Turkey earthquake – Incredible moment woman is pulled from rubble alive in Izmir as killer 7.0 quake flattens towns
THIS is the incredible moment a woman is pulled alive from the rubble after a devastating magnitude-7.0 earthquake that rocked Turkey and Greece.
Hundreds of people have been injured and at least eight have been killed in the massive tremor which struck the Greek islands and Turkish coastline on the Aegean Sea.
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Video shows the moment the hero rescuers pulled the woman alive from the wreckage in the Turkish city of Izmir.
Scores of people are feared to have been trapped beneath the rubble after at least 20 buildings were levelled by the quake.
Rescue workers and residents have been working together to try and clear away debris and save lives.
The 14-second video shows a crowd of rescuers cheering as they appear to pull a living woman from the devastation.
She looks dazed and her face is covered in brick dust, but thankfully she is alive.
The rescuers – many in street clothes – then hug the woman before helping her away from the wreckage.
At least 70 people are reported to have been pulled from the collapsed buildings in the city which suffered the brunt of the quake.
Horrifying pictures however show the ongoing challenges facing the rescuers as rubble is still piled high around them as nigth falls.
Turkey’s health ministry said 38 ambulances, two ambulance helicopters and 35 medical rescue teams are working in Izmir.
The city was also hit by a mini-tsunami as a surge of sea water swept through coastal areas.
Rescuers called for silence as they hunted for any signs of survivors, clearing boulders and other debris in a human chain.
TRT television showed rescuers being helped by residents and police using chainsaws as they tried to force their way through the rubble.
The quake’s epicentre was 11 miles north of the Greek island Samos off the coast of Turkey, a region popular with Brit tourists.
Two teenagers, aged 15 and 17, were confirmed to have died on the island as a wall collapsed on top of them.
The tremor was also felt across the eastern Greek islands, such as Mykonos and Kos, and tsunami warnings were issued to many beachgoers.
The United States Geological Survey confirmed the enormous tremor was felt 190 miles away in Athens and some 200 miles away in Istanbul.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan tweeted that he was ready to help “with all the means available to our state”.
Witnesses said people flooded onto the streets in the popular tourist city after the quake struck.
Turkish officials and broadcasters have called on people to stay off the roads so emergency vehicles can move quickly to the disaster zone.
The quake struck at around 11.50am GMT and was felt along Turkey’s Aegean coast and the northwestern Marmara region.
Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency said the earthquake was centered in the Aegean Sea at a depth of 10.3 miles.
Seismologist Efthymios Lekkas told Greek state television ERT that it was still too early to say whether this was the main earthquake.
“It was a very big earthquake, it’s difficult to have a bigger one,” said Lekkas.
Greece’s Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias reached out to his Turkish counterpart and offered to send some members of their disaster relief team to Izmir.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis called Turkish President Erdogan today, offering condolences, adding: “Whatever our differences, these are times when our people need to stand together”.
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Greece and Turkey are both situated in one of the world’s most active earthquake zones, crisscrossed by potentially devastating faultlines.
In 1999, a 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck Turkey’s northwest, killing more than 17,000 people, including 1,000 in Istanbul.
Another quake in 2011 in the southeastern province of Van resulted in more than 600 deaths.
In Greece, the last deadly quake killed two people on the island of Kos, near Samos, in July 2017.