70-year-old pulled alive from rubble in Turkey as earthquake as death toll hits 57

IZMIR, Turkey — Rescue workers extricated a 70-year-old man from a collapsed building in western Turkey on Sunday, some 34 hours after a strong earthquake in the Aegean Sea struck Turkey and Greece, killing at least 57 people and injuring more than 900.

It was the latest series of remarkable rescues after the Friday afternoon earthquake, which was centered in the Aegean northeast of the Greek island of Samos. Search-and-rescue teams were working in nine toppled or damaged buildings in Izmir, Turkey’s third-largest city, but appeared to be finding more bodies Sunday than survivors.

Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca raised the death toll Sunday in Izmir to 55. Two teenagers were killed Friday on Samos and at least 19 others were injured.

Ahmet Citim, 70, was pulled out of the rubble in the middle of the night and was hospitalised. Koca tweeted that Citim said: “I never lost hope.” The minister visited the survivor and said he was doing well.

The quake triggered a small tsunami that hit Samos and the Seferihisar district of Izmir, drowning one elderly woman. The tremors were felt across western Turkey, including in Istanbul, as well as in the Greek capital of Athens. Hundreds of aftershocks followed. Turkey’s disaster agency said nearly 900 people were injured in Turkey alone.

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Dramatic footage shows rescuers comforting teenager trapped in rubble in earthquake-struck Izmir

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Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay said 26 badly damaged buildings would be demolished.

“It’s not the earthquake that kills but buildings,” he added, repeating a common slogan.

There was some debate over the magnitude of the earthquake. The U.S. Geological Survey rated it 7.0, while the Istanbul’s Kandilli Institute put it at 6.9 and Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD) said it measured 6.6.

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AFAD said more than 5,700 personnel had been activated for rescue work and hundreds of others for food distribution, emergency help and building damage control.

Turkey is criss-crossed by fault lines and is prone to earthquakes. In 1999, two powerful quakes killed some 18,000 people in northwestern Turkey. Earthquakes are frequent in Greece as well.

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Deadly earthquake hits coastal Turkey and Greece

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In a rare show of unity amid months of tense relations over energy resources in the eastern Mediterranean, Greek and Turkish government officials issued mutual messages of solidarity over the quake toll.

The quake occurred as Turkey was already struggling with an economic downturn and the coronavirus pandemic. So far, more than 10,000 people with the virus have died in Turkey, and some experts have accused the government of concealing the true impact of the virus with the way it counts cases.