Wilfried Devillers (special envoy to Antioch), edited by Julien Moreau
A week after the earthquakes that hit Turkey and Syria, rescuers gave way to backhoes to the great despair of families. For them, lives can still be saved. Europe 1 went to Antioch, Turkey, to meet families awaiting news of the missing.
A week after the earthquakes that hit Turkey and Syria, the center of Antioch is nothing more than a field of ruins. To the great despair of the families, the backhoe loaders are now at work instead of the rescuers. From the survivors’ camp where he is living with his family, Hassan observes the clearing operations. A heap of concrete and iron and an almost intact red sofa are pulled out and carried away by a backhoe loader. Operations that occur too soon, according to him.
Residents want the search to continue
“We would like the search operations to continue. During the 1999 earthquake, they found survivors after 18 days. I do not understand why they are stopping the search”, regrets Hassan at the microphone of Europe 1. His apartment in ruins is around the corner, 500 meters from the makeshift tent he now occupies. It was his brother Mehmet who pulled him out of the rubble. They are still without news of their cousins.
“Our cousins may still be here”
“They stopped the search two days ago, but our cousins may still be there,” Mehmet reports, “or they were taken out from the start,” he continues. “We don’t know when we went to identify the bodies, but we haven’t found them. We just want to recover their remains, understand what happened,” says Mehmet. Like his brother and him, there are dozens of them waiting, sometimes at the foot of ruined buildings, with this hope, that of finding the bodies of their loved ones so that they can finally begin their mourning.