Hüseyin Berber who narrowly escaped being crushed when his ceiling was held up by a fridge has told how he survived nearly eight days buried in the rubble of his home after Turkey’s devastating earthquake.
He was left sitting in an armchair in the pitch darkness in the ruins of the 15 storey block of flats where he lived with his family.
Hüseyin, who is diabetic, recalled how he fumbled around in the dark and found a single bottle of water which he drank in his crushed home in Antakya in Turkey’s southern Hatay province.
He became dehydrated and his throat parched and hoarse as he repeatedly shouted out in the hope of alerting rescuers after the water ran out.
Hüseyin said he finally hit on the idea of urinating into his empty water bottle, and then waiting for his pee to cool down before drinking it.
He was able to pick up a rug and wrapped it around himself to stay warm as night time temperatures plunged below freezing in the city where more than half the homes collapsed.
Five other members of his family including his son and grandchildren escaped unharmed by fleeing outside as the earthquake struck just after 4am on Monday last week, according to DailyMail.
‘When the earthquake hit, I immediately stood up. My grandchild was sleeping next to me. I looked around, my son turned on a light, took a flashlight and said, ‘Father, it’s an earthquake!’
‘In a second tremor, the ceiling collapsed, but it did not hit me. I immediately crouched and sat down. The wall fell over on to fridge and the cabinet. I was stuck there.
‘There was a rug. I took that and put it over me … I saw there was an armchair. I climbed over it took the rug and sat there.
‘I shouted, shouted and shouted. No one could hear me. I shouted so much that my throat hurt. Our son, I think took out the kids.
‘When I heard no sound from them, I realised that they were saved.’
Hüseyin said he found his diabetes medicine and a bottle of water on the floor.
He explained: ‘An hour later, I took (the water bottle) and drank it. Apologies, I peed in it and let it rest. I drank it when it got cold. I saved myself with that.’
Describing the moment he was rescued, he said he heard the sound of rescue teams trying to dig their way through to where he was trapped.
He said: ‘I was a little relieved when I heard that the work was being done above, but my throat was swollen with shouting.’I was here, they were there. I climbed next to the cabinet, I am reaching out to the ceiling but I couldn’t make it.
‘But on the other side of the room, it collapsed onto the bed. Our son brought three diggers, they are digging. I was hitting the ceiling, I saw it is punctured, I heard a voice, I shouted.
‘Someone reached their hand out and it met with my hand. They pulled me out from there. The hole I got out of was tiny. I was afraid to get out of that hole, but (I was) OK.’
Hüseyin sipped his urine until early on Tuesday this week when rescuers finally dug their way into his underground tomb and saved him after he had been trapped for 187 hours.
Medical staff have repeatedly told him that his survival against the odds was ‘a miracle’ after he was taken to recover at the City Hospital in Mersin.
