Chinese civilian groups quick to join quake rescue work

Generators provided

Li's team was also helped by the provision of two electric generators thanks to a Chinese entrepreneur.

After learning that the Green Boat team was heading to Turkiye, the entrepreneur, surnamed Yang, asked Li if generators were needed for the mission.

Yang, who runs Baisheng, an emergency equipment company in Shenyang, capital of Liaoning province, did not travel to Turkiye. Instead, he contacted a friend in the quake-hit nation for help, before finally managing to send the generators from Istanbul to the Green Boat team's base in Hatay province, Li said.

She added that Yang's friend planned to hand the generators to the team at the airport in Istanbul, but the squad flew to Hatay directly without leaving the airport.

"Soon after I told him the generators had been received, Yang sent me a WeChat account with the contact details of a technician who could help if there were any problems with the equipment." Li said.

"I am greatly moved by this generosity," she said, adding that the generators provide power for more than 60 workers from five Chinese rescue organizations.

Many Chinese studying and working in Turkiye have also contributed to the disaster relief operation.

For example, Ma Jiayao, 30, from Qinghai, who went to study at Istanbul University in 2014 and has worked in Turkiye since graduating, volunteered to work as an interpreter for Chinese rescuers.

"I was very excited when I saw on the news that Chinese rescuers had arrived in Turkiye," Ma said.

Xihai Metropolis Daily in Xining quoted him as saying, "After hearing from a friend that our embassy in Turkiye was arranging for Chinese students in the country to work as interpreters for Chinese rescuers, the appeal received an immediate response, and I wanted to sign up to help."

As many Chinese in Turkiye were eager to contribute to rescue work, Ma feared his application would not receive a quick response, so he contacted Chinese journalists heading to areas hit by the quake so that they could try to reach Chinese rescuers together.

Leaving Istanbul Airport for Malatya province on Thursday in a rental car with the journalists, Ma finally reached the Blue Sky Rescue camp shortly before midnight on Friday, where he quickly started interpreting for the Chinese rescuers.

As of Tuesday afternoon Beijing time, 440 members from 17 Chinese civilian rescue teams had reached quake-hit areas of Turkiye, according to China's Ministry of Emergency Management.

According to an earlier release from the ministry, as of May 12, 2021, China's National Disaster Prevention and Reduction Day, 1,775 civilian rescue teams comprising 620,000 members were registered in China.

The Emergency Response Coordination Center for Chinese NGOs in Turkiye said it stopped accepting civilian rescuers from China at 3 pm on Sunday.

With emergency search and rescue operations coming to an end, and the priority of disaster relief work shifting to resettlement, the center urged Chinese civilian teams not to travel to Turkiye.

It said it wants to see rescue teams that have completed their tasks make an orderly departure from the country.

Some teams have already decided to leave Turkiye. For example, seven members from the BSR branch in Baoding, Hebei province, were poised to return to China on Tuesday.

Bai Haiyan, head of the group, said on Monday: "Today, we will again comb areas where there are suspected signs of survivors. Tomorrow, the Baoding BSR group will start to leave. Every time we go to disaster-stricken areas, we assemble rapidly. After completing the task, we leave quietly.

"When we arrived in Turkiye, we shouted the slogan 'Live up to our mission, and come back safe and sound'."

Zhang Yu, Gu Yehua contributed to this story.