The story of a special but bittersweet rescue in the ruins of an apartment building in Turkey

There are many shocking stories that see the light of day after the killer earthquake in Turkey and Syria. Amidst the frozen wreckage, a special but bittersweet rescue is presented by the New York Times. In the hard-hit Turkish city of Gaziantep, an apartment building collapsed and few of its residents escaped. A man heard his brother’s voice under the rubble.

As the hours passed the hopes were fading. No one expected anyone to be alive in the rubble of one of the apartment buildings that collapsed on Tuesday. The strong earthquake that hit southern Turkey the day before had level six floors in a huge pile of concrete rubble. And yet, some did not lose hope. The brother of a man who lived on the fifth floor with his wife and children stood in the rubble, talking to his brother Ibrahim Karapirli, who was trapped in ruins below. The results of the scattered rescue operation that followed were both heroic and tragic. Across the vast swath of southern Turkey and northern Syria devastated by the earthquake, countless efforts like this unfolded Tuesday by professionals and hobbyists, using whatever tools they had at hand in hopes of finding survivors of a disaster that it killed thousands of people and upended millions of lives.

A professional soccer player has been pulled from the rubble in southern Turkey. In northwestern Syria, a newborn found in a collapsed buildingpossibly the only surviving member of the family.

After dusk, a cheer came from the roof, and the crowd in the street joined in shouting “God is great!” because the workers had reached the family. About an hour later, another cheer was heard as two of the childrena pair of twins – a girl named Elcin and a boy named Eray Ahmet – went out. The workers formed a line at the side of the pile of rubble and passed the children from hand to hand to the waiting ambulances. THE next was the mother. Workers put her on a stretcher and lowered her onto the street using a crane. Finally the father came, wrapped in a shiny gold emergency blanket. When he reached the street, he was taking deep breaths in the freezing air, his two bare feet sticking out over the edge of the stretcher. In the crowd was Fatma Kaplan, a friend of his wife who had rushed to the scene in tears. “We met when we were 7 years old,” she said. “It’s my heart.” All family members were taken to local hospitals. It was a remarkable rescue, but one that soon turned tragic. Night was approaching and the crew had not yet found the other two children, the boys Enes and Erdem, aged 11 and 12. No one had heard their voice in the ruins either.