One of the survivors of the deadly earthquakes of February 6 told the Turkish Anadolu Agency yesterday Saturday how he kept his cool, remaining trapped in the ruins of a building in the province of Antijaman in southeastern Turkey for 56 hours.

“I didn’t know how many days we spent under the rubble… I had tobacco with me, I was rolling a cigarette and smoking,” says Ziya Soner Tughtekin, who was rescued with his son, 56 hours after the 7.8-magnitude earthquake shook the havoc in Turkey and Syria.

He and his son may have made it out of the rubble alive, but his wife and daughter were not so lucky. “At the time of the earthquake, my daughter and wife tried to come to me. The ceiling collapsed on them and they were killed on the spot,” he narrates. “My son Denis got trapped and broke his ribs.”

He advises those who find themselves in a similar position to primarily try to keep their cool.

The rescuers pulled him out of the wreckage literally with the cigarette in his mouth. “When they pulled me out of the rubble, I had the cigarette in my mouth. They told me to throw it away, but I didn’t because that’s how I stayed alive,” he added. He did not part with it even on the stretcher with which he was removed from the flattened district.

At least 40,462 dead and more than 108,000 injured is the provisional toll of the earthquakes in Turkey. Another 5,800 deaths have been confirmed in neighboring Syria, a toll that has remained unchanged for days and is almost certainly thought to be much higher.