Valladolid (EFE).- The six Valladolid firefighters who participated in the search and rescue tasks in Turkey after the earthquake that devastated the southeast of the country have acknowledged feeling a feeling of “sadness, fatigue and frustration” upon their return to Valladolid.
This was expressed in statements to journalists early in the afternoon at the Las Eras fire station in Valladolid, in an act that was also attended by the Councilor for Public Health and Citizen Security of the City Council, Alberto Palomino.
We were wanting to give the maximum
The firefighter Víctor Rodríguez, dressed in an Ankara fire fighting service T-shirt, explained that they have spent several days in the Turkish city of Adiyaman, one of the most affected by the earthquake that has left a balance of 40,000 dead in Turkey and Syria.
“We have a feeling that is a mixture of sadness and frustration, because we wanted to give our best and we have found a situation with a devastation above normal,” he assured, before mentioning that they spent a whole day in a Turkish airport while rescue teams were being organized.
The six Valladolid firefighters -one of them did not want to make statements and another went directly to his home in Ávila-, went with the NGO Acción Norte and their work went through a double search with specialized tracking dogs, which in their case it has been unsuccessful.
The first to work, the dog, the perfect machine
“Many told you ‘it seems there is life here’, but the first one has to work is the dog, which is the perfect machine, and the bad news always detected us”, he exposed, to underline how the pressure and collective sadness grew .
A trip in which they have coincided with other colleagues from the parks of Palencia, Salamanca, Leganés, Vitoria and Zamora, as well as with other rescue teams of other nationalities such as China or Venezuela.
His colleague David Peláez has recognized that “no more has been done because more could not be done” and has justified the feeling of frustration in which they left Spain with “the idea of saving lives and they have found a completely desolate space, in which that nothing could be done.”
Peláez has assured that the hardest thing for him has been when parents and children asked them to help them remove the corpses from the rubble, which has made it very difficult to sleep in the three full days they were on the ground.
“The minute we set foot in the city, the idea with which we had arrived was dismantled,” said Julio, another of the firefighters, who stressed that they have seen entire buildings demolished in which there could be hundreds of people, in Specifically, one in which he knew there were 180 inhabitants and only ten people were rescued.
They offered water and food that they did not have for themselves.
Julio has pointed out that in Adiyaman they have seen “sandwich-type collapses, in which the first floor slab was joined to the second and third floors” and pointed out that the destruction was such that the streets had disappeared due to rubble.
Firefighters from the municipal firefighting service have underlined the closeness and warmth of Turkish citizens, who despite having lost family and friends offered them water and food that they did not have for themselves.
An elegant and very tough town
The firefighter Mario Arranz has stressed that they even “insisted and insisted” when they rejected their proposals for education and has shown his appreciation “for their integrity despite the bad news that we gave them”, since very few people have been found alive under the debris.
“An elegant and very tough town”, has summed up Víctor Rodríguez. EFE
