Sarza chairperson gives first-hand account of Turkey rescue mission after earthquake

It was a hero’s welcome for Search and Rescue South Africa (Sarza) Lowveld’s chairperson, Andrew Geldenhuys, when he returned from an emotionally and physically exhausting 10-day deployment to Turkey on Sunday afternoon, February 19.

Geldenhuys returned to his home in White River after nine days spent working with non-governmental organisation Gift of the Givers Foundation, alongside international search-and-rescue teams in the Antakya region of Turkey.

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Various villages in Turkey, including Antakya, were hit with a devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake in the early hours of February 6.

Gift of the Givers Foundation facilitated the deployment of a highly skilled team of South Africans, specialising in areas under the search-and-rescue umbrella, including Geldenhuys. He was one of seven Sarza members to be deployed, and arrived in Antakya on February 9.

“It was total devastation. Eight-storey buildings had collapsed into one, walls had exploded outwards, and building after building had been reduced to piles of rubble. We saw people living on the streets and in camps. They had lost everything. The vastness of grief was unbelievable. Everyone who survived lost someone they loved, and in some cases, some people lost their whole families.”

Gift of the Givers head of search and rescue, Dr Ahmed Bham, who was also Geldenhuys’s team leader, said above the mission and dealing with the devastation and destruction, the teams were also working in an environment very different and much colder to than what South Africans are used to.

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Geldenhuys said they slept in tents in a parking lot of a stadium in below-zero temperatures. “Sleep was difficult. The nights were always freezing, and when we were working, we were walking and searching in fire gear all day.”

Geldenhuys’s specialty, while on deployment, was navigation and radio communications, assisting teams to move safely around the region while working. He said an experience he would never forget was seeing a team of rescuers forming a line down into rubble to pull out a survivor. “The line then got that person to an ambulance and to safety.”

One of the most amazing rescues, however, was that of a 90-year-old woman. Gift of the Givers, along with Warrant Officer Tinalia Gouws of the Lydenburg K9 Search and Rescue and her dog, Donna, were instrumental in finding the woman.
Bham said the woman being found alive was nothing short of a miracle. He said the team also played a key role in locating a 52-year-old survivor.

Bham said South African K9 dogs are unique in that they can detect the scents of both the living and the dead, whereas dogs from other teams could only detect people who were either alive or dead, but not both.
He added that the team was not sent to recover bodies, as the trauma and risk to the unit was too great. However, there were a few instances where family members begged for help to locate the bodies of their loved ones, and in some instances in which he considered the area safe enough, he would allow some team members to do so.

He said the team also marked the areas where the dogs detected the scent of bodies.

Geldenhuys said it had been an emotionally and physically taxing time, and that he would need a few days to process what he had seen.
When he returned to Mbombela on Sunday, we was met by fellow Sarza members, the emergency services fraternity and Mpumalanga Disaster Management.