Hong Kong rescue team's nine days in Turkey

Upon completion of a nine-day mission in quake-stricken Turkey, a rescue team sent by China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government arrived in Beijing on a chartered flight together with the mainland rescue team on Thursday night and returned to Hong Kong on Friday night.

On February 6, a strong earthquake struck southern Turkey near the Syrian border, causing heavy casualties. The HKSAR government sent a 59-strong search and rescue team to the disaster areas on February 8.

On February 11, the Hong Kong team carried out rescue operations in Hatay. It was getting dark as dusk fell. Someone's call for help from a nearby collapsed home caught the team's attention.

"We were told that there were people trapped under rubble, then we rushed over immediately," commander of the HKSAR search and rescue team Yiu Men-yeung said.

When both the search dog and life detector gave a signal of "hope", the Hong Kong team stopped using the excavator and started to dig a tunnel. A team member went down the tunnel about six meters deep and found three conscious people.

This was the first time the Hong Kong team successfully rescued survivors in the operations. The three survivors had been trapped in the rubble for nearly six days, more than 130 hours since the earthquake happened.

"All people raced against time and spared no effort to save lives," Yiu said. One of the most unforgettable scenes for him was when aid groups and residents spontaneously formed a human chain to clear the road to ensure smooth transfer of the injured.

On February 13, nearly 180 hours after the earthquake, the Hong Kong team rescued another female survivor in Antakya district in Hatay, and was greatly encouraged.

In Turkey, February is in the middle of winter. It snowed in Antakya for the first two days after the quake, and it had been raining for the following two days, making it a big challenge for trapped people and the rescue work.

"It was about 5 degree Celsius during the day and it fell to below 0 degree Celsius at night, and our team had to sleep outdoors," Yiu said, adding people in Hong Kong have rarely experienced this kind of cold.

The Hong Kong team was grateful for the mainland team who shared hot food and other resources with them. The two teams exchanged information on the application of technology in search and rescue, and other aspects.

Yiu said that working with the mainland team this time was important for Hong Kong's future development in structural collapse search and rescue.

The team that participated in this rescue mission in Turkey is the Urban Search and Rescue Team, a special team under the Fire Services Department of the HKSAR government. Established in 2009, its main duty is to carry out search and rescue of victims trapped or buried underneath the rubble after structural collapse, landslide or other major accidents.

"Whenever a major accident occurs overseas or in neighboring areas, our team, consisting of some 160 members, can assemble all kinds of rescue tools, materials and equipment within a few hours to form a professional rescue force ready to depart for overseas duty," Yiu said.

Yiu said that it was full of challenges in the international rescue operations. It was much more difficult to carry out tasks such as on-site communication, resource allocation and information transmission than in Hong Kong.

"The mission, however, also allowed us to accumulate experiences, which will further strengthen our team's ability to cope with long-term rescue operations either locally or outside Hong Kong in the future," Yiu said.