A man was discovered in the ruins on Friday, 278 hours after the earthquake that devastated southern Turkey on February 6, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Twitter. The survivor, Hakan Yasinoglu, 45 years old according to private broadcaster NTV, was found on the twelfth day of the disaster in the ruins of Hatay province, near the Syrian border, which notably includes the completely devastated city of Antakya.
The survivor was pulled from a mountain of rubble, according to a video of (oppositional) Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, who dispatched city government rescue teams to the affected areas. The last three survivors discovered were also found in central Antakya: two men aged 33 and 26 were rescued “261 hours” after the earthquake and a 14-year-old boy just ahead of them, Fahrettin Koca said on Friday morning.
The latest official figure from the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria at 2 a.m. on Feb. 6 exceeds 41,000 dead. The chances of survival now seem lower around the earthquake’s epicenter further north, in mountainous regions like Kahramanmaras and even in snow-covered regions of Elbistan and Adiyaman, where the thermometer has dropped to -15°C at night.