Nearly three weeks after the disaster, which left nearly 50,000 dead in Turkey, Photojournalist Adem Altan, who captured the film, reunited with Mesut Hanser.Turkish nationality.
The father of four, including 15-year-old Irmak, who died under the rubble of the eight-story building, recently left the southeastern Turkish city of Kahramanmaras for the capital, Ankara.
“I lost my mother, my brothers and my nephews in the earthquake. But nothing compares to burying a child,” explains the 40-year-old. “It’s an indescribable pain.”
Clad in an orange anorak, stricken with pain and defying the cold and rain, Hanser’s figure symbolized the tragedy experienced by tens of thousands of people and sparked a wave of solidarity.
Ankara businessman He gave them a house and proposed to hire Hanser as an executive in his private television network..
Mesut Hancer holds the hand of his 15-year-old daughter, Irmak, who was buried under rubble in Kahramanmaras, the epicenter of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria.
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“He slept like an angel in his bed”: He found his daughter’s body in the rubble after the earthquake
In the living room of his new home, Mesut Hanser hangs a painting commissioned by an artist, showing Irmach with angel wings next to his father.
“I couldn’t get out of his arms. My daughter slept like an angel in her bed,” explains this father, torn by the grief of losing his daughter.
Hanser was working in his bakery when the earthquake struck at 4:17 a.m. (local time). Immediately, he called his family and found out His house is damaged but not destroyed and his wife and three of their four children are safe and well.
But the family had no news of Irmak, the youngest of their children That night he stayed at his grandmother’s apartment to sleep To spend more time with his relatives from Istanbul who came to visit them.
Hanser, very worried, quickly went to the grandmother’s house, where he found the building collapsed and turned into a mountain of rubble. And He found his daughter’s body in the rubble.
He lifted concrete blocks with his hands and tried to remove his dead daughter’s body, but it was impossible. Despondent, despondent, and filled with deep sorrow, he sat down beside Irmach’s corpse.
“I took her hand, stroked her hair, kissed her cheeks,” she recalled.
A few minutes later, he saw a photojournalist filming the aftermath of the earthquake. “Take pictures of my daughter,” he mumbled to her in a voice broken by unforgettable pain.
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The first major earthquake, measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale, struck at 2:17 a.m. local time (6:17 p.m. EST Sunday) near the Turkish city of Gaziantep, about 90 km from the Syrian border.
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Dozens of setbacks were recorded, and the sun had already risen hours after them.
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Hours later, at 11:24 a.m. local time, another strong earthquake, measuring 7.5 on the Richter scale, struck near Ekinozu, 75 miles (120 km) to the north.
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On both sides of the border, the tremors woke people hours before dawn and forced them onto the streets in a cold night of wind, rain and snow. Dozens of buildings collapsed in border towns. This is how the building was left in Pasarcik, Kahramanmaras province in southern Turkey.
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In areas dominated by Syrian opposition, the White Helmets worked to rescue the wounded.
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People and rescue teams carry a man on a stretcher from a collapsed building in Adana, Turkey.
Security cameras captured the moment a powerful 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Turkey on Monday, killing hundreds and injuring thousands. Rescuers are working against the clock to find survivors and the government has appealed for international help. Follow the latest news on Univision.
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Firefighters were able to rescue the man in Diyarbakır, Turkey, where dozens of buildings collapsed after the earthquake.
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People gather around a collapsed building in Basarcik, southern Turkey’s Kahramanmaras province, early Monday morning, February 6, 2023.
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This is how the building was left in Diyarbakır, one of the most earthquake-hit cities in Turkey.
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Rescue workers with white helmets are working to rescue people trapped in the rubble of collapsed buildings in the city of Zardana after Monday’s earthquake.
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Rescue teams try to help residents of a collapsed building in Diyarbakir, Turkey. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Twitter that “search and rescue teams were immediately dispatched” to the affected areas. “We hope that we will get over this calamity as soon as possible and with minimal damage,” he added.
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Turkish authorities estimated that more than 2,500 people were injured after a powerful earthquake struck the south of the country early Monday.
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People search for earthquake survivors in Diyarbakır, Turkey.
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Rescuers cut through the steel of a building to rescue people trapped in the rubble of a collapsed building in an earthquake in Syria.
On the Syrian side of the border, the quake shook opposition-held areas filled with millions of displaced Syrians with a precarious health system after years of war. At least 11 people died in the town of Atmed, and many more were buried in the rubble, local doctor Muheeb Kattur told The Associated Press in a phone interview.
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Buildings collapse in Hama, Syria. Rescue teams are working to rescue the trapped people.
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A map of the destruction caused by the earthquake in the city of Aleppo, Syria.
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A man carries a child injured in an earthquake in the town of Jandaris in Aleppo province, which is controlled by anti-Assad rebels.
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A rescue worker was on a rescue mission in Shalaq, Syria, which was hit hard by the earthquake.
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Rescuers are working to rescue people trapped in collapsed buildings in Syria following an earthquake in Turkey.
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People injured in the earthquake are being treated at a hospital in Bab al-Hawa, a Syrian region controlled by rebels against the Bashar al-Assad regime.
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These photos may affect your sensitivity.
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A Syrian man carries a dead woman in Asmarin, a small Syrian rebel town in Idlib province, in the mountains next to the Turkish border.
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A volunteer from the White House, Syria, carries a child in his arms after saving him from the rubble of a building in the city of Zardana.
