Earthquake In Turkey: Volunteers - British team helps to dig for survivors

BRITISH VOLUNTEERS helping to deal with the emergency in Turkey told yesterday of the dangers they face every day as they search collapsed buildings for possible survivors.

Ray Gray, co-ordinator of the 13-strong team belonging to the International Rescue Corps and veteran of many earthquakes around the world, said: "This is as bad as it gets."

Mr Gray, 44, and his team of volunteers - one of two British teams helping the rescue operation - are based in the town of Duzce, three hours east of Turkey's most important financial city, Istanbul. They are at the front of efforts to search collapsed buildings - or "pancakes" - for any people who may still be alive under the rubble. When they find no survivors, they have the grim task of removing corpses.

"It's the worst of all situations because at 3am [when the earthquake struck] people were in bed," Mr Gray said. The volunteers are using thermal imaging cameras and sound-detecting equipment to try to locate people buried up to 40 feet beneath tons of concrete and wood. The rescuers know time is very much against them. "If we don't find them by tomorrow we'll know where they are because of the smell," Mr Gray said.

The volunteers are having to dig tunnels deep into the rubble to find possible survivors - a highly dangerous procedure given the fragile nature of many of the collapsed buildings. Annie Macdonald, one of two women in the team, was yesterday leading a deep search for survivors after the team believed they heard knocking. As soon as they started tunnelling into the debris they noticed a crack on a pillar above them.

"The further we went on the bigger the crack became," said Ms Macdonald of Falkirk, Central Scotland. A full-time firefighter, she was on her first earthquake mission. "I'm more fortunate than most because I deal with fatalities on a daily basis... but they are never easy to deal with," she said.