Mother, 2 children rescued from Turkey earthquake rubble

A mother and her two children were pulled alive from the wreckage of a collapsed building in Turkey Wednesday, ten days after a devastating earthquake struck the region — after rescuers zeroed in on a sound coming from beneath the piles of rubble.

A woman who identified herself as Ela was saved in Hatay province along with her children named Meysam and Ali Bağdet, the state news service Andalou Agency reported.

Ela, her son and daughter had spent 228 hours trapped beneath piles of debris before rescuers reached them.

“A sound was heard during (search and rescue) works,” said Mehmet Eryılmaz, a miner who was on the crew that rescued the family. “We focused our work on that sound. The mother was happy to see us. I held her hand, at first. We talked, chatted, I tried to calm her down.”

Eryılmaz revealed that the first thing Ela asked for was water. She also inquired what day it was.

Miraculous tales of survival continued trickling out of Turkey and Syria Wednesday, even as hopes to find people alive dwindled.

In Turkey’s southern city of Kahramanmaras, rescuers pulled from the rubble a 74-year-old woman and a 46-year-old woman.

Earlier today, a 45-year-old woman identified as Melike İmamoğlu was found alive after spending 222 hours trapped beneath a destroyed apartment building in the same city close to the epicenter of the quake.

Rescuer Hasan Kılınç told reporters: “We were there to identify four bodies. I suddenly bent down to assure my team if anyone was still there, it was then that I heard a groaning cry for help coming from the rubble. At first, I was scared, but then I was overjoyed. There she was, a 42-year-old woman who waited for a long time.”

“Her hands were warm when we pulled her out; her happiness was indescribable,” Kılınç added.

Also on Wednesday, Turkey’s Ministry of National Defense released video showing workers carrying 77-year-old Fatma Gungor to safety in the city of Adiyaman on Tuesday.

“I’m so excited, I don’t know what to say. We almost got to the point of giving up,” one of the crew members who extricated Gungor from the debris told public broadcaster TRT Haber.

Gungor was loaded into a helicopter and flown to a hospital in the city of Mersin to be treated for injuries.

Here’s the latest coverage on the Turkey-Syria earthquake:

Earlier Tuesday, two brothers, Baki Yeninar, 21, and Muhammed Enes Yeninar, 17, were rescued in Kahramanmaras, Turkey, almost 200 hours after the quake.

Baki said he held onto life by drinking a protein shake.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical correspondent reporting from Turkey, said it’s rare for people to survive more than 100 hours in rubble.

But he suggested that below-freezing temperatures in the region could be prolonging the lives of those waiting to be rescued.

“The cold weather is a double-edged sword,” Gupta explained. “On the one hand, it makes it very difficult, it is below freezing right now … On the other hand, it may reduce the demands for water. Perhaps that is playing into this.”

In Anatakya, the capital of Turkey’s Hatay province, Syrian national Faez Ghanam and his 15-year-old daughter, Seher Ghanam, were rescued after over 200 hours in the rubble. They were among at least nine people found alive in the region that day.

The teen wearing a leopard-print headscarf was photographed wrapped in a foil blanket for warmth and being carried on a stretcher by workers.

The combined death toll in Turkey and neighboring Syria has surpassed 41,000.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has acknowledged problems in the initial response to the 7.8-magnitude quake that struck early Feb. 6 but has said the situation is under control.

“We are facing one of the greatest natural disasters not only in our country but also in the history of humanity,” Erdogan said in a televised speech in Ankara.

UN authorities have said the rescue phase is coming to an end, with the focus shifting to shelter, food and schooling for some 26 million people in Turkey and Syria who have been affected by the disaster.