Scale of disaster in Türkiye 'greatest' that Mexican rescue team ever seen

A Mexican rescue team was surprised by the size of the tragedy in quake-hit Türkiye, saying the scale of last week’s disaster is the "greatest" they have ever seen.

Rafael Martinez Garcia, commander general of a volunteer Rotary Safety and Rescue Brigade, spoke to Anadolu at Hatay airport Friday before boarding a return flight to his country with his team of 16 after spending eight days in the earthquake zone

Although his team is prepared for disaster psychology, which tries to understand the emotional situation of the people who lost everything, Martinez said: "What surprised us was the size of the tragedy. We have been in other remote moments, in other missions. And I think that this is the greatest that we have had to live through. A lot of damage."

"Unfortunately we were unable to rescue people alive. We recovered several corpses," he said. He added, however, that they rescued some pets from damaged buildings at the request of their owners.

"People were asking us to go in for their cats. We were very surprised that people here have so many cats. We entered badly damaged buildings to retrieve those," he said. "There was a parrot as well."

- 'Excellent coordination'

On the coordination between his team and Turkish people and authorities, Martinez said it was "excellent."

"We had the support of the Turkish Embassy and here in Türkiye, the people turned to not only us, but also to all the rescue groups and in a very kind, even affectionate way," he said.

"They gave us soup and tea all the time, they took very good care of us."

The Feb. 6 magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 earthquakes, centered in the Kahramanmaras province, affected more than 13 million people across 11 provinces, including Adana, Adiyaman, Diyarbakir, Gaziantep, Hatay, Kilis, Malatya, Osmaniye, Sanliurfa, and Elazig.

Several countries in the region, including Syria and Lebanon, also felt the strong tremors that struck Türkiye in less than 10 hours.