Turkey earthquake: B.C. firefighters help rescue woman trapped in building | 24CA News

The window to seek out survivors of the earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria Monday is quickly closing.

But a bunch from Burnaby, B.C., helped pull a girl to security Thursday after she turned trapped within the rubble.

More than 23,000 folks at the moment are believed to have died within the quake, which was measured at 7.8 on the Richter scale.

One day later, members of the Burnaby Urban Search and Rescue Team (USAR), which is made up of firefighters and others boarded a airplane at Vancouver International Airport on their technique to Turkey to assist.

The lady they helped rescue had been trapped in Adiyaman, a metropolis in southeastern Turkey.

It took six hours to dig her out of the six-storey concrete condominium constructing that had collapsed. 

“What’s happened is, the bottom three or four floors of these concrete buildings have just collapsed and the top floors have just settled on top,” Ryan Berry, a part of the Burnaby USAR Team, informed Global News.

“So she was in one of those floors so there was probably about a two-foot gap.”

Berry stated they’ve been utilizing cameras and acoustic gear to find out the place survivors is likely to be buried.

2:35Turkey-Syria earthquake: Hope endures as rescuers pull survivors, together with kids, from the rubble

However, whereas the Burnaby USAR Team was capable of deploy rapidly, the Vancouver Heavy Urban Search and Rescue Team stays at house.

“Our team is made up of 150 or so people,” Justin Mulcahy, Vancouver Fire and Rescue assistant chief and the spokesperson for the staff, stated.

“About 80 per cent of the team consists of Vancouver fire members as well. We partner with B.C. Ambulance, the Vancouver Police Department, as well we have members of our team from the City of Vancouver, including structural engineers, (and) some medical staff. And, you know, really, we are a combined task force that is designed exactly for this type of emergency.”

Mulcahy stated the difficulty for his or her staff comes when it’s a world deployment.

“Our team is most valuable in that first 72-hour period where we can use our technical search abilities, our K-9 people, our are highly specialized teams that can reach through concrete, provide structural shoring, do those types of things,” he added. “Those types of activities are best used in this critical 72-hour window.”

Mulcahy defined that there’s a search and rescue advisory group that oversees the groups. The groups that may be deployed nationally must be licensed by this group.

“We are actively involved in a process right now to have our team meet a national accreditation standard,” he stated. “So we’re at the moment assembly with the six groups throughout Canada to develop the usual accreditation course of to make {that a} actuality.

“If this request had come in in the future when these arrangements had been made fully, we would have been in a much better position to immediately deploy people to make a difference in this region.”

6:34Vancouver Search & Rescue staff waits to be known as into motion in Turkey

Mulcahy added that he desires folks to know the Vancouver HUSAR and the Burnaby USAR Team are usually not the identical.

“I really do want to emphasize that this group is a very small group of very well-intentioned people,” he stated, talking concerning the Burnaby staff.

“(They) have deployed through a small NGO not funded by the federal government in a volunteer capacity to try and make an impact at that scale. The team we have is entirely different. We have a highly functional team that carries things like water purification systems, (and) the ability to conduct technical searches was highly specialized equipment.”

Mulcahy stated the Vancouver staff can’t deploy themselves, they’ve to take action by way of the suitable authorities channels.

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