Rescued animals. (Photo by Yasin AKGUL / AFP)
With helmets and a flashlight, rescuers penetrate what remains of a collapsed house in the Turkish city of Antakya. They seek to save Asghar and Nouma, two bulls trapped under the rubble left by the devastating earthquake.
Since the 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck the region on February 6, killing 44,000 people in Turkey and Syria, hundreds of cats, dogs, rabbits and birds are still blockeds among the rubble of this city in southern Turkey.
Nazli Yenocak’s collapsed like others 75,000 buildings of which nothing remains.
This 47-year-old woman considers that she was lucky because her entire family was saved, although at the moment they sleep in a tent in the middle of the garden.
But his two bulls are still trapped. “Hearing them so calm makes me cry,” he explains. For 11 days Yenocak fed them through a hole.
Then he decided to contact the rescuers from Haytap, a Turkish association for the protection of animals, who after hours of efforts and with the help of German and Austrian lifeguards, managed to get the animals out.
haytap managed to rescue 900 cats, dogs, rabbits, cows and even birds from among the ruins of the city.
– Like rock stars –
In the place where the volunteers are installed, the rescued animals are celebrated, applauded and recorded as if they were rock stars.
At first, the members of the organization care for the injured animals, before transferring them to a shelter, outside the affected area.
At the Haytap Vet Shop, some kittens sleep in incubators, bottle fed. The NGO also provides animal feeding points throughout the city.
Fifteen days after the earthquake, the few signs of life that come from among the stones and dust that covers the streets often come from animals.
In a corner of the city a dog sleeps next to a totally damaged sofa. Elsewhere, a cat cleans itself in what’s left of a kitchen.
A few streets away, another dog begins to bark on the first floor of a affected house. “He could go down, but he stays out of loyalty to his owners,” explains Efe Subasi, 27, one of the NGO volunteers.
Finding survivors has now become a miracle. So when animals are saved, “we manage to feel a little better,” explains Subasi, a filmmaker by profession.
Similar stories have come to light in other cities in Turkey. In Gaziantep, for example, the cat “Enkaz” [escombros, en turco] lives attached to his rescuer and became a hero of social networks.
Mehti Fidan, a senior veterinarian in Istanbul, explains that the dogs and cats survived longer because they can wade through the rubble to find food.
“But when they come to us, cats have dilated pupils. The dogs won’t let us get close to them. They are traumatized, just like humans“he points out.
