a first team of French rescuers arrived on site testifies to the difficulty of this mission

France sent two teams of members of the Civil Security and firefighters to Turkey after the devastating earthquake which also hit Syria and which caused the death of more than 5,000 people. The first team left in the night from Monday to Tuesday, while the other took off during the day: 73 people thus landed Tuesday morning at the military airport of Incirlik, near Adana.

>> Earthquake in Turkey and Syria: follow the situation live

This first team arrived on Tuesday, February 7 in the morning around 9:30 a.m., French time, with at least four hours of delay: it took a little longer than expected to transport the twenty tons of equipment. The 73 Civil Security soldiers, firefighters and also four reconnaissance dogs then had to wait at least thirty minutes on the plane before being able to get out, the time necessary to manage the influx of aircraft landing and taking off. since Monday on this military base.

The first team sent to Hatay

And then finally, after international coordination, it was decided that these rescuers would take the road to the province of Hatay, which was particularly affected. There is an emergency, according to Colonel Nicot, who leads the teams.

“We will have no rest until we are confident that we can save people.”

Colonel Nicot

at franceinfo

“To do this we have a number of search capabilities, from cameras, dogs, details the soldier. We have four canine teams, as well as drones, and rescue teams, which will be able to search in the rubble, as close as possible to the victims who could be buried, with means of cutting concrete and metal. “We will obviously have the medical team who will be there to take into account the victims that we have extracted or the injured who would be directly accessible, continues Colonel Nicot. And as I said, I can count on us to give our maximum to fulfill this mission.”

Everyone knows that it will be a difficult mission: the weather was nice on Tuesday, but night falls very quickly and the temperatures plummet at the end of the day. Another French team, 65 people in all, will also go to Turkey today, also with twenty tons of equipment and six other reconnaissance dogs. The mission should last for the moment 15 days minimum.