With flowers in their hands and with open arms, shortly after midnight, at the “Macedonia” airport in Thessaloniki, their colleagues welcomed the fifteen men from EMAK and with them the doctor and the two rescuers from EKAV, who took part in earthquake rescues in Turkey.
“All the members of the team worked selflessly and demonstrated their high level of training,” said the operations officer of the 2nd EMAK, deputy fire chief, Miltiadis Karageorgiadis and continued: “It was a difficult situation, a huge disaster, whole areas were flattened… From the first hour when we heard about the earthquake we all wanted to be there, finally we were, we tried from the first to the last minute. Imagine, that until this morning (yesterday) seven members of the team were trying to extricate the 24-year-old athlete who was buried under the rubble, unfortunately to no avail. We started the operation without having any visual or audible signal, nevertheless we tried until seven in the morning, but without results. We are happy that we had some people freed alive, we hope that others will be found, although the window of time is narrowing as the hours pass and we are now talking about miracles.”
The Greek team attempted the city of Hatay at a considerable distance from the epicenter of the earthquakes, but even there the destruction was great.
The deputy fire chief noted the warmth with which Turkish citizens welcomed the Greek mission.
“They embraced us from the first moment. It was very moving now that we were returning and had the Greek flag on the rescue vehicle, they greeted us, they said to us: “you are brothers”. Very touching”.
The director of EKAV Thessaloniki Central Macedonia, Christina Karabelidou, was also at the airport to welcome the rescuers who took part in the mission, who stated that she was very moved and proud of the health personnel and in general of all the members of the mission. “They had a perfect collaboration” said Mrs. Karabelidou.
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