Meet the incredible Turkish coal miners who helped save so many lives
The powerful earthquakes, which have not been seen in the region in the last century, triggered massive search-and-rescue operations during which Turkish miners showed the world their invaluable skills.
Erhan Akkus, a Turkish miner from Türkiye's Soma coal corporation, a state-run public mine company, takes a brief nap after search and rescue operations in Antakya, Türkiye's southern Hatay province.
As a coal miner, Erhan Akkus, 47, is used to a mundane routine of going down mine shafts with his safety helmet, a flashlight and a pickaxe and coming out hours later covered in black soot. Hardly anyone has ever appreciated this type of low-paid work but in the aftermath of February 6, he found himself being hugged, cheered and hailed a hero after becoming one of the first responders summoned to find survivors in the rubble.
He had arrived at the scene of a destroyed building in Antakya, the central district of Türkiye's southern Hatay province, only to hear anguished relatives of those trapped under rubble cry “the miners are here”. These men suddenly found themselves bearing the task of saving lives and fending for their own survival at the same time.
The two back-to-back powerful earthquakes have killed more than 40,000 people across southern Türkiye and northwestern Syria. Magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 tremors destroyed many buildings completely and seriously damaged thousands of other buildings, including residential complexes in which people lay asleep when the first quake hit at 4:17 AM.
Akkus was among 200 miners working for the state-run Turkish Coal Enterprises who arrived in Hatay on February 7 ahead of many other relief agencies.
He, along with 74 other miners, were assigned to look for survivors in a badly damaged multi-storey pair of buildings known as Ronesans Rezidans.
The rubble of one of the collapsed buildings of Ronesans Rezidans, a luxury apartment complex in Antakya, the provincial center of Türkiye's southern Hatay province.
“We dug people out with our hands. We didn’t even have special equipments,” he told TRT World.
Race against time
The work Akkus and his friends embarked upon would prove a difficult rescue mission from the start. After its bottom floors caved in, one building had tilted 45 degrees onto another, leaning in a precarious position, with screams and cries of trapped people coming from inside. An excavator was brought in to prop up the leaning structure. They had to move fast.
Digging through a collapsed structure is relatively easier as rescuers can drill through ceilings, which stand on reinforced concrete and steel rebars. But digging into a slanted building meant Akkus and his friends could have only entered from a side wall prone to collapsing at any moment.
The miners managed to reach the elevator shaft, which was like a tunnel - something they are used to working with.
“We broke open an apartment wall and entered it. From there, we rescued an 8-year-old girl and her mother. The father has already passed away, but we managed to take out his body as well.”
Akkus and his fellow miners, who work in the Soma mine located in Türkiye’s western province of Manisa, crawled up the shaft using wooden planks as a ladder.
“We needed to work fast because the leaning building was about to collapse,” he says.
Turkish miners fight through their way in the rubble of Ronesans Rezidans in Antakya, Hatay, a southern Turkish province, to reach earthquake survivors.
For anyone who hasn’t been in a similar situation, it’s hard to imagine the challenges the miners faced as they burrowed their way in, cutting through the debris inch by inch along the way.
Ronesans Rezidans was an expensive residential complex of 200 apartments in which around 1,000 people lived, including the city’s affluent and bureaucrats.
Mehmet Yasar Coskun, the contractor behind the project, who once marketed the apartments as “a place from paradise”, was arrested at Istanbul airport while trying to flee the country as miners were hard at work in their tattered boots and weary eyes.
The miners stayed at the site for seven days, taking four-hour naps and eating meals at a makeshift camp.
In addition, they had to find food, blankets, chairs and anything that could help them keep warm in the bone-chilling cold. Across the city, there was no electricity, gas or regular water supply during the first days of the rescue operation.
Akkus and his friends also constructed a makeshift toilet using blankets as coverings and iron bars for support. It came in handy as many survivors also ended up using the facility.
A makeshift toilet built by Turkish miners in Antakya, the central district of Türkiye's Hatay province. During the earthquake, the self-reliant miners showed once again their unseen ingenuity doing what is necessary under any circumstances.
Even when it was dark, Akkus and his friends continued to work under the rubble thanks to two-panel lights set up by a Hungarian rescue team.
They managed to move 12 metres along the building before they had to stop because of aftershocks and a smouldering fire in the debris that had filled all the narrow spaces with smoke.
“The smoke was so strong it burned our noses,” says Akkus, who has been a miner for 10 years.
By the time he had to wrap up his team’s rescue operation after seven days, Akkus says his toes were swollen.
They were able to rescue more than 40 people alive from Ronesans Rezidans and take out dozens of bodies.
After all of that, Akkus says “I still feel sorry that we could not move further down the building”.
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