The captain of the Spanish Military Emergency Unit (UME) in the city of Gaziantep, which was struck by a major earthquake in Türkiye on Monday, praised the coordination with the Turkish disaster agency and local authorities as "great" during the rescue operations.
"The coordination with AFAD (Turkish Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency), was very very great and with local authority too. So with our reach-out procedure, we achieved a lot of goals," Capt. Juan Rodriguez Juste, part of a group of Spaniards sent to help Türkiye in the wake of Monday’s quakes, told Anadolu Agency (AA).
Noting that his team carried out two rescue operations in Gaziantep so far, Rodriguez said the first was on Wednesday in Islahiye where his unit supported the Turkish team in rescuing two people.
The second came on day five of the disaster when the unit saved two little children and their mother in Nurdağı.
"We got all the information from the coordination point of AFAD. We went to the point where AFAD told us," the captain said.
He underlined that the UME "worked more than 20 hours" to locate the mother and children under the rubble of a collapsed building.
"The police (gendarme) and the local civilians helped us to accomplish the mission properly," he added.
He noted that a volunteer from AFAD was with his team from the beginning as an interpreter to make information flow as smoothly as possible.
