temperaturesnear zero degrees, softened by layers of rubble, and the cold slows down the dehydration of the human body, explains Quique Arribas, another Ericam firefighter.

But work among the ruins antioch This turns out to be more difficult than usual, since the scale of the disaster is enormous: entire neighborhoods have turned into ruins.

Heavy machinery is already working everywhere to remove concrete blocks and free at least part of the streets, completely covered with rubble and cars crushed by collapsed buildings.

The noise of bulldozers along with the noise numerous ambulances Making your way through the stream of trucks and rescue vehicles, as well as some kind of generator, it is extremely difficult to hear calls from a survivor.

And in front of each mountain of rubble are neighbors who are warming themselves by the fire, in a kind of vigil for the place where they lost their loved ones.

“Come here, please, here,” they shout as the Spanish team passes by, but in this field it is impossible to pay attention to everyone. ruin.

mine and headlight they jump on concrete slabs, dart between crooked pieces of iron, and finally fall into the hole left open, but exit after a while to no avail.

Two firefighters climb into dishes and they call many times, registering vibrations with their sensors, but that didn’t seem to work either.

“Nothing” is the conclusion. You must continue to the next point, a little over a hundred meters away, where someone thinks they heard a noise. Perhaps this is true: hope should be the last thing to lose.

(EFE)