ERCIS, Turkey — Five people were pulled out alive Monday from the rubble in eastern Turkey after a 7.2-magnitude quake leveled buildings and killed some 272 people. Four of them were rescued after one managed to call for help with his cell phone.
Dozens of people were trapped in mounds of concrete, twisted steel and construction debris after hundreds of buildings in two cities and mud-brick homes in nearby villages pancaked or partially collapsed in Sunday’s earthquake.
Worst-hit was Ercis — an eastern city of 75,000 close to the Iranian border that lies in one of Turkey’s most earthquake-prone zones — where about 80 multistory buildings collapsed.
Yalcin Akay was dug out from a collapsed six-story building with a leg injury after he called a police emergency line on his phone and described his location, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported. Three others, including two children, were also rescued from the same building in Ercis 20 hours after the quake struck, officials said.
Later, a 21-year-old woman, Tugba Altinkaynak, was rescued after being trapped beneath rubble for some 27-hours. There was no immediate information on her condition.
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