Husband and wife trapped for 296 hours under a collapsed building pulled out alive in the aftermath of a massive earthquake
- A rescue team in Turkey saved a couple stuck under a collapsed building for 296 hours.
- Samir Muhammed Accar said he survived by drinking his urine.
A rescue team pulled a couple and their son from the rubble in Antakya, Turkey, on Saturday, more than 12 days — or 296 hours — after an enormous 7.8 magnitude earthquake devastated the region.
Samir Muhammed Accar, 49, his wife, Ragda, 40, and their 12-year-old son were transferred to ambulances after being found under a destroyed apartment block, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported. Their son later died at the hospital, and the bodies of their two other children were found in the wreckage, according to the agency.
The father is conscious and being treated at Mustafa Kemal University Hospital, Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said, according to the Associated Press.
Anadolu later released photos of Accar being visited by Mehmet Oz, television doctor and one-time candidate for senator, while he recovered. Accar told Oz that he disinfected and drank his urine to stay alive.
Oz posted about his visit to Accar in the hospital on Twitter, saying that “devastatingly, his children did not pull through.”
The city of Antakya is in Turkey’s Hatay province, one of the regions hit hardest by the earthquake. The disaster has killed more than 46,000 people in the country and neighboring Syria.
Turkey’s government and highly lax building regulations have come under scrutiny after the massive collapse of infrastructure in the wake of the earthquake.
Despite the rescue of the survivors nearly two weeks later, the head of the Turkish Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency said that search and rescue operations would likely end on Sunday evening.
