Earthquake In Turkey: One Family's Search - Suddenly, in the ruins of her home, came a cry: `Save my father first'

HER NAME was Hafize Kurt and for more than 30 hours she had been buried beneath the unstable rubble of her flattened home.

At first, the neighbours and friends clawing desperately at the debris with their bare hands had not known the 22-year-old was even alive. Then in the early hours yesterday they heard a voice. It was Hafize and she desperately needed their help.

The drama that was eventually played out here in Ornek, a suburb of the industrial city of Izmit, yesterday morning was being repeated across the entire strip of north-west Turkey that was struck by the earthquake, which literally caught people asleep.

Just how high the death toll rises will not become clear for many days, but those involved in the rescue operation fear the worst. In such circumstances, initial estimates of the death toll invariably rise rather than fall.

In communities from Istanbul to Bursa and as far east as Duzce, rescue workers, volunteers and more often than not ordinary people struggled with their bare hands to free survivors from the debris. Where there were no survivors, people were simply trying to recover the bodies of their friends and relatives.

As searches continued, the death toll rose. In that sense, at least, Hafize was lucky. The moment her neighbours heard her voice calling for help they called the local fire brigade, pitifully under-equipped and overstretched as it tried to co-ordinate the rescue efforts.

When the firefighters arrived and put their ears to the rubble, Hafize had told them there were other people trapped, including her father, Emin, 60, and her eight-year-old brother, Metin, and that they would have to work fast.

"For several hours we have heard voices but then they stopped," said Ramazan Yildirm, one of many locals who had stayed up all night trying to help. "Then there was the sound of knocking - someone knocking against concrete. We could not understand who it was."

A little while later Hafize was able to speak to the rescuers again. It was her father, Emin, who had been knocking, she explained, as she asked those digging for a cup of water. He had a bad heart, and they should rescue him first.

Then she added: "My brother is probably dead. His knees are pressing up against my shoulder."

The rescuers worked on, carefully lifting away the slabs of concrete from the collapsed four-storey block of flats that had once been Hafize's home and was now threatening to entomb her.

As they did so, other villagers watched - some wailing in grief, others simply sitting staring at the scene in silence.

One old man with a blue hat was sitting quietly on the grass in the shadow of those flats still standing, but teetering at a dangerous angle. Sacit Ingec had lost his only son, buried beneath the rubble.

"I feel hopeless," he said, as he berated the builders of the flats. "There was no one here to help him."

Mr Ingec and other locals believe that up to 50 people had been killed and were lying somewhere beneath the debris of the two collapsed blocks of flats.

One of the victims, an eight-year-old girl, whose injured parents had been taken to hospital, was clearly visible trapped between two concrete floors at the rear of the rubble.

She was lying face down, her dark brown hair piled over her outstretched arms, and she was still wearing her pink and white pyjamas. In all likelihood she had never woken up. Someone thought her name was Anna.

"Why don't the rescuers take her body out of there?" one of the locals was asked. "Because they are trying to save those still alive," came the reply. The rescuers working frantically just a few yards from where the little girl's body lay knew they were up against time.

"If somebody has plenty of room, and lots of water and they are not injured in any way then it's possible they can survive in those situations for up to five days," said Beat Kunzi, a member of Swiss Rescue, a team of which had arrived yesterday in Izmit to help the emergency operation.

"If any of those factors are against them then their chances are drastically reduced."

The rescuers knew that in addition to Mr Kurt's heart condition and Hafize's injured ankle, neither of them had any space and the mid-morning sun was like a furnace. More worryingly, nobody had heard Mr Kurt tapping for more than an hour.

The tension and expectation continued to rise as the rescuers kept saying they were only minutes away from releasing the young woman, only for them to then turn round and reveal they had encountered another hitch. Apparently Hafize's foot had been caught by wire and one of the rescuers had to tunnel to her 30 feet beneath the debris and cut her free.

"There are many dead bodies on the way to get to her," said Yilmaz Sevgul, the rescue team leader, "I could see many. I could smell them."

The rescuers persevered trying to ignore the mid-morning summer burning like a furnace. And then 31 hours and 42 minutes after she was first trapped under the rubble Hafize was carefully lifted by the armpits from a hole in the top of the rubble, where she was gently placed on a stretcher and an oxygen mask placed over her mouth.

In bright green leggings and an orange top now covered in dust Hafize appeared remarkably unhurt by the ordeal as an ambulance crew attended to her. But as the rescuers carefully carried her down the sloping pile of debris towards the waiting ambulance she was moaning aloud. It became clear that she was telling them something important.

Moments later one of those nearby divulged the contents of their conversation: Hafize had told them that her father had died just an hour before.